128 - Slam that!

Day 128. I took a Year 6 class this morning while their teacher was away. This class is part of our BYOD iPad program so, borrowing the Slam idea from the Google Summits, I got them to do an App Slam. Each student who chose to voluntarily participate had 2 minutes to share an app, game, tool, tip, etc with the rest of the class.

I was amazed at just how eager they were to do this, and they were literally falling over themselves to add their name to the list of presenters. As they did their slam (which of course they had to end by shouting the word Slam!) I added their name and demo to a Google Form. When the last student presented I simply published the form, gave them the short URL to access it and let them vote for their 5 favourite slams.

It was a lot of fun and a great way to let them share what they are learning with their iPads.

I particularly liked the fact that, of all the things they shared, I was only previously aware of two of them. Part of the magic of a BYOD scenario is that the kids are discovering apps and things that I would probably not. It's pretty clear that they feel far more in control of their own learning when they are the owners of the technology.I was talking to a teacher yesterday from another school that went 1:1 iPad but their devices were school provided and highly locked down. They had $14,000 in damages in their first year of operation. We have had virtually no damages at all. Turns out students look after this stuff when they own it. Who knew?