Shao Ping and I went for a walk along Bulli Beach. We stopped for a cuppa on the sand and took some photographs as well. There was an onshore breeze and the skies were mostly overcast. The rock platform at Bulli Point features some remarkable colours and formations. I shall allow the photographs to speak for themselves

The choppy waves broke on the rock platform and the smell of the sea was quite nice. It was neither warm or cold this afternoon. It was nice just to sit there and to watch the waves, the surfers and others walking along the beach

A blue-bottle jellyfish (“Portuguese Man o’ War“) was washed ashore. I have been stung by those a few times in my lifetime. Rather nasty. The long, trailing stinger wraps around your body and limbs leaving red, inflamed trails of reddish welts on your skin.

An extensive set of links regarding iPad implementations, the experiences of teachers and students with iPads in the classroom, scholarly articles, and reviews of iPad apps. These links were listed on my iPad workshop page previously. These links are updated regularly.

Apple iPad Education Sites

• Learning with the iPad
• Education Apps
• Apple iPad ~ Accessibility ~ Physical and Motor Skills
• Apple iPad ~ Accessibility ~ Vision Skills
• Special Education Apps
• iPad for College Students
• Apple iPad ~ Accessibility ~ Hearing Skills

Papers and posters published re the iPad and mobile devices

• Sabrina Huber: iPads in the classroom – A development of a taxonomy for the use of iPads in schools
• Kinash, S., Brand, J. & Mathew, T: iPad Experience Questionnaire
• Paula Williams, Wai-Leng Wong, Helen Webb & Sally Borbasi: Mobile Technologies in the Field: iPads – Rescuer or Rescuee?
• Scott Symonds, Andrew Rowatt, Andrew Jamieson, Gina Salapata, Susan Abasa & Sita Venkateswar: 21C to 700 B.C in a swipe: The Classics meet iPad
• Andrew Lovell-Simons & Sharon Kerr: E-books – a key to greater accessibility
• Brian Torres: Syllabus: Using The iPad/iPod In The Classroom: How To Teach, Assess, and Empower Your Students With The iPad/iPod
• Trina Marmarelli and Martin Ringle: The Reed College iPad Study Summary of Faculty Evaluation Reports April 2011
• Aleksandra Hollingshead: Have an iPad in My Classroom. Now What? : Ideas for Implementation to Support Social‐ Communication Skills
• Jane Farrall: Using the iPad as Assistive Technology
• Department of Education & Early Childhood Development, Victoria: iPads in Special Education: Suggested applications and activities
• Samuel Sennott, Eric Sailers, David Niemeijer & Jane Farrall: iPhone, iPod & iPad Apps for Special Education
• Autism Queensland: Applications for iPad, iPhone & iPod Touch
• Do E-Books Make It Harder to Remember What You Just Read?
• Dr. Ian J. Shepherd and Dr. Brent Reeves: iPad or iFad – The reality of a paperless classroom
• Jeffrey Brand and Shelley Kinash: Pad-agogy: A quasi-experimental and ethnographic pilot test of the iPad in a blended mobile learning environment
• Jacqui Kelly and Judy Schrape: 100 days with an iPad: Lessons learnt and apps acquired
• Nathaniel Ostashewski and Doug Reid: iTeach, iDance: Using the iPad in the body-kinesthetic teaching context
• Swee-Kin Loke, Mark Lokman, Michael Winikoff, Jenny McDonald, Rob Wass, Maryam Purvis, Richard Zeng, Christoph Matthaei, & Peter Vlugter: Lessons in designing sustainable mobile learning environments
• Karen M. Scott, Sharon Kitching, Daniel Burn, Marianna Koulias, Dianne Campbell & Megan Phelps: “Wherever, whenever” learning in Medicine: Interactive mobile case-based project
• Thomas Cochrane and Roger Bateman: Smartphones give you wings: Pedagogical affordances of mobile Web 2.0
• Kathryn MacCallum and Lynn Jeffrey: Identifying discriminating variables that determine mobile learning adoption by educators: An initial study
• Henrik Valstad: iPad as a pedagogical device
• Norshuhada Shiratuddin and Syamsul Bahrin Zaibon: Local content game: The preferred choice for mobile learning space
• Jenny Waycott and Gregor Kennedy: Mobile and Web 2.0 technologies in undergraduate science: Situating learning in everyday experience
• Nathaniel Ostashewski and Doug Reid: iPod, iPhone, and now iPad: The evolution of multimedia access in a mobile teaching context
• Robert C. Meurant: The iPad and EFL Digital Literacy ~ Robert Meurant has written quite a few papers in this field of study.
• Brian Ferry: Using mobile phones to enhance teacher learning in environmental education

iPad Teaching, Learning and Implementation Resources

Educators write about the iPad and their experiences with the device in the classroom

Journalists, bloggers and others write about the iPad

Third party vendors and storage solutions

• Bretford PowerSync Cart for iPad
• Building iPad Sync Carts: DIY & MacGyver
• Encore Data Products ~ Laptop, Netbook, iPad Storage and Recharging Carts
• Managing iPad Fleets In Schools

I have been trawling through old photographs and video clips and I chanced upon these photographs and video clips taken in Singapore back in October, 2000. My wife Shao Ping and I were living in a flat in Pasir Ris and one morning the sounds of this exotic and hypnotic music came in trough our 9th storey window.

