Technology: SMART Table & iPad

I think that there is a huge educational potential for the use of the iPad and the SMART Table.

With students with disabilities, especially those whom I will be working with in the future, those with emotional/behavioral disorders (EBD), the SMART Table can be an amazing tool.  From what I have learned about what I will be teaching students with EBD, I will be teaching social skills and a SMART Table is a wonderful tool for collaboration.  The biggest potential about it is that a majority of the students have to agree on an answer and then move their answer to the middle.  This works on collaboration skills as well as fine-motor skills because they have to hold their finger down and move it to the middle.  There is an application on the SMART Table where students create a movie.  This is a awesome tool for the "Synthesis" or "Creation" stage of Bloom's Taxonomy of Higher Level Thinking as well as develops creativity.

The iPad is also amazing tool that works on fine-motor skills.  Like the SMART Table, the iPad has an application on it where you can create a storybook, this is an actual storybook, as compared to a movie.  In this application, you can draw with your finger in 6-8 different line sizes with a lot of choices for the color.  You can draw anything you want on it, and there is another part in that application where you are able to create a read-version of the book.  This is not text-to-speech capabilities, but it is a very helpful tool because you can put the read version of that page on that page.  You can also upload the story that you create to the internet.