I’ve been doing some training for teachers who will be using iPads in their classrooms this coming year.  I wanted to show them the power of mobile technologies so designed a lesson plan that I thought others might find interesting, particularly if you doing your own training.

Pretty simple idea: the content I used was the food web since it seems to be a ubiquitous standard in the biological sciences.  The teachers started with their own school campuses to locate and photograph the various parts of the food web that they could find.  If they couldn’t find certain ones, they were allowed to supplement with photos from the web.  They opened the photos in Skitch to do some annotations and then used an interactive whiteboard app to create a presentation.  The preferred app was educreations as it allowed the user to have multiple screens.  Considering the limited amount of time we were able to devote to the activity (just about an hour), the resulting products were pretty good.

This past week, I also had math teachers so I gave them the option of creating one related to triangles and other geometric shapes.  They were able to easily find photos in the school and combine them into great presentations.

I would love to hear about other ways you’ve incorporated hands on learning in your professional development…I’m convinced that if teachers can experience engagement with the devices, they will be more likely to use them in more powerful ways.