iPod as Writing Tool

Simon is a wonderful student. A very bright student, very interesting, when he’s on, he’s sharing so much and he brings the whole class kind of running after him and they all excel together. With this project I was definitely a little worried I would lose Simon. Worried I would lose my students that don’t keep track of their paper very well, or paper trails are a nuisance. They somehow disappear and I have endless complaints of I don’t have my drafts, I don’t have this. And you know, can I hand it in without it?

Simon, Glenbrook Middle

We had to do an autobiography for our life up until now and everything. And we would do it, hand it in, in a binder, with a bunch of different stuff, and I did it all on my iPod. Well the rough drafts and everything.

Sarah

So when he naturally began using his iPod as a means of typing and getting his work accomplished, I sort of, I don’t remember there being a conversation about him asking me. But I sort of saw him working, saw that it was English, and put the two together and said, excellent. Let’s keep this going. Don’t want to interrupt this or burst this bubble.

Simon

It’s a lot faster, you can do the autocorrect kind of thing and like my handwriting’s really bad, so it’s a lot neater right away, and I don’t have to copy it down, instead of like having the rough copy beside me at the computer when I’m typing it up, I can just email it to myself, put it on the word project, edit it and everything like that, and then it’s done.

See like there, I spelled the word wrong.

Sarah

So Simon’s drafts come from his iPod and they’re just as good. He spent the time flipping through the pages and editing it. And his work might actually be better than someone who just hand wrote out a copy, typed it out as it was, and submitted it, thinking that’s two drafts and that’s good.

Simon

This one, all of it was made in class. And I have all the other things too.

I thought about that, like what it looks like, the fact that it looks like he’s just there playing on his iPod, but he’s not. And I know that he’s actually getting the work done. Yes, from the window, it looks, you know, his feet are up, he’s relaxed and he’s working away? But shouldn’t we be relaxed when we’re working on something and reaching that kind of creative avenue within us?

I really hope that next year and all future I would be able to do stuff like this again and just have an iPod and be able to  do all my projects like that. It’d be a lot better.