Discrete Computing - Technology is a tool to be used.

Computing in many schools is still treated as stand alone sessions.  There are a few reasons for this: The distribution of hardware, the lack of hardware and teachers lacking confidence to use technology alongside their everyday teaching.

What the most important thing to remember is that technology is a tool to be used, not a learning objective.  We have got to remember this and we must make sure that our schools are set up to achieve this.

How many times have we heard teachers say, 'oh it's computing this afternoon,' or 'I haven't made a video yet this year, I need to do that during computing.'

Right, I'm not saying there isn't a time to teach children skills to be able to use the technology independently, but we mustn't spend all our time doing just that.

We need to get to the point where we see technology in the classroom, actually, we don't see technology in the classroom as it is just as normal as children using a pen or pencil.  I used to find this last year when I had a 1:1 iPad classroom, where my guests on tours of the school were told - this is the classroom with 1:1 iPads.

For me, technology should be used in the classroom when it's needed to improve the outcome of children's learning, not to be used because it looks pretty or we haven't done it yet.

Into the Woods: Discrete use of technology

Recently, my class came up with the idea of building their own Saxon homes in our wonderful forest school area.  So, this was forest school and design technology skills - this was the main focus.  But how did we weave technology into the project?

As you can see from the image the children are using iPads to document the process of building the homes. We used BookCreator to combine text, images, and video as a record - a clear purpose for the technology.  

We could have taken loads of images and video and then spent hours creating the book back inside the classroom. But tablet technology allows us to work on the go, very effectively.  The children were ticking off the communication and publishing objectives as they were constructing.

Each child had a chance to create a page of the book, making sure that everyone had a go at using the application. Now I hadn't actually taught the children (skills lesson) how to use Book Creator, they did it all by themselves.  The children were teaching each other, asking questions and publishing without my help.  Who's the teacher here?

What else did we do in the forest?

Now, this is an example were I did need to 'teach' the children how to use an application. We used iMotion to bring the forest to life, by animating parts of the homes outdoors.  As the children hadn't used animation software before I had them 'play' with the application using natural material in the classroom.

They made so many mistakes when creating this short piece of animation, that it sped up the final process in the forest.   We have a saying in my class 'I've learned so much from my mistakes, I think I'll make another.'

This was very true here.  The children's animations improved dramatically from their first attempts in the classroom.  They stabilised the iPad, ensured smaller movements were made, set better frame rates and published much quicker - on the go!

A really great example of progress over a lesson or two.  and the children were able to apply these skills when videoing the final animation.

Interestingly, using our school website, we were able to share the work the children had completed at home as well.

Yes, the children were so inspired BEFORE we went into the forest they went home, downloaded the free app and produced their own animations.

It was great to see so much animated Lego and toys being posted online via our class discussion pages.

I never asked the children to do this, they were motivated to do it themselves. They used technology to follow their own curiosities and then shared with our whole class to get feedback ready for the next lesson.

Dismantle the trolley!

You will usually find that having a laptop trolley held outside the classroom means computing lessons are limited to one off sessions a week. This is fine - at least the children are getting the sessions they are entitled to, but we must endeavour to have that technology at the fingertips of children. They must be able to choose when and how they use the hardware in the classroom.

It should flow seamlessly in classrooms and be hardly noticed.

Sometimes Free Applications are Awesome: Pro Wise

Hats off to the companies who give things away for free, especially to education.  Before I write this I don't know this company, have in no way been asked to write this - it's just an honest review.

Promise Presenter - An alternative?

So, here we go - Prowise Presenter - available here - https://prowise.com/en_gb/presenter/

I've fallen in love with this little piece of presenting software over the last few weeks and I'm not turning back to my trusty Notebook presenter files.

I first came across the software at our local education partnership computing meeting and the company was there demonstrating its very impressive screens with built in PCs, swivel screens etc etc.  All very impressive, but it was the software I was interested in, not the hardware.  This has to be right to sell the hardware. 

