Apple TV - amazing!

Finally my fears about not being able to teach 25 teenagers with brand new iPads are beginning to subside! Thursday's lesson was another general success. Although I must admit I am still not really sure what I mean by success... Did they learn as much as they would have done without the iPads? No, not yet, although I am still confident that this will come. After all it is lesson three, and they and I are still trying to navigate ourselves through using an iPad, let alone learning French with one! Did the lesson feel successful in terms of behaviour, engagement and focus? Definitely. In fact in some cases I would say that there has already been a marked improvement in focus on the lesson, and improved focus and engagement in turn make for better behaviour - which fills me with confidence that there is definitely potential for outstanding learning with the iPads.   

Today the pupils had to do an external exam in the first half of the lesson, so there was no scope for iPad use there. In the second half, the pupils began their new module (Education and Future Plans) by using a couple of bilingual dictionary apps to look up words that thought might be useful for their new module and then created a mind map in SimpleMind, which they really enjoyed. The most fun bit was at the end when they discovered independently that they could share their work with each other via Apple TV!! Of course I then had to quickly come up with an 'acceptable use policy' for using Apple TV... ;)