iPad Educational Strategies and Life Long Learning

Lifelong learning with iPad education strategies

There are some people in this world who believe when you’ve left school it’s not necessary to learn anything else. There are those people who didn’t like reading books at school and never picked up a book after they’d left. People like that we can generalise as being of low ambition. It takes all sorts to make up this world of humanity some are go-getters some are not. To some extent it runs in families and if you have parents who read, the children will also be avid readers. My mother was never much for encouraging me to further my education, but she did like reading. I often saw her ensconced in a book. Even now she’s not far off 80 years old she still likes reading. Reading is one thing, but there’s more to learning than just hitting the books. In some respects it’s a way of thinking and a mindset. I always love learning new things and I believe in lifelong learning. Now we have the fantastic iPad there are iPad educational strategies we can use to learn new things easily.

Use the iPad to be a lifelong learner

The iPad is a perfect tool to help you be a lifelong learner. There are a huge number of applications available for educational purposes. This can mean using standard productivity tools to do educational things. Such as using writing applications, spreadsheets, various presentation tools and the excellent art creation applications. There are also a huge number of applications created specifically for the iPad education strategies. There are applications designed for you to learn a language. I have applications for learning Spanish verbs, how to speak Estonian. I also have applications for learning mathematics. There is an application called Mathemagics which is a fun way to learn how to do mental arithmetic.

Tactile learning with the iPad education strategies

I could never quite get my head around algebra. Despite this, I still managed to pass one or two mathematics exams while in school. There’s an application called Algebra Touch and with being able to move things around using my fingers on the screen algebra finally starts to make sense. You begin with simplify and move on to the addition of like terms. Then it educates you in the order in which you process the operators. So you start with multiplication and follow that with the addition operator. It makes algebra all look very easy when you can move numbers around the screen with touch. You only have to touch on the multiplication, division, addition and subtraction operators to make it work. It’s quick and you might not want to go back to using pencil and paper. The application even has plenty of little help videos to show you how to do the sums. It doesn’t take long to get through the first couple of lessons and you’ll find yourself going to factors and more complicated maths. There is no reason at all why maths has to be difficult when you can get a good grounding in the basics using an app like Algebra Touch. The application will not let you break the rules of mathematics which in one way is a good thing or maybe not. Sometimes you can learn more by making mistakes and having an extra lesson because you got things wrong. If you feel you haven’t got the concept quite right in your head yet you can also elect to do more practice.

Using Algebra Touch

Native applications or web applications

Web applications can be just as good as using a native iPad application for learning. I’ve been using an application on the web at a website called Memrise. It works on your learning of vocabulary for language using repetition. You get to hear the foreign word and you match it to the text. Also you have to type in the correct word. Sometimes there are multiple choices and all of these learning strategies are mixed and matched, going backwards and forwards between the two languages. It’s the repetition which helps move things from the short term memory into the long-term memory.

Learning is more than just filling your heads with facts

We have information at our fingertips now. Sometimes we might think it’s not necessary to throw things inside our brain and to remember them. That was the educational process of the past. There was an exam at the end of it to test how much you had remembered. To a certain extent now what we need is the intelligence of how to find information and to how to use it. I’d favour tests or examinations where you had to creatively show what you knew how to do. You find information and then know what to do with it when you found it.

Problems in a school educational setting

Students are lazy and if they think they can get away with using copy and paste without doing any thinking, then that’s what they’ll do. When children spend so much time in schools is no wonder they get fed up with the learning process. It’s a long time to keep focused on your education. Children seem to have shorter attention spans and maybe iPad education strategies will be the way to push past this. The way to make it better is to make the lessons more interactive and engaging. Immersion in the educational topic can be made entertaining and interesting with iPad education strategies. The touching of the screen makes it a more personal process. The sheer number of applications available gives lifelong learners a chance of finding the right way to learn. Some people are more tactile, kinetic learners while others are visual or maybe audible in the way the brain works. I’m of the opinion that a mix of a variety of learning processes will work the best to enhance intelligence.

You can learn anything watching videos.

If you need to learn how to do anything at all, just do a search on YouTube and someone will have the answer. Having somebody showing you how to do something in a video is perfect. You can stop the video at any point and do whatever you need to do to reinforce the learning physically or complete the task you are learning how to do. If you need to see something more than once then there’s nothing stopping you from going back to the start and watching it over again. For certain tricky operations it’s even possible to slow the video down and watch in slow motion detail. Using YouTube you can find out how to do tasks around the house or learn how to make things. You might watch a video in which an expert explains something so the penny finally drops for you and you understand. YouTube isn’t just about silly cat videos or the stupid entertainment videos where somebody falls over and gets hurt. There is a YouTube application for the iPad and so can be part of your iPad education strategies.

