When working with the staff at Tiny Tots Day Nursery over the Easter Holiday, one of the themes we investigated was how staff working with under 2s could use iPad with their children. We started by talking about what under 2s enjoy and what the staff already provide that is good quality first experiences. This lead the discussion to think about how iPad can be integrated in to a multi-sensory activity with elements of investigation.
apps
Bringing Stories to Life with iPad
At TeachMeet Nottingham, Friday 30th March, I spoke about my work with Apps Based Learning on iPad and how Puppet Pals and Morpho Booth has been effective in bringing story language to life in my Reception class.
Earlier in the Spring Term 2012, I wrote about the iPad Workshop which I organised at my school with the support of European Electronique (@euroele) and Neil Emery (@neilemerydotcom). Since then I have been busy planning and resourcing opportunities for my Reception class to make the best use of apps in the classroom.
iPad Apps for Early Years: a few ideas to get you started.
My Story
This app is a simple book creator app and is great for making multi-modal texts. Children can insert photographs, clipart, saved images. They can also record their voice and there are a range of mark making tools for them to write and record their ideas. Read more about introducing My Story on this post here.
Puppet Pals
This is a puppet show app and children can quickly create a story with characters and backgrounds in 3 simple steps. The app records their voice and playback is instant. Puppet shows export as videos to the iPad’s camera roll.
Here is a good YouTube video which demonstrates the Puppet Pals App
Here is an example of children’s work from my class:
Puppet Pals is so versatile and can be used beyond story telling. It can support non-fiction, instruction texts, science and mathematics. Find out more about using Puppet Pals beyond story telling here.
Our INSET day: Using iPads to Create Movies and Animations #ukedchat
Background Information
Classes at my school currently have 1 iPad per class and staff have struggled to integrate these into classroom life.
Towards the end of last year I began a partnership with European Electronique (@euroele) to promote the use of games and apps based learning in the classroom environment. After working at the BETT Show with the company, they organised an INSET day at my school to train staff to use an iPad as a collaborative learning tool in the classroom. This promoted the effectiveness of a 1 iPad classroom, proving that tablets can be used creatively and successfully beyond 1:1 ratio.
Enabling Environments 