Remember back in 2012 when I did an iPad Scout with my 5th graders?  Seems like forever ago, and we’ve come a LONG WAY since then.

For instance, I’ve now taught another 5th grade, as well as 1st and 2nd graders with iPads and it’s amazing how much these kiddos know about how to do things, how to troubleshoot, how to help each other and also what ideas they come up with that I hadn’t even considered!

So as we were ready to pull out our iPads for the first time this year, I was interested in how much I would need to explain before we could get going.  So I asked a simple question as our warm-up this week:

I’m not sure if you can read what’s on that chart, but these kiddos came in to Rm. 202 with some SUPER smart thinking about how to be safe, productive and smart with their iPads.  They told me things like wash your hands, put it on a table when you’re not using it (and not the floor!), use your headphones, be quiet, ask the teacher and do what you’re supposed to do.  I mean come on–those are all the things I was going to say!  It was so easy to begin our work much more quickly since kindy had put in so much time and work previously.  GOTTA APPRECIATE THAT!

When my next question got lots of “yes” hands, I was again super happy.  Aside from just knowing how to take care of their new device, they also knew how to do things with it!  Aside from just knowing basics like being able to turn it on, put it to sleep, swipe the screen to get started (when it is sleeping), etc., they knew about apps that I wanted them to use (for example, Notability and eBackpack–the LMS we use in our district) and how to take pictures and then use those pictures to demonstrate learning.  I’ll give more examples of that in later posts (like how we went on a letter hunt and built our names!), but for now we just have two words for our kindergarten teachers:

I really cannot express my appreciation more for how easy they have made my job of getting starting with iPads this year.  They are ready and they are excited!  And I’M EXCITED to see where we’ll be able to go with this sturdy foundation that’s already been built.  🙂