While K-12 schools around the country search for funding to provide iPads to every student, an education researcher in North Carolina has found that even a single iPad can make a huge difference in the classroom.

The results of her experience with student teachers at Wake Forest University appear in the December/January issue of Learning & Leading With Technology, the magazine of the International Society for Technology in Education.

“Because they’re truly part of the digital generation, our pre-service teachers and the K-12 students they teach have a natural aptitude for tablet devices,” said Kristin Redington Bennett, an Assistant Professor of Education at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.

Though iPads can cost more than $500 with 3G access and a budget for apps, Bennett said, “Don’t discount the device because of its price. We found that just one iPad allowed teachers to design creative lesson plans tailored to individual learners.”

One of her pre-service teachers even used the iPad to solve a problem with a disruptive student who made trouble in the reading center every morning. When the teacher showed the student how to download books on the iPad, he read with focus for 20 minutes each morning – a goal he had not achieved until then.

“Anything new and different is engaging for kids,” said Nancy Davidson, a senior elementary education major at Wake Forest who used an iPad in her student teaching last semester. “Tracking student growth through apps, pictures, and videos became more efficient for me and more interesting for the children. Using the iPad in class started as a luxury, but quickly became a normal part of their learning process.”

Bennett’s pre-service teachers used the iPads in three ways:

*Comparing students’ progress on identical tasks using the iPads, interactive whiteboards, and desktops to see if the less-expensive iPad would work as well.

*In groups of two or three, working out a problem together. This approach required a set of rules (only one set of fingers on the iPad) and specific tasks for each team member. The group would capture an image of their work and store it in the iPad’s photo album for teacher review.

*For the teacher only, taking the place of other digital displays. One teacher took photos around the school and flipped through as she explained geometric shapes occurring in the school and in nature.

“What often happens in schools is that they purchase this new technology and expect teachers to use it with little training in how to design successful instruction with it,” Bennett said. “My goal is to train our elementary education candidates to graduate from our program with the skills and fluency in the use of mobile technology to support teaching and learning. This has allowed many of our graduates to be leaders in their schools even as a first-year teacher.”

Based on her experience, Bennett recommends these top 10 apps for use with elementary-school students:

1. Google Earth: (all ages) Take a virtual field trip to anywhere through this app that uses global satellite and aerial imagery with a swipe of a finger.

2. DoodleBuddy: (all ages) Students and teachers can use this across all content areas as a whiteboard equivalent to paint, draw, sketch, and write.

3. Story Buddy: (K-2nd) This app allows kids to create, read, and share stories that they create with the iPad.

4. Stack the States: (2nd-6th) An animated, game-based way to learn state locations, capitals, shapes, abbreviations, and nicknames.

5. Geocaching: (3rd-6th) In this global treasure hunting game, participants hide and seek containers, called geocaches, outdoors, then share their adventures online.

6. Numberland HD: (PK-1st) Twin heroes teach numbers using the Montessori Method.

7. Corkulous: (2nd – 6th) This app allows students to collect, organize, and share ideas through notes, labels, and photos.

8. iThoughtsHD: (3rd-6th) This mind-mapping tool can be used to sequence ideas, write mind-maps, organize thinking, and assess interrelatedness.

9. Coin Math: (K-3rd) Students learn both sides of a coin, how to add them, and how to pay for something with the correct coins.

10. StarFall ABC’s: (PK-1st) Students learn to recognize letters and develop skills as they begin to learn to read.

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Three-fourths of preschool-age children in the United States attend child care, and many are not getting enough outdoor physical activity, which may be due in part to parental and societal values about injury prevention and kindergarten readiness.

A team led by Kristen Copeland, MD, division of General and Community Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Faculty Scholar, conducted a focus-group study of 53 child care providers from 34 child care centers in Cincinnati to examine their perceptions of potential barriers to children’s physical activity in child care.

Researchers identified three main barriers to children’s physical activity: injury concerns, a focus on academics over outdoor play, and financial constraints. Because many children spend all daylight hours in care, and because some lacked a safe place to play near their home, these barriers to physical activity in child care may limit children’s only opportunity to engage in physical activity, according to Dr. Copeland.

The child care providers who were interviewed for the study said that they felt pressure from parents to make sure that their children did not get injured while playing outside and, at times, were asked to keep children from participating in vigorous activity to keep them from being injured.

Similarly, child care providers noted that recent stricter licensing codes have resulted in playgrounds being less physically challenging and interesting to children. The new play equipment that was safe according to these standards soon became boring to the children as they quickly mastered it. Teachers noted that children would then start to use equipment in unsafe ways for which it was not intended such as walking up the slide.

“Child care providers mentioned that they appreciated having state inspections of their playground equipment and strict licensing codes because it helped them feel confident about the safety of the equipment,” says Copeland. “But several of them expressed how overly strict standards had rendered some of the equipment unchallenging and uninteresting to the children, which hampered the children’s physical activity.”

Another issue discovered during the study was that care providers felt pressured by parents (both upper- income and lower-income) and early-learning state standards to prioritize academic classroom learning over outdoor and active playtime.

“Several of the care providers agreed with this goal in principle, but they also recognized that children learned through active play and that the energy release and creative stimulation of outdoor activities helped place children in a better mindset to learn and concentrate later either indoors or outdoors,” says Copeland.

“We were surprised to find such a strong focus on academics for children as young as 3 years old. At this age, most children do not know how to skip and are still learning how to share and negotiate peer relationships. Yet teachers told us that many parents wanted to know what their child ‘learned’ that day, but were not interested in whether they had gone outside or had mastered fundamental gross motor skills.”

Many of the participants also cited budgetary reasons for why their centers could not offer children optimal physical activity opportunities. Most centers had tight operating margins and could not afford equipment for the children to play on. Yet Copeland does not feel the financial barriers present an insurmountable barrier to children’s physical activity in child care.

“There are plenty of things centers can do to encourage physical activity that cost little to no money—such as putting on a dance CD, taking nature walks, running races on the playground, or learning how to skip.” Copeland and her team say that these findings show that there may be a need to reset the balance of the priorities of injury prevention and kindergarten readiness with physical activity promotion.

She says, “Given that childhood obesity is a national epidemic and a major cause of childhood morbidity and that time in child care may be the child’s only opportunity for outdoor play, licensing standards may need to explicitly promote physical activity in as much detail as is devoted to safety.

“An important message from this study is that well-intentioned policies may have unintended consequences for preschool-aged children’s physical development. Daily physical activity is essential for preschool-aged children’s development and for preventing obesity, yet parents’ and teachers’ concerns about injury and school-readiness may be keeping children from being physically active.

In essence, in ensuring that young children are smart and safe, we may also be keeping them sedentary.”

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