To be honest, when we first received our tablets I was excited but wasn’t sure how it would benefit me. I already had a laptop…and a smartphone…I only saw the tablet as like an in between to those two  for people who just wanted yet another piece of technology 🙂

During my externship, Kenan professional development sessions, and small adult class, I enjoyed using the tablet a lot. I didn’t really use it in my large high school classroom, but I plan to incorporate

Software and apps I loved:

• Evernote: I began using Evernote when we learned about it at NCAAT and have never stopped! I use it as a “journal” for all my Kenan work—I take weekly notes on hours, any miles driven, and what I did on a daily basis. One of my friends who works a lot with long-term, individually-driven projects recommended this as a method to show what I’ve accomplished and what I still need to accomplish, and I’ve found it very beneficial. I also use it to organize meetings notes and on-the-fly ideas.
• Pdf reader/annotation capabilities: Over the summer I read a lot of scholarly articles on survey design and methods. I enjoyed reading these on the tablet and using the stylus to annotate. Now they’re organized and easily accessible when I want to cite them.
• Common Core apps: I found several useful common core standards apps for the tablet that I passed on to my department.
• Recording software: I used the recording software on the tablet to record my ESL students speaking in English; for a lot of them, that was the first time any had heard their voices recorded!
• NEW version of Microsoft Office: so much fun to play with!
• DROPBOX: I did not know about dropbox until the Kenan professional development, and I am totally and completely enamored. I use it to share documents with other teachers in my department and resources for my student teacher. I store all my Kenan docs there so I can access them anywhere, even on my phone. I actually downloaded Dropbox when I cracked my screen and needed to transfer all my documents while it went to the shop to be fixed.

Benefits of tablet:

• Portability: my ESL students loved passing the tablet around to look at pictures that illustrated our conversations. It can also be used to take quality pictures and video in class.
• Quality software and apps
• Training on software and apps by Kenan
• It made me look very official (only half-kidding)
• Lots of possibilities for “flipping” the classroom (haven’t attempted that yet this semester, but there’s always tomorrow!)
• Excellent to have all my Kenan work in one location

Drawbacks:

• Just one, really: I cracked my screen and took it into a repair shop, but it was very difficult for them to get an affordable replacement part (not even the screen—something that goes with the screen). Right now I’m using it by hooking the tablet up to my digital TV until I can get it fixed.
• The keyboard disagreed with me sometimes, but that might have been a personal problem.