The fun has started

6 days in to the new school year and what an absolutely brilliant start !  The children have been amazing and are really thriving in this environment.  Room 1 is just a buzz every morning as learners check their email, read the notice and begin learning - yes begin learning - before the bell!

We experienced a minor authentication issue with the wireless where children needed to re authenticate as soon as their iPad went to sleep. This meant they where needing to do this numerous times throughout the day.  With help from Ruckus Wireless this issues seems to have been resolved.  Besides this we haven't really had any issues, we have learnt that viewing and editing some google spreadsheets are quite different on the iPad than a PC/Mac but once someone is in the know it doesn't take long for tips to spread.

A lot of learning time has been allocated to slowly introduce different apps and features, i.e: email, calendar, google drive etc.  I have found the fastest and easiest way for introducing something new is to model (using Apple TV) and as soon as a couple have caught on ask them to show a neighbour.  This has proved far more successful than me attempting to get everyone on the same page at the same time.  When it comes to different apps, I set an initial task of creating a presentation "About Me" to introduce the themselves to the class.  Enthusiasm was huge from start to end with learners finishing days before the due date (apparently it was fun to do it at home - no way!).  The peer teaching was a huge aspect and i found myself redundant.  I am excited about using this extra time for quality 1 on 1 or small group teaching in the future.  The standard of work was high and many produced presentations using skills and functions that i had never used before just from exploring and helping each other.

A lot of time spent on digital citizenship also as i believe it is highly important for these learners to create a positive and respectful digital footprint right from the word go!  More on this later.

This week is all about using google docs and blogging.  Check out our classroom below