Pro Wise Presenter: Ease of use

Firstly and most importantly and one of it's big selling points (hold on it's free!) is that all the files are held in the cloud. What a simple Idea, but one that has proved a master stroke for me.  I can work at home, not bother with dropbox, memory sticks, hoping that the right software is installed on the Mac or PC I'm using when I get to school - it is entirely browser based.

Log in and your work is waiting for you, exactly as you left it when you prepared it at home, on another PC or Mac.  I loved this as it meant there was no time wasted. Of course if the network is down, there is another totally different problem - but how often is it, nowadays, really? Cloud for me everytime!

What about all my other files? What about all my old Notebook presentations?

The first thing I asked at the demonstration was about my old stock of presentations I had.  Can they be used?  

Yep! No problem. Simply import them into the presenter software and away you go. All the links are there, images, video - everything!  

You can import Pdfs, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Notebook etc

And now they are all in one place, online.

The Interface: Nice Little Tools

Here is a screen grab of one of the pages from my current workbook.

The usual tools are there, you'd expect from a presenting package and they work very easily and very intuitively. So far, so good.

You can see that I have embedded video files for my art lesson this week. We used a step by step video guide to help us draw castles and wolves - all based around our story 'Dawn Wind' by Rosemary Sutcliffe.

Now, I really like how easy it is to embed videos into the presentation. The whole process is contained within the software.  Simply search for a video and it will perform a 'safe search' of YouTube for you. Click on the video and it is ready to go in your presentation.  Already have the URL, then just paste it in the search box and it automatically embeds it into the presentation for you. 

This process is the same for images as well. Nice and simple, nice and quick and relatively safe - the kids could do it.  

So far, so good really - there is so much more to explore!

There really is so much more to explore, as I haven't even touched on the 'ProConnect' feature available, again, FREE!  Pro Connect allows you to set interactive challenges using their Free app for iOS or Android and then see the results live on the screen. You can even export the data it collects into Excel, to keep - superb for assessment purposes!

This will be a totally different bog, worthy of it's own pages. Stay tuned, when I've more time to play.

In the meantime, go and download it. Try it, why not. It may make your life so much easier.  In fact I guarantee it really will.  I'll let the company themselves have the final word.

Starting a New: Can what I've done before work somewhere else?

The summer has passed us by and so has September - how did that happen?  There have been some changes since July; mainly I've been seconded to a school just up the road to help develop their computing curriculum.

They've also asked me to introduce the concept of flipped learning to help further develop their mathematics curriculum.  This is all very exciting and I've spent the last month settling into new routines and a new school - you all know how it is.

Interestingly, I'm actually back at my last school half a day a week to teach computing to Year 3 and 4.  Something I'm pleased about as I get to keep in touch with colleagues from my last school and also stay in touch with changes.  This will certainly help when I return in September.

One interesting thing to note is that the school I worked at last year was a complete Apple school, and the new school isn't.  Time to get used to Windows again!  This is something I need to do, as I've been losing touch with Windows applications.  

I was really very interested in this opportunity, if only to follow my own curiosity - will it work in another school?

I met with the head teacher and she was keen to try the model of teaching to help the children in the school have access to content 24 hours a day.

She talked about parents wanting to help their children at home and sometimes not knowing the correct way to help their children.

A great meeting and one full of energy and enthusiasm - let's get started!

Finding a platform: Does it have to be Edmodo?

In my previous school, I have always used Edmodo as our school website - a labour of love for me (http://www.peartreeprimary.co.uk), doesn't have the ability to do what Edmodo does.  You can read plenty about Edmodo in my previous posts.

I was curious to see if what was successful using Edmodo could be replicated using another platform. I've always said yes, and I'm confident it can.  Every school needs to find something that works for them and their stakeholders - particularly the children.

My new school uses 'School Spider'  a really excellent learning platform that has very similar features to Edmodo - mainly the discussion area.

The teacher posts video, text, whatever they need the children to digest before coming to school.  It has an option for children to reply to the posts, so it ticks the social aspects of flipped learning.

Early use shows that this platform is working and the children are viewing the videos and commenting when they are stuck or informing me which challenge they will be trying during the next session. So far, so good.

