IPads are becoming more accessible and widespread in today's society. The sphere of education is catching on by offering more and more activities in digital formats, including ebooks, iPad apps, and online interactive reading programs.
My ESOL students come from a variety of cultural, linguistic, and educational backgrounds.
Some have strong background knowledge in academic subjects, while others have limited formal schooling. Technology provides the tools to engage students of all abilities and backgrounds. It is exciting for students at the beginning of language development because they can practice listening to digital books, recording their voices on the iPad, and use language development applications. Using iPads would be beneficial for students at the Advanced level of proficiency as they take part in reading activities that are challenging to them.
My Project
I would like to use these tools with my students to offer them an array of educational apps. I have observed the use of an iPad in Speech-Language Pathologist's sessions, and saw how the students' motivation increases when they get a chance to record their speech in response to a prompt or manipulate sentence parts by dragging the subjects and predicates into place.
I realize there is a lot of potential in iPad use in ESOL class as well. The competition among devices allows users to download apps that make Raz-Kids books from Reading A-Z available for a variety of devices, including the iPad. Amazon Kindle is accessible on an iPad as well, and with our local library lending ebooks to users, the possibilities of getting reading materials online are endless. I am also planning to take a course on iPad use in education, which would give me more ideas on integrating an iPad in instruction.
I would like to add activities using an iPad to the choice of the students' classwork options to let them develop their literacy skills in one more engaging way.
I would also like to capitalize on the use of technology for educational purposes and train the students to evaluate activities they encounter online. Teaching the students to navigate the applications and choose to spend their time productively is a valuable point. An iPad will be a very useful tool in our ESOL classroom!
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