10+websites

===1. Explore various websites and find 10 different articles that use ipods in the classroom. Post the websites along with a summary of the article to your wiki space. Must be done in 2 weeks. You will also present this material to the entire group the last weekend. ===


 ===" **Grand Prairie schools welcome iPods in classrooms" -** **Dallas News** ===

 This article from the Dallas News, reported that the Grand Prairie Schools purchased 321 iPods to be used in their classrooms with the students. It cost the district about $73,000. They covered the cost from Title I funds and money from their state technology funds. The Carolton District now has over 4,000 iPods for students in their district! Teachers had the option of getting an iPod and are still trying to get the hang of using them. Grand Prairie also recently had the music, art, and physical education classes team up for a project dealing with the planets. They used hula hoops and all the specialists worked on a certain aspect of this project. What I was interested in was some 5th graders made a historical podcast on the American Revolution. This is an idea I would love to try in my class!  []

**"North Carolina Middle School to get iPods" -** ****MacDaily News****
At Culbreth Middle School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; this school is giving teachers, students, & some administrators an iPod Touch. It will be the first school in the country to do this. They are looking at ways to implement them into their curriculum. They will be first looking at some obvious ones like guitar lessons where students will watch videos of an instructor and practice at home. Another idea is in physical education where students will keep track of their fitness records on the iPods. Later in the article it states that Culbreth is also looking at being the first school in the country to give iPods to **K-12** students. I also visited their school website and they have a great video to go with how they are going to use them at their school. They have certain applications and websites that the students will visit at school and use. I was amazed on how well thought out this was. I also noticed that the principal had some Podcasts on the website for everyone to go to. I loved that the principal had this to help promote how the iPods will be successful at her school! It is again a pilot program that will be looked at very closely. At another school, South Iredell High School in Statesville, some students have made movie trailers for novels in English class and others have composed and recorded their own music on the devices. They also end the article with this quote from their principal Susan Wells, "These teachers say this pilot signals their commitment to our students to meet them where they are, as opposed to where the teachers are comfortable. Wells also goes on and says, "They state their commitment to teach 21st-century skills, because technology is the future for students and teachers." This I feel this is a very strong statement that everyone should agree on. [] & [] (Full article)

**iPod in Education**
This article talks about what is a Podcast and what are the educational potential of the iPods and Podcasting. It states that books can be read and listened to instead of just having students reading them. Another advantage is students and teachers can hear from the experts in their field they are studying. It also creates access to other schools and other Podcasts from other students. It could be a video from another country. The author writes about getting the information directly to the students without relying on the students to go get the information. Also, he brings up students being more creative by creating digital stories to share with other students, their community, and the world. I also found this image that shows the many ways Podcasting in Education can be used from Organization to the Classroom. It is very amazing to see where all of this can be accomplished in education.

[|http://www.addysg.org.uk/ipodined/news.php?extend.91]

This website tells about the education benefits of Podcasting in school. The main benefit is Podacsting potentially gives students world wide sharing of materials. The next benefit is it gives students purpose and motivation to succeed in school with a spectacular product. They list Discovery Channel, Disney, and NPR sites to hear Podcasts that have areas that the students are studying. It also links up with [|Our City Podcast] which gives teachers and students access to hear and see Pocasts from all around the world! It is created for kids by kids! You just need to select the place where you want ot go and click and hear them. Also Learning in Hand gives a booklet for showing teacher and students how to Podcast. It is free to download for anyone. The link is here : [|Podcasting for Teachers and Students] written by Tony Vincent. I checked it out and it is a fantastic booklet for teachers and students to use in their classroom. [|http://www.learninginhand.com/ipod/touch.html (Main Website)] [|http://www.learninginhand.com/podcasting/index.html (The Podacsting link)]
 * Learning in Hand**

**Schools to encourage iPods in Scotland**
I found this website and was amazed with the comments made by George Lucas on iTunes U. He heads an educational foundation in the US and has said “the LTS schools’ Glow intranet system had put his own country to shame”. Also, the students download their lessons to their iPods and cell phones. The students also have access to videos and audio by iTunes. The video clips are approved by the government and the school system of Scotland. Scotland is moving toward a new digital technology curriculum: [] that incorporates techology in the classroom and trains teachers to use that technology. It also states that teachers could download the curriculum and learn "on the move". They also can access it on computer, televisions, game consoles, and iPods. This program will put Scotland as a leader in cutting edge, educational technology learning for both students and teachers that possibility other countries will model after. Glow will allow educational material to be shared in schools across Scotland and host a video conferencing service which students can log on to and watch lessons that are hundreds of miles away from them! []

