I have an iPad... Now what?

Consider the following use cases that illustrate a few of the many ways teachers might use this powerful device.

Write on a digital white board during instruction

A teacher wants to work on problem sets or write notes on the board during direct instruction. Because she is teaching in a hybrid classroom model, she has students participating both in person and from home. Using her iPad, the teacher jots notes in Jamboard or Explain Everything, which are shared in real time with students at home while also being projected on the screen at the front of the room. To make the lesson available for absent students or for review, the teacher has the option of recording the whiteboard lesson outside of the Google Meet.

Learn how to split your iPad screen to see your Meet and your digital whiteboard at the same time >

See Meet kids while teaching

A teacher wants to be able to teach from his MacBook air and share his screen while in a Google Meet, but he wants to be able to see his at-home students without having to shrink his windows. Using the Sidecar feature, he is able to put his Meet screen on his iPad while teaching from his Macbook.

Annotate almost anything

  • Using the scanning feature in Notes, a teacher scans a hard copy of an activity he wants to complete with the class. He writes on the digital version with his Apple Pencil while sharing his iPad's screen to the projector. When he's finished, he uploads the notes to Classroom or Seesaw with a few taps.

  • A teacher takes a photo of something (an artifact, geometrical shapes in the room, part of a science experiment, etc.) and adds labels and diagrams. The image is saved and shared with students for future reference.

  • Modeling reading informational texts and research skills, a teacher annotates an article on a website. Embedding the website in an Explain Everything whiteboard, she marks up the live website with the Apple Pencil to demonstrate her thinking process. The annotations are saved on the article.

One digital space for the whole lesson

A teacher plans a lesson during which he will play a video clip, read and annotate a segment of an article from the Smithsonian website, write notes on the whiteboard, and collect student summaries from group work in one space to compare responses. Instead of preparing several different tabs and bouncing among laptop, whiteboard, and document camera, the teacher can arrange all of this media on one digital canvas in the Explain Everything app, easily navigating the lesson and writing notes on a nearly infinite whiteboard. The lesson can be recorded easily within the app for students who need missed it or need review, and it is saved and ready to teach to other classes.



Use Dynamic Simulations

Using apps such as Insight Heart and Human Body, a science teacher can add dynamic visualizations and simulations to lessons to build learners' understanding of concepts.



Guide Virtual Tours

It's difficult to get funding for a one-hour class trip to Paris, but the iPad makes it easy to transport a lesson to previously inconceivable locations. Leading tours from her device, a teacher uses Google Expeditions to provide digital tours of sites of cultural and historical significance. Older students can experience the tours on their own phones, but the teacher can easily project/screenshare the tour from her iPad. A growing number of tours are available in both virtual and augmented reality.

Write on Slides While Presenting

Whether you prefer Google Slides or Keynote, there are options to annotate slides as you teach. This not only provides room for teachable moments and visual answers to questions, but it also offers the teacher more dynamic options for presenting content. Teach directly from the Keynote or Google Slides apps (while sharing your iPad screen to a Meet if you wish) or use Explain Everything to combine your presentation with a digital whiteboard.

Use Explain Everything to annotate and present existing Google Slides or Keynote presentations while accessing a digital whiteboard in the same window

Annotate Keynote slides as you present for remote and in-person students

Annotate Google Slides as you present for remote and in-person students