Apple Education lets teachers and parents creatively enhance student learning

Since the start of the pandemic, Mdm Shuhannah, a teacher from Madrasah Alsagoff has had to adapt in keeping tabs on her students.

Since she is unable to interact with her class face to face, the Primary 4 Science teacher has taken to using Apple Books to compile and annotate notes for her daily lessons, Classroom to keep track of her student’s live progress as well as Pages to inspire her students to come up with creative narratives and publish them as digital books.

These free apps can already be found on existing Apple products, as well as part of Apple’s Apple Teacher program. Apple Teacher is a new self-paced professional learning offering that helps educators bring creativity to every lesson and any subject.

Taking advantage of the latest features on the iPad, teachers can create motion graphics, animated gifs, and podcasts via Apple’s Keynote, Garageband, and even the Photos app.

As means to educate and innovate teachers, educators who are already familiar with Apple’s hardware and tools can instead partake in Apple’s Education Learning Series, which teaches educators how to apply and use these tools and hardware to support student learning.

And it was through these classes that enabled Mdm Shuhannah to adapt and grow with her students.

“These programmes provided me with the opportunity to learn new features as well as share ideas with other educators who were present. There were also separate sessions conducted for the educators at Madrasah Alsagoff which helped.

I remember all of us being so excited when we were first introduced to Classroom app. A number of us started trying it out the day after the session,” she recalled. 

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For many teachers, students, and parents, the shift to home learning has been a struggle bus, though, with an iPad or Macbook in hand, things do go down an easier road.

Over the past 40 years, Apple has worked alongside educators and made products that enhance learning for every student.

On top of offering a foundation for teachers, the brand has also created a treasure trove of resources for parents and students to get the most out of home-based learning – more on that later.

Apple’s vision to creating education tech has always stood by the brand’s very own pillars – connection to content, collaboration, creativity, and personal – and this is clearly mirrored in its recent launches.

From the recent launch of Apple Teacher Portfolio, the numerous education and learning apps on the Apple App Store, and of course, creative learning and accessibility being built into the hardware, it’s time we folks take a look at what Apple has to offer and see how they marry personal learning, education, and technology into one.

For starters, educators can gain insight into student activity and share Schoolwork projects with colleagues by exporting assignments created in the Schoolwork app. This allows teachers to manage and personalise learning content for their students.

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Schoolwork uses the pillar of collaboration where teachers and students can remain connected and work together and create efficient learning and marking experiences.

With the Classroom app, students can connect in the same space with their teachers via a Classroom session.

These remote sessions are a personal way in which teachers can engage with their students’ personal learning as well as see a summary of their engagement with the class lessons.

Parents can also join in on the learning journey with their kids and browse through the numerous apps and resources available on Apple.

Focused on self-directed learning and creativity, Apple’s collection of resources enhances learning in creative ways that use the Augmented Reality features in the iPad as well as drawing with the Apple Pencil.

Students can also take up skills outside of the classroom like coding for example so to expand their learning and abilities.

The Remote Learning App Collection features resources for institutions and educators whereas Learn and Study from Home App Collection features supports for parents creating learning experiences at home such as smart flashcards with Spacify: Learn and Remember and a GCSE Maths Helper and Solver with iMathematics to name a few.

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Lastly, Remote Learning Book Collection provides books for educators and students who want to build learning activities across different subject areas such as music, video, app development, and more.

To support independent and personal learning, Apple continuously ensures accessibility for students who identify with a disability with features such as closed captioning, speech to text and translation apps for students who struggle with learning in a language that isn’t their mother tongue.

For more information and resources for educators and students (from K-12 all the way to college), check out the Apple and Education website.

This article was first published in Geek Culture.