#ilearniteach

25 TVs in 20 classrooms and other locations around the college was going to be a challenge. Not only do we have a majority of VGA projectors, but encouraging staff to use them was going to be interesting!

Firstly, who will have access to the TV in the classroom? Teachers, students or both? We went with both, flattening our wireless network removing the separate SSIDs for student and staff. Unfortunately, the Apple bonjour service doesn’t run over multiple SSIDs (unless someone can prove me wrong)!

The VGA problem was solved by small HDMI to VGA convertor (unpowered) – a cost saver for any classroom upgrade!

Second, training the staff how to access the TVs – I really like how Apple make it easy with Airplay and Mirroring. No messing about, it’s simple and effective. I want to make a comment on Digital Natives Vs Immigrants here – another blog post is in order!

Classroom deployment… So we decided to increase the number of TVs to 35 across both primary and secondary classes.

Airplay mirroring has been a great success in the classroom, giving greater effective assessment focus for the teachers and ubiquity to the students. No longer is the classroom a “I do, you do” scenario. Students are even more the focus in the classroom, allowing them to interact with their peers and teachers. Apps become the means to the learning cycle (not the end) and demonstrations and presentations become a classroom collaboration.

The onscreen code to prevent accidental interruptions has been an added to success to the TVs. The concept of Share, Remix, Reuse between students has enabled them to further develop their collaboration skills in curation, communication and connection. The culture of front of the room, or chalk and talk is even more disconnected from the classroom – this brings in the debate of whether IWBs still have a place in Secondary Education – I’d enjoy reading your comments on this.

  The SAMR Model can simply be applied effectively to Apps that you use in the classroom. This graphic is not intended to be an exhaustive list but it will give you an idea of how you can modify your teaching programs using SAMR . 

  The SAMR Model can simply be applied effectively to Apps that you use in the classroom. This graphic is not intended to be an exhaustive list but it will give you an idea of how you can modify your teaching programs using SAMR .