21 Ways I Will Use My IPad2 in 2012 @ School

I have had my iPad2 for two months now and after spending a considerable amount of time on it and downloading apps I thought I would try and clarify in my own mind how I was going to use all this new technology in 2012.


1. The Step Test and Bleep Test apps will be useful as part of my fitness testing units in middle and senior school.
2. The Vital Signs app is used to measure heart rate and breathing rate. Really looking forward to using it with my year 1/2 primary PE students to demonstrate how physical activity increases heart and breathing rate. I will take screen shots of each student with their data to post to blog with a student comment attached. A great tool for senior classes as well.
3. The Fitdeck Junior app will be used to help junior primary students develop core strength and show them how to correctly do exercises like push ups etc. Will use at beginning of lessons regularly, focusing on one exercise over a period of time to ensure correct technique and motor development. Minimal time will be spent doing this activity but
4. The TimeMotion app will be used to record movement data for senior students to analyse in relation to energy systems being used. I will use the app with middle school classes to collect movement data at various times to show a connection between success in a sport or game and the amount of movement or effort a student puts in. I did this last year and graphed the results for each student.
5. The SportsCam app will help to improve skills in all sports. I have been downloading You Tube video of skills for a particular sport and then trimming the video down to a short snippet showing only the skill. These videos are then loaded into the app and can then be compared with video of students performing the same skill. I will be using this extensively with my senior classes and at different times with my middle school classes.
6. The PE Games app will be used to help provide me with games for my junior primary PE classes.
7. The PE Apps app is an excellent starting point for finding great apps for PE.
8. iMovie is a great app that I will use to produce short movies of student activities such as camps and excursions. It is so easy to add video and edit that no longer does it take hours to produce great looking movies. These movies will then be made available for students to take home and share with their families. Students can also use the app for learning activities and is one more format for students to present work. This will unfortunately be limited as students will not have their own iPads to work with, just mine.
9. The TED app is nicely set out making it easy to find the types of talks you want. Allows you to download and store talks to the iPad for viewing without an Internet connection. TED is a great resource regardless of whether you use an iPad or a PC.
10. The Flashcardlet app is a flash card app which I will try to incorporate into my teaching of senior PE by creating sets of cards on various topics. This app allows you to create questions on one side of a card and then flip the card over to reveal the answer or relevant information. This is just another method of learning to be combined with textbook, screencasts, audio, class discussions, blogging, worksheets, video etc..
11. Dictionary app is quick and easy to use. One of the great things about an iPad is having everything on one device. A dictionary is just another of those things.
12. How Stuff Works app is a great reference tool quickly available on my iPad. I will be using this to find information linked with my health classes this year i.e. searches on topics like alcohol, skin cancer, and Aids/HIV are just a few that I have tried. Great for any subject area.
13. The Educreations app will be used by me to create audio visual presentations for staff in my role as teaching and curriculum coordinator and for my senior PE students as another way to access content and learn. These presentations will go on my staff blog www.australiancurriculumtfel.edublogs.org and my PE blog www.seniorphysicaleducation.edublogs.org. This is a very useful app and makes flipping the classroom very easy.
14. The iBrainstorm, Popplet and iDecision apps will assist with the sorting of information and analysing that information. The first two mentioned are essentially brainstorming apps with Popplet being slightly more flexible allowing me to insert images. iDecision is an app that I will use with students to help make decisions about an issue. It allows students to list pros and cons and helps them to come to a decision by allowing them to allocate a level of importance to each pro and con. The app then generates a decision as a percentage ratio.
15.The Dropbox app will be used to create shared folders with my senior PE students to submit assignments. Students will be creating their own Dropbox accounts and then access a shared folder under their name in my Dropbox account to hand up work. I will then edit or mark the work in Dropbox. To start with I will only be able to edit on my laptop and view on my iPad. Looking to get Documents To Go (expensive $17.99) which will then allow me to edit Word, Excel and Power Points on my iPad if I want to. Reduces paper use and saves me losing assignments and messing up my desk with more paper.
16.The iPad camera will be used to take photos in my junior primary PE classes for the students to add captions and then upload to their HPE class blog. It is not a great camera but I will see how it goes as it saves me carrying another camera.
17. The Splashtop app will be used to access and control my laptop. This app allows me to wirelessly access my laptop from my iPad. This means I can be working around the classroom with my iPad and if I need to use my laptop to put something up on the IWB I can do it from my iPad allowing me to continue sitting and working with students.
18. The Keynote app will allow me to create slide presentations on my iPad for students and staff. I will probably continue using PowerPoint as well. Keynote does have one downfall and that is getting the presentation off the iPad so it can be accessed elsewhere. However if I can get Apple TV working in my classroom the benefit of having Keynote presentations will be significant as I can show them wirelessly on the IWB and not be confined to the front of the classroom.
19. The Easy Assessment app will be very useful for student assessment. I will be using this with my middle school classes in HPE and have already entered my classes and begun creating rubrics to match the topics I will be teaching. The most exciting feature of this app is the ability to add a photo and video into the students assessment.
20. I will continue to use the Twitter app as my main source of continuous professional development. It is an outstanding source of information and resources.
21. Apple TV will allow me to connect my iPad wirelessly to the IWB. At the time of writing this I am yet to get this working at school due to security issues. I have a potential solution I am hoping will work. Just need to get back to school and try it out. If this does not work I will be left with my VGA cable to connect to the IWB.

There are many more apps that are available that I could use but these are the ones I have become familiar with and could see an immediate use for. No doubt this list will be added to during 2012. These are the functions that I can see myself using as the owner of an iPad in the classroom. If each of my students had an iPad this list would be a lot longer. Maybe this will happen sometime in the near future......