On Thursday, May 24, LREI hosted an all-day iPad workshop for 75 educators from NYSAIS (New York State Association of Independent School) schools entitled, "Think Different: Integrating the iPad in the Middle School Classroom." It was an excellent opportunity to share and think with others who are also exploring ways to use the iPad as a teaching tool. For us, the seeds of this conference were born a little more than a year ago when we decided to embark on this 1:1 iPad experiment.

This conference was also an opportunity to share other areas of work that have emerged this year along side the iPad project. Our use of the social network framework Elgg with the eighth grade social justice projects and in Adolescent Issues classes led us to use the framework as a collaboration medium for the conference. Additional real-time collaboration took place through Twitter. You can read the interesting back channel conversation that went on among participants at #lreipad. Click here to view images from the day.

We have learned a lot this year and most of the truly interesting learning has come from unexpected obstacles and the insights of our students as they worked alongside us. It's hard to understate how important the student role in this has been; but not surprising when one considers that at the most basic level this experiment has really been about the impact of the iPad on their learning experience. Given this, we also knew that the students themselves would need to play an important role in the conference.

To this end, we divided the day into two sections. In the morning, participants had the chance to sit in on classes in which students used their iPads in a variety of learning contexts. Here's a brief overview:

• Music: Creative composition: sharing music notation between multiple iPad apps
• Student Calendaring: End-of-day procedures for students to organize their calendars, homework, and to-do lists on their iPads
• Core: A social studies lessons featuring the iPad as a device to share information on the LREI student fileserver
• Core: Students digitally annotate Shakespeare
  
• Art: Using Adobe’s new Touch apps, students create social activist propaganda materials; then make use of the iPad’s new wireless beaming function to distribute their projects
• Science: Students learn about Bernoulli's Principle using Google Docs and our in-house streaming video server
  Math: Combining interactive whiteboards, iPad styli, network sharepoints, and iPad note taking software, students create personal digital math notebooks
• Math: Using the iPad a tool for enhancing problem solving and mathematical communication
• App Choices: Students “pitch” new apps for inclusion on their iPads, and argue for their educational worth

In the afternoon session, LREI teachers and participants from other schools facilitated a variety of discussions for attendees. Between the sessions, Pratt professor Jessica Hochman, who has been doing an assessment of our project, offered some initial finding and thoughts from her year-long work with us. She was also joined by seventh graders who offered their own observations and answered questions from Jessica and other attendees. Hardly surprising that their responses were honest, thoughtful and reflective of the considerable thought that they have put into this project.

Thank you the seventh grade team who have put in significant time and energy in order to make this pilot project work and to prepare for the conference. A long day, but proud of students and teachers and proud to be a member fo the LREI community.