All our grade 11 students are being given iPads, and I have just received mine

The theory is that their learning might be ‘enhanced’ by having them use the iPad for school-related work, although there are some who suspect that more time might actually be spent on games, social networking and videos.

I have enjoyed reading a ‘guest post’ article by Doug Ward (associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Kansas) – “What I’ve Learned from Teaching with iPads”.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/what-ive-learned-from-teaching-with-ipads/37877?sid=at

The iPad is fun but – as Professor Ward points out – “tablets are certainly no educational panacea and I’d be careful about wholesale adoption without aspecofic purpose.”

[youtube]cFFrtGpFHgE [/youtube]

For our IBDP visual arts students, part of the ‘school-related work’ is, of course, making art, so I have been checking out iPad paint and sketching apps, and looking at the kind of art that is being produced with the iPad.

As for ‘practising’ artists, David Hockney currently has an exhibition on at the Royal Academy in London in which his iPad creations feature.

Will my year 1 IBDP art class use their iPads to demonstrate their “understanding of the ideas and techniques that underpin artistic expression”?

Time will tell!

I will follow our school’s technological educational experiment – both for art investigation and art making purposes and for other schoolwork – with interest.

Links, articles etc

Apple iPad: Why I won’t be buying one – yet

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7767659/Apple-iPad-Why-I-wont-be-buying-one-yet.html

Art iPad apps

http://appsineducation.blogspot.com/p/art-ipad-apps.html

David Hockney’s instant iPad art

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11666162