One thing I'm missing is EduCannon - Have a read of my post about the use of it HERE

I need to find a solution for this as Edmodo seamlessly imported the children's details into EduCannon. School Spider does not have that feature - maybe I should just ask?

What's next?

- Use of iPads in the classroom to help children learn at their own pace - Read about it here

- I have a staff meeting coming up where we are looking at the computing curriculum we currently have and looking at how we can develop it further by linking it to the topics we are teaching. Not a stand alone subject.

- I've been using some new software from a company from Prowise.  It really is a great bit of kit and is unbelievably cheap! Free is you have a single user license - I'll write more about it soon. In the meantime, have a look here

Classroom of The Future?

I was taking part in this weeks #BettChat and a question cropped up that got me thinking about something I was supposed to write months and months ago. So here we go - what would 'my' classroom of the future look like?

A space to let your curiosity run wild
Space in any classroom is always at a premium and it usually is in a building that was built on a traditional method of teaching - the Victorian model. Most of our schools are still organised with the children ordered, as Sir Ken Robinson puts is, by their manufacturing dates. Why do we do this?

Why do we group children by their ages? With the younger children in one area of the school and the older in another. They progress through primary school and never really interact with anyone outside their year group.  

Why can't children work with younger or older children on subjects or skills which they are equally skilled at.  We sometimes see this in sport with younger children playing in older groups, but rarely do we see it any other subjects 'within' school.

The walls and structure of our schools are preventing us from achieving this. I have seen over recent years schools beginning to tackle this with EYFS and Key Stage One, but I haven't come across a school completely integrating ALL age groups. Please tell me there is one so I can go and visit.

What does it look like right now?
At the minute we still see (particularly at high school) teacher at the front, sometimes behind a desk (I've never had a desk - just made me think then) talking to a class for twenty or more minutes and then having children set to work completing a task based on the knowledge or skills they've just been 'told' about.

Why do we still do this? I have blogged extensively about flipped learning and the impact this has had on my primary classroom and I know we can take this model further throughout the school.

Let's imagine for a moment that I was wasn't here to 'tell' children things, but to question their understanding more, probe for mastery of a skill and then push them further to do something with the skill. 

At the moment we haven't got the time in our schools to do this using the outdated model of teaching in the classrooms we have in our traditional schools.

So what would it look like?
The use of technology to drive this flipped model, in my opinion, is essential.  Too many times in schools we see technology introduced into schools and the teacher using the technology to benefit them, rather than the students.  Great for the teacher, but it may not suit that child.

Technology is becoming very personal, almost an extension of oneself.  Just watching how the children in my Year 4 class use their own iPads is fascinating.  They have their own ways of finding apps, their own positions of working with it; they have truly personalised their device.

Let's strip away the walls, open it up. Let's have learning areas for children to sit, lie, sprawl and collaborate in different learning areas.

And, essentially there are no classrooms as such. Children are free to work with older or younger children on problem solving activities and be as creative as possible.  Their own personal device being used to answer questions they may have. 

So what do teachers do?
A very valid question.  What do we do when that tiny device in their hands holds the knowledge of the entire human race. We no longer need to be fact knowing machines and feel like we should know everything.

Many times in my class, I'll say: "I don't know, let's find out." In fact, "just google it," is a phrase that is common place in schools and homes around the world now. Great, so that's knowledge ticked off.

Sugata Mitra, the professor of educational technology at Newcastle university talks about the ability of children to absorb information from computers with no guidance at all from adults.  Children can access knowledge easily with the most basic of technology, but they understand and articulate what they are absorbing. That's where we come in.

Relationships
Teachers will always be needed to help guide students on what to do with the information they are receiving. To inspire and be creative with the knowledge, to apply and refine the projects they are working on. But most importantly, we need to have a good learning relationship with the children in our care.  

In my experience this part of the classroom is the most important - the children need to trust you to allow them to take risks to learn.  We will always be needed to be there for the children in our schools and I'm sure that won't change for the next 100 years.

The look and feel of classrooms and schools need to change to allow a more flexible, creative approach to learning because our schools are still too rigid to allow this.  Knock down the walls! 

