Using iPads with ESL students
So, by now I am sure that every teacher reading this has gotten his or her hands on an iPad, right? Well if you haven’t, you have just been given your summer assignment.Â In my opinion, there is no other tech product currently available for teachers that can facilitate teaching and learning like this one.Â I think you will find that the iPad is a revolutionary educational tool.
For our purposes, I’m going to narrow the focus to the use of the iPad for English as a Second Language Learners. If you haven’t become a devotee of the iPad universe, join me. Let’s take a look at just a few of the things that make the iPad so unique and so useful for ELLs.
iBooks Struggling readers will find the tools available through iBooks absolutely indispensible.Â The highlighter, bookmark and note tools facilitate student comprehension and encourage students to use the reading strategies we have taught them to readily access the content of a text.Â By simply touching a word or phrase, they have the option to get the dictionary definition, highlight, annotate, or search.Â In addition to marking up a page, the student canÂ find all the notes and bookmarks in one place when reviewing the text. They can also type in and search for key words or phrases within the text.
Students are able to downloadÂ and store books and pdf files without breaking their backs with overloaded book bags.Â The library can then be sorted by title, author or category.Â Upon opening a book, students can browse the table of contents, flip through pages, or advance to any page in the book with one or two gestures. The brightness, font size, or page color can be adjusted to suit the reader’s preference.Â If you prefer to use a Kindle e-reader, (I like it too) you can download the app to your iPad and use that one as well.Â There is also an app called OverDrive, which allows you to borrow e-books from your local library!
Notes Lisa and I have been experimenting with several different note tools.Â I have found that for basic note-taking the Notes application that comes standard with the iPad is okay.Â However, several of the apps now available allow students to record a lecture while drawing, writing or typing their notes.Â This is very useful for ESL learners. They can play back the lesson as many times as they like while reviewing and revising their notes. Notes Plus is one such app.Â inClass is an app that offers audio, video, and photo note-taking, as well as a student organizer. Other writing apps that are being used in school districts include Office2HD, PaperDesk and iAnnotatePDF.Â Dragon Dictation is a speech to text application that is great to use with Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE). Verbally is an assistive speech application that allows users to communicate by selecting from a word bank. Speak it! is a text to speech application that allowsÂ students to hear what they are typing.Â UYH Gold is a good for practicing handwriting with SIFE.
Educational Apps We continue to test out apps that are both fun and educationally useful for ELLs.Â There are several good ones.Â Flipboard allows you to customize and browse the web in a magazine layout that is easy to scan and fun to read. There are also many good word game applications. I like the traditional Boggle and Scrabble.Â There are also lots of flashcard apps, such as Index Card, that help students learn study skills. Apps like Stack the States and Star Walk help with content area studies.
Other Tools But wait..there’s more.Â Some of my favorite apps include Google Earth and Translator.Â Â We know that our ELLs benefit from having visuals and the iPad screen is the perfect size to view videos and images – not too big and not too small. You do run into a wall sometimes because iPad does not support Adobe Flash, but you can definitely work around that.
This is just a quick look.Â There is a lot more.Â I hope this has piqued your interest.Â If you haven’t had the opportunity to use an iPad yet, my best advice is to get one and see for yourself.Â If you know about some useful apps, tell us!
There are a lot of pilot programs for iPads springing up in schools. Here’s a link to an article from Scholastic.com that highlights an iPad pilot program in aÂ NY school district on Long Island. Who knows, maybe your district will be next?