Making videos to show how to do something in the app Explain Everything

Learning to code on the iPad

The new application from Apple called Swift Playgrounds looks like it’s going to be brilliant for learning how to code. I’ve seen posts from people who have had no interest in coding before, saying now they would love to give it a go. I’ve been using application called TapCoding which is a great way to learn Swift and your basic concepts of programming. I’ve enjoyed it so much that when given the opportunity to pay for all of the application to be unlocked, I did so in a heartbeat. I paid €10 to get the full course and any extra modules they add to the course. I’m sure more will be added as time goes by. You don’t have to pay for the course, you can get access to all that’s there so far, just by logging in daily and completing a module. Each time you hit a milestone with a streak of learning you get access to the next stage. There are many people in education and in business who are of the firm opinion that everyone should learn how to code. TapCoding and Swift Playgrounds are a step in the right direction to encourage more people to take part using iPad educational strategies. Swift Playgrounds will not be available until the autumn when iOS 10 becomes available. I’m almost tempted to try the beta version of iOS 10 on my iPad, but after my last experience of using beta operating system software I think maybe not. I’ll just have to be patient.

iPad educational strategies for students

If I was a young student now, I’d love to be in a school where there was a one-to-one iPad educational strategy. I can imagine using the iPad for all lessons to take notes and create content as part of my education. Children have a mountain of information to learn and the ability to store all of the learning process in one place would be fabulous. No more carrying around big heavy schoolbooks from class to class and back home again. All the necessary information could come in electronically and it would be possible to create a single log of the whole educational procedure. One day perhaps there’ll be a single computer system where students could pick up any iPad and login with a fingerprint. They’ll say to the computer something like “Show me the lesson from last Tuesday we did in the maths class” and they’ll get the required information. The computer could even suggest extra learning materials if the system sees that student hasn’t quite grasped the concept from one of the lessons. This could mean all students will be able to learn at their own pace. Teachers will only need to be there to be facilitators and to give personalised encouragement to learn. Teachers will still perform the important task of providing pastoral and social care alongside the nitty-gritty of teaching subject specific information.

I often get the feeling that the educational system is slower to pick up on technological changes. Time and again it’s due to financial constraints, sometimes it’s due to teachers expecting to teach with the same methods they learned with themselves. I’d like to see education arrive in the 21st-century with the materials for learning matching the possibilities of technology. I’d like to see classes where the teachers use modern, up-to-date teaching methods. That would have to be matched with examination, testing procedures to reflect the new modes of learning. It could happen and there is the possibility of a slow revolution towards something better. The educational system could still specify the basics to be learned, but as a student progresses the lessons could be tailor-made to each individual person. I could certainly see iPad educational strategies using the fantastic apps available as part of that system.

Going further than iPad educational strategies

When my three boys were at school I was concerned that their education was to a certain extent a lottery. The lottery came down to which school they were able to go to, which classes they were able to take either due to time constraints or what was offered. There is also the lottery of getting a teacher who is good and inspirational as opposed to getting one that is marking time and is burned out. This makes me wonder how education could be improved in the future. Will somebody in a single school work out a system where technology is used to give a student centred education? Will a government of a country put in the money and resources to create a futuristic education system? Modules could be put in place that students are required to study. These could be worked in alongside various options for other information. Students could choose what they want to learn and the system could give suggestions of which areas of study they maybe should concentrate on. The system would make these suggestions of study based upon the talents of the student. There would be checks and balances to make sure that the students got a balanced education that would be guaranteed to help them fit into society. Professional educators would have a say in creating the system and providing the modules. All of the educational materials would be put online in the form of videos, audio, application-based learning as well as other documents. This would work in the form of a flipped classroom strategy. This is where the student goes and follows the online information to get the basics and then the detail of the subject. Then in the classroom they spend the time putting that information into practice and reviewing what they’ve learned. This is where the professional educators, the teachers, give guidance and assistance to make the best use of the educational materials. This would fit in well with iPad educational strategies.

There could be a system of rewards and it could be made into some sort of game to encourage children to immerse themselves into their own education. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be completely individualistic and there would be a requirement for some of the modules to be completed by teams of children. The system could put together children based upon specific abilities to work together as a team. Other tasks could be available as part of your iPad educational strategies where children make up teams with their friends or even family.

We won’t have to worry that children or adults are spending too much time with their devices and getting square eyes. Thats what the old folks used to say when we watched too much television. The educational system will have life balance built in. We know we learn better if our bodies are in tip top condition too. The marvellous iPad educational strategies system will assign time for exercise and human interaction in the perfect amount for each individual. Groups of users will be brought together and given the opportunity to play a game on an old fashioned board and the devices will go dark for a couple of hours. Maybe there will be activities like Pokemon Go where the system encourages the users to go out and interact with the real world and other people by using AR (Augmented Reality).

What sort of educational future is possible?

There will have to be a huge amount of belief in a computer system to put something like this into practice. Some teachers would be against it because it might seem like they wouldn’t be needed any more. The job of the teacher might change to a certain extent, but teachers will always be necessary in the classroom. It would certainly be great to see schools move away from a paper-based educational system. It would be brilliant for education to move away from the memory bucket system of learning. I don’t think it’s much of an education where children have to just prove how much they’ve remembered over a period of time by regurgitating it in an exam. It will be much better to have a complete system which had a built-in guarantee of an all-round education, but with flexibility to the talents of individual children. It might take another hundred years before something like this happens. However long it takes, I think we can be sure education is changing to reflect our technological advances. The educational system will have to change to reflect the modern work practices and requirements. For the moment we can start by educating ourselves using iPad educational strategies and being lifelong learners. There are excellent educational apps available for both children and adults. Make use of the online academies to educate yourself. Become more employable or sufficiently knowledgeable to run your own business and be an entrepreneur – employ iPad educational strategies.