As a teacher, you inspire the next generation of leaders. You make complex ideas easy to understand. And you’re always looking for new ways to engage your students. So, we’ve gathered a series of tips, stories and other helpful materials on this page to keep you inspired. And we’ve created the Apple Teacher program to help you get the most from our products, and celebrate the work you do every day.
As a teacher, you inspire the next generation of leaders. You make complex ideas easy to understand. And you’re always looking for new ways to engage your students. So, we’ve gathered a series of tips, stories and other helpful materials on this page to keep you inspired. And we’ve created the Apple Teacher program to help you get the most from our products, and celebrate the work you do every day.
Get a glimpse of what you can do with iPad and Mac.
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Apple Teacher.
A free, self-paced professional learning program exclusively for educators. Build skills, unlock badges, and earn recognition teaching with iPad and Mac in your classroom.
The Indigenous peoples of Saskatchewan have rich traditions of oral and visual storytelling, and community involvement. However, when First Nations and Métis children came to school, existing assessment practices were often culturally biased and unable to identify their individual strengths, leading to inaccurate assessment results.
Telling a new story.
Rooted in Indigenous learning models, the Help Me Tell My Story assessment app for iPad provides a new way to measure early learning success. Students bond with Askî, the friendly turtle puppet, who guides them through an informal assessment survey with his touch sensitive nose on the Multi-Touch screen, and then encourages them to tell a story, recording their voice using the built-in microphone on the iPad.
Assessment data is collected from the child, teacher, Elder and caregiver. The results are then linked to customized learning ideas that support academic development and influence lesson planning at school and activities at home and in the community.
This assessment is different from others because children like doing it. Askî combined with the iPad helps the students feel comfortable. It becomes a powerful communication tool that gives them a voice with value during and after the assessment.
Lori Bolay, Pre-Kindergarten Teacher, Westview School
Real Story
Redefining assessment.
Learn how teachers in Saskatchewan are using iPad for holistic early learning assessment.
For some students, inverting colours or changing to greyscale makes reading on iPad easier. To enable this feature, go to Settings General Accessibility. This works with text, graphics and video.
Aspect Hunter School caters to children on the autism spectrum. They are students who often struggle with conventional educational approaches and environments. They are drawn to specific interests like music and math, and have very personal comfort zones. Craig Smith, the school’s Deputy Principal and Aspect Practice Specialist, delivers multi-sensory lessons on iPad to tap into his students’ interests. The immersive lessons help students communicate, overcome social challenges and become more receptive to learning in a structured environment.
Mapping a comfort zone.
Understanding the indicators that contribute to a positive learning environment is key at Aspect Hunter School. Students use the built-in camera on iPad and audio recorder in GarageBand to create a library of visual and audio cues from around their school that they layer together to create playground soundscapes. Then they use the Maps app to capture an image of their school, and using SketchBook Ink they highlight their favourite areas to show where they feel most at ease.
Students bring together the playground soundscapes and highlighted maps to reflect their comfort zones in a project they narrate in iMovie. Now students who may have previously struggled to describe their ideal learning environment can use iPad to help them express themselves using different senses. This activity helps them identify their personal learning style, and create better experiences — both in Craig’s class and their lives outside of school.
With iPad, students are sharing and building social interaction skills, including expressive and receptive communication. iPad encompasses all the best practices of autism education and helps students connect better with their school environment.
Craig Smith, Deputy Principal and Aspect Practice Specialist
Real Story
Creating personal learning environments.
See how iPad is helping students on the autism spectrum in Australia become more confident at school.
La Miranda is a multilingual school that focuses on individualized learning from primary school through high school. Marta Ruiz Benito’s young students are often challenged with staying focused and on track during math study. By using the Timer and Alarm Clock functions in the Clock app on iPad throughout the day, she creates a shared sense of responsibility for class activities, and her students are able to manage their time independently.
Keeping time.
Marta teaches her students how to use the Timer on iPad, and then assigns them a series of activities to complete in an allotted amount of time. By giving young learners the freedom to cycle through the various activities at their own pace — but within a time constraint — they learn how to keep time while gaining independence and confidence.
Setting pace.
