Time To Hand Over To Our Kinder Leaders

It's time now to hand over to our Kinder teachers. The itunes account is set up, the para sync is working well and the students love the ipod touches. So now we set the challenge to our Kinder leaders. The aim is for our students to have their ipod touches in their pockets to use as a tool for learning during the different learning episodes in the day........

Is The Ipod Touch An Effective Tool For Developing Kinder Literacy Levels?

We have started to collect some information to inform us about any increase in student’s literacy levels using the ipod touches. This information will be used to help us make informed decisions in relation to the use of the ipod touch in our school environment.

We believe that the ipod touch is a tool that will support the development of literacy levels for our Kinder students. We believe that this will be achieved through repetition of key concepts and skills learnt at school using a mobile and interactive device such as the ipod touch. We also believe that it will make the over-learning fun.

To begin our research we have administered letter identification and concepts about print tests on our kinder students. We have paired our students up according to their existing knowledge of these areas. Now we will give one student in each pair one to one access of an ipod touch for a two-week period. This student will have access to the ipod at school and at home. They will also participate in the normal classroom activities related to learning about letter and print concepts. The other student will only have access to the normal classroom teaching. The ipod touch has been loaded with some basic applications that revise letter and sounds and introduce basic concepts about print. They have been chosen as they are interactive, repetitious and fun.

At the end of the two-week period the tests will be re-administered.

Week Two Data Collection

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Our four students involved in our research project have had their ipod touch for two weeks now. They have been using them in class and taking them home each day. Today we re-administered the Letter Identification tests to the students involved in the sample of Kinder students taking the touches home and the student who began with the same score for the Letter Identification test. We graphed the results of these tests. Some observations include:

• The students who have access to an ipod touch with letter identification applications were able to identify more letters than those students who didn't have access over a two week period.
• The students who have access to an ipod touch with letter identification applications displayed more confidence during the letter identification tests than those students who didn't have access over the two week period.

Touching student lives in the classroom: using the iPod touch to increase learning outcomes for Kindergarten students.

Meet Miss Kelly, she currently teaches Year Four and is completing her Master of Education in Educational Leadership. She has written a literature review related to our work with the ipod touches.

Parent Feedback

Last week we asked two of our trial Kinder mums to take a couple of minutes to give us some feedback about the ipod touches. They spoke to us about their child's level of engagement with the ipod touch, the ease of use of the ipod touch, a sense of responsibility, the relevance of the applications, instant feedback given through the applications and the concept of mobile learning.

Ipod Touches Given To Kinder Students

Today the ipod touches were given to the Kinder students with very few instructions. Amazingly the Kinder students were able to turn their touches on and start to use them straight away It was great to see the students working together to teach one another how to use the different applications. The most popular application today was the matching one. Their was great excitement and engagement in the room as the students navigated their way around the applications.

A small group of four students used the ipod touches in their first ever guided reading session. It was lots of fun. These four students will now take their ipod touch home and use the reading application to develop their fluency in reading.

Ipod Touches Go Home With Students

Last Friday four of our Kinder students took the ipod touches home to continue the research part of our program. I met with two of the parents of these students today as well as the four students. Both the parents and the students were excited about the touches, although I have to say that the students found it harder to contain their excitement.

Some feedback from the parents included the following points:

• Students needed no instruction on how to use the ipod touches.
• Siblings of the students were keen to use the ipod touches as well, however the Kinder students found it difficult to share them.
• Students were playing the letter and number identification games all throughout the weekend.
• Students enjoyed the stories that were read to them on the touches.
• It was easy to charge the ipod touch at home, it fitted into the docking stations that families already had at home.
• Parents found it useful to have the earphones.
• Parents liked the instant feedback that the applications provided for students.
• Students had to listen very carefully to instructions on the applications

Some feedback from the students included:

• The number game is fun.
• It's easy to use.
• The students liked the fairy tales that were read to the on the touch.

Some feedback from the teacher who sent the touches home on Friday included:

• Students used the touches freely once they were shown how to turn on/off, slide, select an app, exit an app and return to the main screen so they could select a new app.
• The students were quickly engaged with the touches using alot of language to teach one another how to use the touches.

Restoring Ipods

Today saw the end of restoring the ipod touches that had gone home with staff over the Christmas break. As all staff members took a touch home with a range of applications and access to add some more to trial before we gave them to students all of the touches had to be restored back to their original settings. This was a long process! I believe that it was worth it though as all staff now know about how the touch works and its potential in improving learning outcomes for all our students.

Some positive comments from staff after the holidays included:

• The ipod touch is a great tool for mobile learning.
• There are plenty of apps that we could apply to the syllabus.
• It is great for developing fine motor skills.
• It's fun.
• It kept me interested!
• Apps are really worthwhile and challenging.

Some minus comments from staff after the holidays included:

• The screen needs cleaning.
• A case is needed to protect the ipod touch.
• They are quiet addictive.
• The power can drain quickly.

In response to the minus comments we have purchased some silicone cases and screen protectors. We are also trialing the parasync to charge twenty touches at once.

Apple Fixes Bugs With iTunes 9.0.3 Update

Today spent most of the day trying to sync ipod touches using new parasync device. It charges and syncs twenty ipod touches at once. This was supposed to make life much easier, however the work that we had done previously made more work in the long run.

We had added eighty plus apps to ipod touches for all staff to take home over the Christmas break. Our purpose was to make sure that all staff were on board with the idea that the ipod touch is a great device to increase access for students in our school in a more mobile environment. This meant that all of the touches we had added apps to had to be restored and then synced again using a backup touch. After many hours we discovered that this was not going to work. Then we were informed that apple had updated iTunes 9.0.3, this update fixed all of todays problems.

The Journey

Journey with us as we endeavor to give more students access to more technology at more flexible times.