iPod Activity and Lesson Ideas

You can read about how 20 classes at Nova Blanche Forman Elementary School in Florida are using iPods in the newspaper article iPods Hit the Books: Elementary School Embraces the Media Player as Learning Tool. Some of the activities the article mentions include:

• fourth graders watch a video about the sun's layers
• third graders play podcasts about solving math problems
• first graders record video book reviews
• the principal delivers message and training resources to teachers
• students work at their own pace by pausing, rewinding, and rewatching math podcasts
• students are allowed to take home the iPods to do homework
• teachers use iPod to facilitate parent-teacher conferences

If you're looking for more ideas for using iPods in the classroom, click on over to the Apple Learning Interchange. The Learning Interchange has many resources for teachers that are made by teachers, including lesson plans that use iPods and iTunes. Some of the lesson ideas include:

• Learning Math with Music: Students work in groups to create their own rhymes and songs for an entire family of math facts. Individual students record their songs using an attachable microphone.
• Radio Show: After reading and listening to several radio dramas, student groups write and record a radio drama based on an event or period in history.
• iPod Reporters: Students explore the basics of news reporting and gain an understanding of why news is news and what their responsibilities are as news gatherers. Students then plan a class newspaper.
• Reading Fluency with iPods and GarageBand: The goal of this lesson is to develop stronger reading fluency and comprehension, and increase language acquisition skills: Using an iPod and a voice recorder.
• The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Students download and watch videos from United Streaming on iPods. Similarly, check out All Quiet on the Western Front.
• Oral Histories: After a discussion on what it means to be an American, students use an iPod and a voice recorder to interview a family member. They then combine the interview with old photos of that relative in iMovie, and create a short video history about that person.
• Digital Science Experiments:This lesson can be applied to any science experiment. The teacher uses an iPod and a voice recorder to provide experiment instructions to small groups of students.
• Listening to Letter Sounds: Sounds and their corresponding symbols are taught in a series of lessons using various strategies and aided by Lively Letter cards.

Apple's Learning Interchange has a search box where you can specify resources that are tagged iPod and allows you to specify grade levels and academic levels. You just might discover a really cool lesson idea!

For more about iPods and learning, go to Learning in Hand's iPods section.