The more that students use the Timer and Alarm Clock, the more familiar they become with numbers, telling time, and then managing their time. Students show increased motivation, resourcefulness in their assignments and longer periods of concentration. As a result, improved study skills have further contributed to more effective interactions that build stronger relationships with classmates.
Seeing children overcome challenges by themselves makes us feel accomplished and proud that they can better achieve their goals.
Marta Ruiz Benito, Primary Teacher
Real Story
Empowering independence.
Learn how the Clock app is giving young students in Spain a new way to work through their day.
HongGuang Middle School is nestled in one of the most historic ancient cities in the world — Nanjing, China. As a language arts teacher, He Xin builds lessons in iTunes U on iPad for his students to access while visiting local landmarks. The convenience of having everything they need on site helps create a more engaging experience with their language, culture and history.
Class scavenger hunts.
He Xin uses Discussions in the iTunes U app to encourage his students to share thoughts, add comments and ask questions as they visit different monuments and museum exhibits. By facilitating these conversations while the students explore artifacts and sites, the learning feels more like an interactive scavenger hunt through time than assignments for a class.
Using the built-in camera on iPad, students capture their own perspectives of artifacts and insert them directly into a Pages report. He Xin also curates related web links in iTunes U so students can explore supporting facts in Safari. Students can then add their findings from Safari as secondary research into their reports.
iTunes U has moved the classroom into the real world. Creating a multimedia-rich curriculum has never been easier for the busy educator. To watch students become engaged and want to share ideas is extremely rewarding.
He Xin, Chinese Language Arts Teacher
Real Story
Make learning an adventure.
iTunes U gets students in Nanjing, China, out of the classroom to experience their history and culture.
At Valencia Park Elementary, 62 percent of students are learning English as a second language. Using iPad, teachers are able to personalize lessons no matter where students are on their language development journeys.
Record, repeat and retain.
Using the Sock Puppets Complete app and the built-in microphone on iPad, students bring virtual sock puppets to life by recording themselves reading aloud. It’s a fun way for them to see and hear their progress with pronunciation, speed and accuracy.
As their literacy skills develop, students use iPad and apps to demonstrate their progress. They write original stories and film themselves with iMovie, practice speaking English and presentation skills with Keynote, and read aloud with book buddies in different schools using FaceTime.
The class collaborates on engaging projects that encourage reading, writing and speaking. Literacy and fluency scores have vastly improved and attendance has skyrocketed.
Alina Mills, Teacher
Real Story
Unlocking literacy.
Learn how iPad is improving reading and writing skills for students in the United States who speak English as a second language.
Create resources for language lessons using international keyboards. Choose Settings General Keyboard Keyboards Add New Keyboard. Next choose the language you wish to add. When you are ready to type, simply touch and hold the Globe button and choose the new keyboard.
In Greg Hughes’s Physics class, many students needed a more tactile and visual way to experience the science of sound. Using iPad, they can see and measure the frequency and amplitude of vibrations, which helps them to develop a deeper understanding.
Measuring frequency and amplitude of sound.
Students fill glasses with different amounts of water and run their fingers around the edges to generate vibrations and sound. Using the built-in microphone on iPad and the bismark bs-spectrum app, they measure the variance in sound waves and analyze how water levels affect pitch.
Students enter their collected data in Numbers to explore the results with charts and graphs. Then they create lab reports on their findings in Pages to show their grasp of key physics concepts.
Before iPad, there was no way to capture any actual measurements or data unless you spent several hundred pounds on a single set of data-logging equipment. With a low-cost sound app, Pages, Numbers and the iPad camera, students can quickly collect their own data for a range of variables.
Greg Hughes, Teacher and Vice Principal
Real Story
Making waves in advanced physics.
See how students in England use iPad to measure and analyze sound.
Swipe up from the bottom of the screen and tap AirDrop. Then choose Contacts Only or Everyone to allow files to be sent to you by people you recognize or all devices in range.
Watch Jodie Deinhammer explain how her science class was inspired to create their own lessons in iTunes U to help teach younger students all over the world.
When you receive Excel files from colleagues or students just right click on the file and select Open With, then choose Numbers from the application list to open it on your Mac.