We have an iPod Touch Pilot going at our school. Well, we really have a mini pilot, since we only have 4 and we are trying them out with 7 kids. It’s been an interesting venture thus far, so much so that I thought I’d share some thoughts here and you can read the kids comments on our wiki, Crozet Math Musings iPod Pilot.
Sue Waters (@suewaters) tweeted on April 13 that
Education 1.0=Consumer
Education 2.0=Producer
Education 3.0=Collaborator
Others have said a similar thing about web 1.0, web 2.0 and web 3.0. What we need to realize, as we work with iPod Touches (and I’m referring to the 2nd generation) is that it is designed as a device for access. It allows users to get to “stuff”–email, twitter, texting, the internet, games, etc., but it is NOT easy to create on it. It doesn’t allow access to many web sites in ways that you can use them (flash doesn’t work, for example, so there go all the flash-based games on my school’s computer support site), and the kids complain that the keyboard is hard to use.
If that is so, and it is mainly a device for access, then would it not make sense to categorize it as a web 1.0 device, since you are mostly consuming web pages with it??
But wait, can you not record on it? Can you create a voicethread? Can you work on a wiki? If you can do some of those things, then doesn’t it become a web 2.0 device, since you can now produce on it?
And, as you record for that voicethread, or make that wiki, or respond to an email, text or Twitter, aren’t you collaborating? Doesn’t that, then, allow us to classify it as a tool for collaboration, and thus a Web 3.0 tool?
If it’s such a tool for collaboration, then why aren’t we infusing them into classrooms and using them daily instead of machines that cost three and maybe even as much as four times as much as an iPod? Why don’t they become the basis for our 1:1 programs?
What are people using iPod Touches in the classroom for? My 8 and 9 year olds are exploring games on them, and reviewing the games (see our wiki).
What are others doing? See Chris Webb’s Why an iPod Touch in education? for more info on using iPods in the classroom.
There are lots of ways to use them, but do they REALLY do collaboration well? I’m not so sure, and would be interested in YOUR ideas of what you would like to see on the iPod to make it more of a collaborative tool. Iin the third or even fourth generation iPod, what features would YOU like to see?