iPad App Aims to Make Lecture Halls More Intimate and Students More Engaged

More and more iPad apps are emerging that can be very beneficial in the classroom. In this article, Perry Samson, a professor at the University of Michigan, created a very interesting app that is designed to make lectures “more intimate.” This app allows students to use their own iPads to take notes, ask and answer questions, and keep students engaged in class. While this was originally created for the professor’s classes, the app can also work very well in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms (pending the technology is available). This app is called LectureTools and can be a very valuable resource in the classroom. There are some excellent features for teachers using this app, as well. “Instructors can present students with interactive activities, including multiple-choice, free response, and image-based questions, and students can respond using their mobile devices, including iPads” (Schaffhauser, 2012). Students are also able to send it questions to the teacher, which will be shown anonymously to the rest of the class and answers will be saved for reference. One part of this app that I really liked is that “a teacher can assess the class’ performance with aggregate or individual student data about participation and correctness for each activity that took place” (Schaffhauser, 2012).  This is a great way for teachers to see how each student is doing on different activities all in one place. This app is free for instructors to use, but a license would be needed to use in the classroom. I’ve blogged about a few different iPad apps and I think this one might interest me the most!