The Classroom of the Future…

As part of our Academy Show this week I had the pleasure of running a session called ‘The Classroom of the Future’ for the Year 5 students visiting from the surrounding primary schools.

Each 40 minute session was split into two completely unrelated parts; a short 3D exploration of the human body and an iPad creativity task.

The 3D projector provided the initial wow factor, as students were taken on a journey around the human heart and inside individual cells.

The headline act was the iPad creativity task. Each group of 5 (max) was given only an iPad 2 with a pre-selected iMovie trailer, eight randomly selected household (?) items (see picture) and 25 minutes to create the most imaginative trailer possible. The students were treated to my own example movie, ‘Special Agent Small Yellow Duck‘, followed by a 30 second demonstration of how to use iMovie on the iPad courtesy of AirServer.

After only a short explanation the students dived straight in and began creating content instantly in every session, with very few students requiring any help or assistance. Sadly, time constraints meant that some groups were unable complete the entire trailer, but the creativity shown in only a short period of time was astonishing. An example of the creativity is inserted below. Alternatively the entire playlist of trailers can be accessed here.

Within the playlist there is one trailer created by a group of Sixth Formers and three videos made by Year 10 students, who had almost twice as long to create their videos. I promised them I would ask some people to guess which ones they are…

Student engagement was incredibly high throughout the activity and they clearly enjoyed what they were doing. The primary school teachers accompanying their classes also appeared to enjoy the sessions, commenting on both the level of engagement and creativity being demonstrated. Encouragingly, most of the primary schools who visited have already made enquiries or investments in iPads for their students.

If the session demonstrated  anything, it was that the iPad is a seriously powerful content creation tool. In terms of the SAMR model of technology integration, the iMovie session certainly achieved redefinition, since without the technology the task would have been inconceivable in that period of time. Just to confirm this, all of the videos were exported directly to Youtube from within iMovie and links emailed to the class teachers so they could view their creations either at home or in school. In the future. Or now.

PS. I told the students it took me only 15 minutes to make my entire video. It was closer to an hour.

DragonBox – ‘The first real Algebra game’

I have been fairly critical in the past of the majority of Maths iPad apps, since very few offer anything other than mind-numbingly repetitive practice of number skills. They are often 21st century versions of worksheets containing 100 questions on that have been known to be used for detentions.

Yesterday I came across an app that is a little bit different. It is called DragonBox, it is available in the Apple and Android stores for £1.99 and it aims to teach you algebra. It arrives in Britain off the back of some impressive success elsewhere in Europe (check out what Wired had to say about it here). After about 24 hours of owning the app, I can honestly say I am seriously impressed.

Here’s the difference between DragonBox and most other Maths apps: you learn concepts by playing it. DragonBox does a great job of introducing equations, the idea of balancing and the role of the equals symbol without explicitly teaching you what you are doing. Our Maths department were instantly impressed, as were the 9 year olds I tested it on yesterday.

The wired article raises some important issues. Whilst DragonBox constantly encourages you to figure out things for yourself, it can result in you knowing how to play the game without knowing why something is true. A blue monster divided by a blue monster equals 1. Is this really a problem? Understanding of the rules can easily be built upon with the necessities of why?

There are also the difficulties of how it could be used in a school setting, citing evidence that teachers ‘didn’t know what to do with this’. Surely developing the understanding of why would be an ideal role the teacher? A few simple substitutions of the blue monster to a number and the question of why is accounted for. I have just signed up to trial their web-based version and cannot wait to give it a go.

It is about time a Maths app like this arrived on the market and I am already looking forward to seeing what they can come up with next, or perhaps more importantly – what they can inspire others to come up with next.