Over the past term and a half, Instructional Technology at Exeter has hosted bi-weekly Lunch & Learn sessions to share our experiences, app discoveries and excitement about our iPad initiative. With the investment of a decent wifi hotspot, it's proven to be a great opportunity for our faculty to get together in a casual atmosphere to hear and see what our students and teachers are doing. There's always that great moment when a Music teacher says to a History teacher, "Wow, I could use that in my class!" or vice versa.
This week, we hear from an Art teacher whose students have been drawing and painting on the iPad. She's used VoiceThread to record their work and play it back, stroke by stroke. Fascinating stuff. Next term we hope to broaden the Lunch & Learn series to look at other technologies beyond, and perhaps still linked to, the iPad program.
I've also begun a program I have nostalgically named iPad Show & Tell (I really liked Show & Tell in kindergarten). Its premise and investment are simple: I plug my iPad into the projector in the lobby of our "commons"--which is located between the teachers' coffee and mailboxes--and "play" with a different iPad app each time. I chose an hour when students are in Assembly and two thirds of our faculty are free. I've already had a couple of teachers show up to market their own favorite apps; I just plug their iPad into the connector and they're on the big screen. Easy.
The best ideas are the simple ones. Maybe Robert Fulghum was right: you do learn everything you need to know in kindergarten.