Embracing the Technology
Could we not create a school based around the Khan Academy approach? A whole curriculum of skills online, accessible whenever or wherever you might be.  Using a flipped model of learning, the children can access the information in a 24 hour online school.  The only reason a child needs to come to school is to learn what to do with those skills in the real world through blended or real life learning.

Imagine the children waking up and logging into their own 'personal learning tapestry' and then finding their next steps, "Ah, this is what I need to do today." They could then watch a short video before coming to school, or on the way to school. Then arrive at school, complete the work and then submit it online.   When a certain bank of skills have been mastered, a project is set to complete. This could help to prove that they fully understand the skill and how to apply it.  

Built into the tapestry is a list of online videos to help support the acquisition of the skills or a link to a live lecture somewhere in the world to learn from. Links to experts in the field they are studying - actual email address of universities that are researching that subject. Allowing children to ask questions like "How do we know what we are going to think next?" 

Teaching children how to collaborate in the real world as well as online will become a critical part of school life with children and teachers from all over the world contributing to one child's learning journey.  The use of apps like Edmodo and Showbie will become the hub for online collaboration throughout the school and social media enabling children to make connections with experts in a variety of fields across the world.

I currently have 1:1 iPads in my classroom and I've been trying hard to knock the novelty factor off them and reduce them down to what they really are - just another tool for learning. Recently I have seen this starting to happen. People have stopped talking about them being in my room, the children just get them out without asking, and they use them because they need to, not because they sparkle.

I want them to become invisible in my classroom, not for people to ask, "so what have you done on the iPads today?" Expecting that because they cost a lot of money I must be creating books, films and new apps on a daily basis.

Unplug the Children!

There will be time for physical education, recreation, and most importantly the social aspects of school life throughout the day. These children need to unplug from the world for time during the day.  The teaching of forest skills, gardening, cooking will all play a vital role in creating healthy children for the future.  

The use of technology has a role to play here as well.  Wearable technology will help children understand how their bodies work and how best to look after yourself. Reading the book 'Spark,' by Dr John J Ratey has really changed my thinking about fitness in schools and how it has an impact on the brain. 

Possibilites?
These are just ideas that have been flowing round in my head for a while now and some I hope to put into practise at some point in the future.  There are huge obstacles and problems with all the models offered above, but what remains central to all of this is the pedagogy must be sound for the children to learn.

Technology will be a part of our classrooms whether we like it or not and the quicker we find ways to fully understand how this will become seamless and almost unnoticeable in our classrooms will be when the learners begin to benefit from the technology, not the teacher.

Plenty to ponder, plenty still left to think about. Let's start with the learning environments and  break some walls down.

Both my books are on sale on Amazon Kindle, Google Books and Kobo for digital download. 

Amazon - Pause, Rewind My Teacher: A Flipped Approach to Learning

Amazon - Technology is a tool to be used not an outcome

The books detail all my work to date around flipped classrooms primary schools.  

I've also been invited to present at The Digital Education Show in London on Tuesday 30th June alongside some great names like Sir Ken Robinson, Sugata Mitra and many others - Find out more.

Creating Book Trailers with iMovie

Since implementing our iPads in the classroom we have been busy experimenting with how they can help us create exciting and individualised content. The iPads have actually given us more time to work on things when we have a spare minute without running around looking for a spare MacBook or iPad.

So, one thing I've been wanting to do for quite a while is to create Book Trailers for a book we've been reading in class. We have been reading Millions by Frank Cottrell Boyce and the children have loved every part of it. A truly wonderfully book that comes highly recommended and can be used to access so many parts of the curriculum.

I gave the children the task of creating a book trailer based around the story of Damian and the money he finds in his hermitage.  The book has been turned into a movie - you can watch the trailer - here We actually used the movie trailer to help us structure our book trailers.

The children were incredibly enthused about this project and it was a great way to end a superb terms work based around this great story.  

The iPads were dished out and the planning stage began. The children watched some of the book trailers from The World Book Day website to find out what makes a good one. - Watch some here 

This is something we tend to do with every piece of work we complete; look what is already out there and make a list of key features to help guide us when create our own unique work.

