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Announcing Pre-K Pages Conference for Early
Childhood Educators, July 15th in
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Using iPods in the Early
Childhood Classroom |
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Click here to go back to the technology home page |
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Ipods are
devices that can store and play all kinds of information, not just
music, they can even be used as external hard drives.
Our school district distributed iPod's to all ESL teachers
in 2004. At first I was a little hesitant about
what to do with it other than listen to music, but soon my eyes were
opened wide! Below are some ideas for using the iPod in the
classroom. |
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Music: |
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Music is an important part of any early childhood classroom.
I use music as a learning tool in my classroom, not as form of
entertainment, and there are so many great educational children's
musical artists out there to choose from. For educational
music ideas see my music page listed in the resources section below.
You can upload all of your classroom music to your iPod, and you can
find inexpensive speakers to play your music through so you can get
rid of your big, bulky CD player. The iPod and speakers are
very small and portable so your class can have access to music
wherever they go.
You can create play lists for each of your units/themes so you never
have to waste time searching for a song, switching back and forth between cd’s,
or risk scratching your CD's. |
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Here are just a
few of the play lists I have on my classroom iPod:
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Classroom
Management |
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Colors |
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Shapes |
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Numbers |
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Letters |
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Listening Center:
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Many teachers are now using
iPod's in place of traditional cassette or CD listening centers.
You can easily record your own voice reading the stories in
digital audio format (Audacity) so any book can become a part of your iPod
listening center. Read more info about how some
kindergarteners in our district are listening to iPods both in and
out of the classroom in the resources section below.
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iTunes as a listening center: This year we began using
iTunes as a listening center in our classroom. Since all
of our iPods are for homework use we couldn't use them as a
listening center too. iTunes works well as a listening
center because every single recording is available every day.
No more switching out books and cassettes or CD's with each new
unit or theme. Students have access to everything on your
iTunes menu at all times. I have 3 student computers, 2
are dedicated to iTunes and 1 is for watching our
Photo Stories or using our
Activ software.
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In May '07 our
Pre-K team won a grant for iPod Shuffles to send home with our
students. Below is a press release from our district,
the four holding placards are teachers, the others are from the
"Prize Patrol". |
 
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We began the iPod Shuffle Pre-Reading
program in October of '07 and it was a roaring success.
Students are highly motivated to take
the iPod shuffles home and listen to the stories we uploaded to
them. Parents were also very pleased with the program,
they saw how much their children were learning with the iPods.
I had 14 iPods in my classroom and 15 students signed up
for the iPod program (parents had to sign a contract) so of those
signed up, most got to take home a different iPod each night.
Every few weeks I selected new books and made new audio recordings to
go with them, then uploaded the new content to the iPods. The
students were always giving me suggestions of what they wanted to hear
next :) |
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Podcasting: |
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You can create podcasts for a
variety of different venues. I have created enhanced
podcasts for parents who weren't able to attend our "Back to
School" orientation or other school events, and "How-To" types of
podcasts for other teachers that could be used for staff
development purposes, but in the comfort of their own homes.
Ideally, parents can view our podcasts from their home computers,
but most parents in my low-income school don't have access to
computers so we have them view the podcasts on our classroom
computers. Many teachers also create podcasts with their
students, I have not done this yet but there are lots of others
who have. You can find links to educational podcasts in the
resources section below. If you know of a good educational
podcast please send me the link and I will add it below.
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Below you can find the Logitech headset I recommend for
recording your own podcasts or Photo Stories. |
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You
can use the Belkin Tune Talk to record your students voices and
then add into podcasts, iMovies, or Photo Stories. |
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If you want to learn
all the secrets of your iPod I highly recommend The iPod Book by
Scott Kelby (see link below). It's very easy to read and has
lots of full-color pictures, it has helped me tremendously.
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