With excitement in the air and giddiness abound the anticipation of the iPads arriving is finally over. Randerson is pleased to be part of SD#68’s pilot project using iPads in the classroom over a six-week period. It started with a transition session for teachers from the schools who have just finished them to the schools just getting them. This helped tremendously as we learned of what worked best from management, logistics and apps to some of the challenges and how they were solved or averted. We also had Shelley Beleznay,Coordinator of Literacy, Learning & Instruction for our district visit our school and work with the teachers on apps, lesson ideas, technology and logistics.
Over spring break teachers took iPads home to play and learn. We had lots of stories about about the ‘kid’s’ teaching their parents. That definitely was true in our home.
Week one with iPads. The primary classes were introduced to the iPads during library class. Here we went over care and safety, turning on and off, volume and using your finger to move the screen and get to apps. Students played with Doodle Buddy with the specific task to create math sentences. They also learned to scroll left and use the keypad to quickly go to an app by spelling or partially spelling out the apps name. Some favourite apps from week one as rated by our K-3’s
Doodle Buddy, Drawing Pad, Talking Tom & Math Ninja 
Our intermediate classes will begin their work on iPads this week. A few classes had the opportunity to test the waters.
What we loved after week one:
· iPads are cool and fun to play with
· there are so many great apps
· they are easy to navigate
· students are completely engaged
· guidelines and expectations were followed excellently
Challenges from week 1:
· one iPad somehow got a password on it and we were unable to use it for two days – we need to be careful not to add or delete apps or programs to the iPads