The children used the storyboard on iMovie to help them plan their trailer and when they had a clear plan of what they needed to film, off they went.

Now, here is where the 1:1 iPads come into their own. I could actually have an entire class doing this all at once! Something I've never been able to do before. 

I've created short films and trailers before with children, but the process becomes a long one with some children often left out at certain points in the creation process as we'd not got enough hardware.

It was great to see so many children activity involved in creating something on their own, but within a small group. They were using the whole school to film their trailers - outside and inside the classroom. Because the storyboard gave them the structure, they were able to know what shots they required instantly, without going back into the classroom for a hand written plan.  

What I loved was watching them edit on the go, watching back clips of films and then reshooting or clipping parts.  Another pleasing thing I observed was how they were sharing video clips via email to different members of the group to save time and to share good clips.

The children were also sharing their videos using Edmodo to get next steps from their whole class. I could see them building on other peoples work as well. "Oh I like that, let's do that!"  

The children have spent two days creating their book trailers and some are almost ready, but I really want them to make sure that the final trailer has a clear story running through it. Again, we've been using technology to create something that looks good, quickly and efficiently, but ultimately it must still engage the watcher.

This is something we must always remember when using technology, it all looks impressive, but if the final outcome doesn't work, then there was not much point in using it.

Both my books are on sale on Amazon Kindle, Google Books and Kobo for digital download. 

Amazon - Pause, Rewind My Teacher: A Flipped Approach to Learning

Amazon - Technology is a tool to be used not an outcome

The books detail all my work to date around flipped classrooms primary schools.  

I've also been invited to present at The Digital Education Show in London on Tuesday 30th June alongside some great names like Sir Ken Robinson, Sugata Mitra and many others - Find out more.

1:1 iPads: So far, so good.

So it's been four weeks since thirty iPads arrived in my Year 4 classroom and our 1:1 iPad adventure began. It's be a great experience so far and one I'm looking forward to continuing over the coming weeks.

So what have we been up to since the last time I blogged? What things have gone wrong? What have we learned?

Social Media in the Classroom

First up, the ease of using social media in the classroom. Instant sharing of information with the class and the world.

We use Edmodo for this and it has gone from strength to strength since implementing the iPads. The children are sharing their learning, pictures and thoughts without asking and getting feedback from the whole class instantly.

I love the instantaneous workflow we're developing in the classroom and how it's impacting on their learning. The children don't need to wait for feedback from one person during peer assessment opportunities, they can get it from potentially thirty other people in their class - and they are!

We used our iPads to publicise out bake sale using our School Facebook account and Twitter account. The children were over the boon when the author of the book we're reading (Millions) Frank Cotterell Boyce retweeted our efforts. We've raised over £160 so far for Water Aid, with one week to go.

Blogging using Edmodo

I've tried blogging before with children for years and now it finally makes sense when they have their own device. The freedom to write when they want to has enabled the children to write their blogs on the go, whenever they have a spare minute.

I chose to use Edmodo as a start to blogging with my current class. It gives them an instant audience, something we all crave as bloggers - someone to actually read what you've written!

The children have started to write comments and feedback for each other and improve their blogs. I've asked them to write at least one a week to keep the interest up.

One interesting thing is watching the children typing on the iPads.  Most use their thumbs or single finger in portrait mode. Very few actually type like you traditionally would on a keyboard using the iPads landscape view.  Something to watch and think about? Touch typing lessons on the iPads? It's not as if they're slow at typing, far from it, but is it something to develop?

Cricket:  Finding my own next steps

During our cricket sessions we use our iPads to review our performances. I allow the children to film a modelled example of a shot I perform and then use it to compare to their own performances.

If they need to check a certain part of the shot, the children can then watch it back to see were they need to improve.  They also filmed each other and reviewed their shots during the lesson, each time referring back to the example I'd given them.

