As part of the Durham Academy pilot program with personal devices, our students have spent the last week setting up their iPads for use in the classroom and at home. With the Middle School Technology coordinator, we have met as a class for the past week to accomplish the following goals:

1. Discussing best practices for iPad use. Topics included the physical aspects of care, cleaning, charging, and storage. For the purpose of the pilot, students are not able to add or remove apps on school issued iPads. We also discussed acceptable use of the iPads including: permission of other teachers to use in their classes, how to handle peer interest in the device, distraction vs. learning tool, photography feature (permission to photograph other people and proper use of photos taken), recording feature (permission and appropriate use), following parental rules and guidelines at home, web surfing and appropriate use, and academic tool vs. toy.

2. Set up their First Class Email accounts through the First Class app.

3. Set up a note taking app called Evernote.

4. Subscribed to the Room 211 Language Art Blog using Edublogs through an app called Blogsy. Posted their first blog that is first edited, filtered and published by Mr. Schaefer and Mrs. Williams.

5. Experimented with Office HD to access Google Docs. Began a collaboration document to suggest books and educational apps that should be added in the future.

6. Today students took the iPads home for the first time. More news to follow tomorrow!