"In Some Schools, iPods Are Required Listening" **- New York Times**
This New York Times article talks about Union City School in Hudson County that put 300 iPods in the classroom at a cost of around $130,000 in the poorest urban school systems. Again, one fourth of the students are learning English and focusing their attention on bilingual learning. It also comes at time where many districts are banning these type of devices in the schools. This speaks loudly to me is that students' education needs to be adapted to new technology advances. It was supposed to be an experiment, but I think the results say that this experiment is successful. The students see the teachers using the iPods in their lessons and teaching. Teachers assign students to reenact plays off of YouTube, historical events, and many other multimedia things. The iPods are passed out at the beginning at class and collected at the end without any damage to them or stolen! That itself speaks loudly how the students love this type of learning with the iPods. Another thing in this article is the refer to the students as "Pod People". A teacher that uses the iPods joked with one of her students that there beter be English music in there and she would be making home visits to check that! I hope other districts look at this example and start to change their thinking about iPods! []

The article from Computer World is a fantastic one dealing with how we are teaching the students on memorization and not real world skills. It brings up an excellent point that states schools that are banning iPods and other multimedia are doing a disservice to today's students. I agree with him that memorization is not preparing the students for the world today. They need to efficiently use the tools and materials that are presented before them. It also says that if we have the students memorize is not very useful unless you are training the students to be iPods. From this article it also states, "We need the iPod equivalent of "open-book tests," where gadgets are required, the tests are harder and demand of the student problem solving, creative thinking and deep understanding of the ideas, not just the ability to spit out words fed to them earlier". I agree with all of the article and as teachers we need to rethink our teaching. We need to adapt to the world and our teaching styles in order to equip the students with skills for the 21st Century. In my classroom, I think I do this pretty good and have the students only memorize their basic math facts. Otherwise, we need to have the students apply what they learned to real world problems and use the technology that we have to incorporate that in their learning. He ends his article on, lets stop banning iPods and start requiring them for school! What a meaningful statement! []
 * Computer World**

iPods in School looks at using iPods for students that struggle in reading by having them listen to audio books. This program lets second and third graders check books and iPods to take home. The students document then if they listened to the book and followed along, just read the book, or anything else they did at home. The school did some research from Boston Public Schools that prove audio books accelerate reading gains and data shows that audio books can improve reading comprehension by as much as 34%! It also shares that there are at least four benefits that using iPods in school: increases student achievement and motivation, independent reading, shared or small-group reading, whole class listening, and lending out the audio books for students to use at home. Another exciting thing that it says that the iPod Shuffle has come down to around $49. It really sounds like a terrific program that I might look into spending some of my budget money on. It would be a start and the students would probably be excited to use them! []
 * iPods in School**

This article deals with Millville School in New Jersey using iPods in the classroom. Through various grants and funding, the district has purchased over 50 iPods. They have the students use iPods to read poems, books, Podcasting, video clips, and other multimedia projects that go with the district's curriculum. It brings up a great point that if a student misses class that they can record lessons for those students. The iPods are used in special educational classrooms where the students are more visual and auditory learners. For those students, and any students if they didn't get a concept, they can replay the lesson for them. []
 * Schools Teach With iPods**

This article talks about a school in New Jersey where 90% of the students don't speak English as their first language and 54 percent are either special-needs students or limited English-proficient students. They are using iPods to help them succeed in school and calling the iPod "a global must have" in the students' lives. The iPod enhances student learning by making it a one on one instruction for the students. It also increasing achievement and motivation. The conducted a study to find out how much it helped students. In their first year of using the iPod, 50 percent of the students went from an ESL program to an all-English program--a switch that usually takes between three to six years. The iPods also helps accommodate all students with multiple learning styles with anywhere, anytime learning for the students. Another super thing they are doing is using a grammar program that puts music to the learning of grammar with fun activities. []
 * E-School News**