Here you can see one of the children have used Pic Collage to make a note of their next steps at the end of the week.  A great starting point for the next lesson - pick up from where they left off completely independently.  I really have seen the benefits of having 1:1 iPads for this as they have a record of their own performance. 

I plan to use it for assessment purposes to track progress throughout PE sessions. The children have also uploaded them to Edmodo to share with parents. 

iMovie: Creating Book Trailers

We've only started his project this week, so not really done a huge amount with it. The children will be creating their own book trailers based on Millions.

I'm hoping we will see the real power of the iPads here with children needing to combine film, audio, graphics and text to create one finished project.

I'll probably write a whole blog on this when the project is complete. I love the idea of book trailers being used with our online library system, Junior Librarian. 

Junior Linrarian has been a great addition, not only to school, but to our iPads as their app is superb. The children have direct access on their own devices to ebooks, our library and 1000s of suggested websites for research.

The children reflections:

Each week I am asking the children to blog about their experiences during the week. This is proving to be a masterstroke as it really is giving me an insight into their thinking.  The things I insist they write about are: What went well, what didn't and what next.  I do encourage them to post screenshots of things they have accomplished this week as it helps them remember projects they are working on.

These are a couple of examples of what they have written.

Both my books are on sale on Amazon Kindle, Google Books and Kobo for digital download. 

Amazon - Pause, Rewind My Teacher: A Flipped Approach to Learning

Amazon - Technology is a tool to be used not an outcome

The books detail all my work to date around flipped classrooms primary schools.  

I've also been invited to present at The Digital Education Show in London on Tuesday 30th June alongside some great names like Sir Ken Robinson, Sugata Mitra and many others - Find out more.

1:1 iPads - Week 1, the story so far

So last week I wrote my first blog post around my expectations for introducing 1:1 iPads into my classroom. I was very excited and if the first week was anything to go by, I was right to be excited. 

We spent the first morning, getting the children used to the work flow of the iPads; screenshots, email accounts, edmodo, google docs and much more. 

My first surprise cam when some children who had only used Samsung Galaxy Tabs at home become a little stuck using the iOs software.  One thing to note for the future, check what experience of hardware the children have at home.

Our wi-fi seems to be holding up to the task, although we are only on 14mb download from Cheshire, so we may need to invest in BT fibre Optic in the very near future - not a huge issue though, all the apps we needed were already downloaded.

Teaching the children to use Evernote was a good experience as they had never experienced that sort of organisation before. They have been using it to take photographs and store notes on maths problems and to write they first blog post about the iPads - more about that later.

Our first Multi-App project

On the first day I wanted to show the children how they can combine lots of apps to produce a final piece of work. The image is from Visual Poet, the photographs are from SnapSeed and the language generated was mind mapped using Poppet.  A really interesting afternoon.

The children loved taking the images and using various filters and the using the photographs to inspire the writing about 'A Windy Day.'  A simple, but very effective project using multi-apps and demonstrating the power of the iPad


Book Creator: Jackson Pollock

We visited The Tate Gallery in Liverpool before half term and studied various painting and sculptures, but the one that they remembered the most about was Summertime 9A by Jackson Pollock. 

I asked the children to use their notes, sketches and feelings that they had collected in their sketchbooks on their visit to produce an iBook using Book Creator.

This has to be one of my favourite apps on the iPad and also inspired by this post from ADE Ian Wilson - The Importance of The Blank Canvas

We started by researching the paintings, his life and even create our own impressions using a free art app called Draw. The children combined all their findings into one book and then published them onto Edmodo for others to download and share. 

What was interesting, was that some children chose to use Pic Collage instead of Book Creator. I was very pleased some children chose to do this as this was one of the reasons I started this research project - I want children to have a choice.

This choice leads to unique pieces of work and more excitement in the classroom. Children are expressing themselves in a way that they want to. Some even used Visual Poet to write a poem about their thoughts and feelings towards the painting.

A big step forward for the children. 

Screencasting

At the end of last term I wrote about the children using Vittle to create short mathematic calculation videos for assessment purposes. I was amazed when I say a few children creating these videos during a maths session this week to help others in the classroom - how powerful is that!  

