Welcome to the blog chronicling the experience of World Leadership Foundation's mobile iPad lab based in Sarapiquí, Costa Rica. The iPad lab will be used in several local schools as a way to access more resources and provide a tool for more interactive learning. I am writing as a volunteer at Chilamate Rainforest Eco-Retreat. Meghan, the co-owner of the Retreat, is also a board member for World Leadership Foundation and acts as the on the ground coordinator for all things related to the iPads. I arrived to Chilamate around seven months ago, and I am finishing up my time here, but these last few weeks my time has been devoted to the preparation of the new iPad lab in conjunction with Meghan. Therefore, I want to share my experiences of this process, and give you an eye-in to the ground level time and work to effectively carry out the goals of the project.
In all honesty, it was hard for me to understand the purpose of these iPads when I was first asked to assist in the process. None of the apps on the iPads really stood out to me as promoting more interest and learning, and were mostly organizing tools, but I was quickly introduced to the wide range of ways that the iPads could bring more books, articles, and reference materials to the classroom with certain applications and internet access. Quickly, I was immersed into the process of organizing existing applications, searching for quality educational apps in Spanish (there are lots of great apps out there, but they are only in English making them almost useless to our students), proceeding to download them to each iPad, and then logging in each of the iPads to save time for the teachers and students. The amount of time needed for all of this was incredible especially if the iPads were to be set up in a quality way. Our hope is that if the iPads are set up and organized at the start, that the rest of the year will be able to have minimal unexpected issues.
We paid special attention to limiting the number of apps that needed to use the internet as there is not very strong internet at the schools, especially with all students using them at the same time. Also, the strength of our internet affected our preparation process. The longest part that I participated in was creating email and apple id accounts for each of the iPads so that the students could communicate with each other and the teachers, and proceeding to log them in to necessary applications. The students will now have added storage memory with Dropbox, drive, and the email accounts. Through our process, we found a wide range of effective apps that the teachers can hopefull explore and incorporate into the lessons. When used in an organized and planned way, I feel that the students will benefit greatly from this project. The globe is changing rapidly and understanding technology is a major part of these changes. Students will hopefully be interested and engaged with the iPads inspiring them be lifetime learners.
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