The children were actually modelling their work and then able to pause and rewind the method to help themselves. Even better, they now have that video forever! When we come back to investigating fractions they will have that video from that lesson.

During that session some children found an interactive fraction wall to help them when finding out which fraction was bigger (e.g. which is bigger 4/7 or 8/10?)  This is the website they used - Fraction Wall

The Children's Reflection

At the end of the week I asked the children to reflect on their first week by posting on a short paragraph and screen shots of their work. I want the children to do this each to help document the impact of the project over the next few months. I'm thinking this will be a huge piece of evidence.

Next week, I want to see how the children use the iPads when they are not instructed to do so.  Some children have been using the 'define' button when reading to help them understand a piece of text and some have been using the online dictionaries and thesaurus to improve their writing.

I'll write some more reflections next week.

Both my books are on sale on Amazon Kindle, Google Books and Kobo for digital download. 

Amazon - Pause, Rewind My Teacher: A Flipped Approach to Learning

Amazon - Technology is a tool to be used not an outcome

The books detail all my work to date around flipped classrooms primary schools.  

1:1 iPad - So the story begins...

So, they've arrived. I'm excited, the kids can hardly contain themselves and we're kicking off our 1:1 iPad adventure this week at school.  I've been planning and waiting for this for so long and now the time is ready - we're ready to go.  The children will be getting an iPad Mini, each with a host of creative apps and exciting opportunities.  

The children will be working with me on Tuesday to start putting in ground rules about using the device, but ultimately we're going to be learning as we go.

There are plenty of example schools using 1:1 iPads, ChromeBooks etc, but I want this to be suited to our school - it really needs to be personalised.  What we want out of them will differ greatly from what other schools want out of them.  There won't be a right or wrong way to do this and the outcome will greatly influence how we proceed with the rest of school.

My classroom with be the research for this project for the next term and a half. We will then work out how the iPad use will be transferred into the next class. I'm confident that the children will be making the most use out of the iPads in my Year 4 class and we'll need to ensure they keep that level of use in Year 5 and beyond. How will they cope at high school, if they don't have a 1:1 iPad scheme?

I have every confidence that the children will continue to use the technology themselves, but it'll be interesting to see how the adults in the classroom adapt their style of teaching and if the reluctant children, who would not choose to use an iPad, adapt.  

Should they need adapt?  I always find it interesting to talk about pedagogy when thinking about embedding technology into classrooms. It's only a tool for learning after all.

The iPadagogy Wheel is something I've tweeted about many times and something that will drive my approach to using this new technology in my classroom.

I'll be using Edmodo as a hub for sharing and storing information, pages, keynote, iMovie, GarageBand and a host of other creative apps to produce some quality outcomes.

I really want the children's app input into the whole project. Apps they already use at home, apps they would like to try and really progress from there.

I'll be blogging about the whole process and learning from mistake after mistake and sharing successes with shorter blog posts.

So, stay tuned and wish us all luck!

What have I been up to and what's next for me?

Both my books are on sale on Amazon Kindle, Google Books and Kobo for digital download. 

Amazon - Pause, Rewind My Teacher: A Flipped Approach to Learning

Amazon - Technology is a tool to be used not an outcome

The books detail all my work to date around flipped classrooms primary schools.  

My article has been published in this months issue of Teach Primary I've written about flipping Art and English lessons in Primary Schools.  I'm also writing another article for Teach Primary about using Edmodo in your classroom.

I've also just finished writing an article for Tech and Learning UK - a new education magazine for schools. I've written about the introduction of Computer Science in the new curriculum and how it has begun to impact on Primary schools.

I presented at The BETT show 2015.  I presented Pause, Rewind My Teacher: Primary Flipped Learning. 
Download it - here

I've also been invited to present at The Digital Education Show in London on Tuesday 30th June alongside some great names like Sir Ken Robinson, Sugata Mitra and many others - Find out more.

I'm also presenting at OSPedagogy in Manchester on Friday 13th March. You can find out more about this - http://ospedagogy.co.uk/cloud-pedagogy/

Keep following on Twitter @chriswaterworth