I grabbed my camera, a Sony DSC70 Cybershot and managed to take a few photographs and four MPEG video clips that were 15 seconds in length. That was all the camera could deal with at that time. I edited the four video clips into a single video file using iMovie and uploaded the finished product to Vimeo.

Malay Wedding ~ Singapore from John Larkin on Vimeo.

Every time I play these clips the music simply entrances me. The repetitive percussion and the rise and fall of the rhythm and the crescendos that writhe around you are just mesmerising. The wedding was colourful as are all Malay weddings.

The wedding musicians perform in the void deck

The wedding musicians perform in the void deck

The wedding musicians begin their walk up the stair from the void deck

We lived in a Housing Development Board flat, Block 423 Pasir Ris Drive 6 and the wedding was held in the void deck of the adjacent housing block.

We lived here in Block 423 Pasir Ris Drive 6 Singapore

We sat at these long wooden desks that could sit four students next to each other. I remember I sat next to Ginetto Poscoliero on that very first morning. About three rows back in the centre. School had already started and my sister Mary and I had arrived late. Not an auspicious beginning. Gino had the most amazing lunches. His incredible lunches made my devon and tomato sauce sandwiches on plain white bread look rather pathetic in comparison. Gino’s lunches were humongous. Bread rolls with the most exotic fillings! This was all so new to me. A cultural awakening. [See Alan Levine's comment below... That's Gino on the left in the photograph below together with Ernesto, Sammy and Mario. All from that 2nd grade class at a recent reunion. We are getting together again later this year.]

Gino, Ernesto, John, Sammy and Mario. Still together after more than 45 years.
An Australian boy in a Mediterranean sea of manhood!

The way in which mathematics was taught at this school was quite different in comparison to how I had been taught at my previous primary school and from that point on in life I struggled with mathematics. It seemed to be more advanced. I could never seem to stay in touch. My first three years at school had seemingly wired my brain to learn mathematics in a particular way. My new 2nd grade teacher, Sister Philomena, taught it a different way. She seemed to be a tall foreboding woman with impossibly thick eyebrows and deep, dark brown eyes. Her thick dark habit and the huge string of wooden, life-threatening, rosary beads that dangled from her belt bespoke of authority and merciless power. She probably never wanted to be a teacher. She conceivably became a nun to pray and get married to God but the head of the convent probably tossed the poor woman a piece of chalk and said “Teach!”

However, it was not all doom and gloom in this new school for a small sensitive boy. Every member of the class was given a “reader” called Open Road and I thought it was the most fantastic book. Some of the stories have stayed with me all my life. In recent years I have always kept an eye out it for it in second hand book stores and I have also searched for it on the web. To no avail. I mentioned this in passing to my older sister Margaret recently and she replied that she had kept my copy of the book, along with my Kindergarten and 1st grade readers! Excellent! Thanks Margie! Margaret is a kindergarten teacher. I am one of seven children. Six teachers and one librarian.

The Rolling Plum contemplating life on the road

One of the stories that always fascinated me was “The Rolling Plum“. It is the story of a plum that decides he is going to see the world. The idea of a plum rolling from one place to the next captured my imagination. This plum had balls, per se, and it was determined to leave the tree and head for the road, channeling Jack Kerouac no doubt. I guess that this little roaming plum caught my eye because I had recently moved to a new home just metres from the beach, paddocks, tracks, sand-hills, creeks, coastal rock shelves, a playground and a football field. Freedom! I too could be that rolling plum.

The Rolling Plum evades capture

The Rolling Plum was one weird, little dude. How he managed to roll around like that was a mystery. Yes, this little purple renegade carved a swathe through the meadows as he rolled around the countryside with a grim determination. Thinking about it… this could conceivably be a nightmare for some kids. The plum encountered some dangers along the way however he met them all head on, in a manner of speaking, and carried on regardless, singing his merry little tune…

“I’m a rolling plum
and you can’t catch me,
for I’m off to look
at the world you see…”

After his travels far and wide the Rolling Plum eventually found his roots and settled down with a worldview quite unlike that of his fellow plums. You can read his story by exploring the gallery at the foot of this post.

The rolling plum evades capture once more!

Do you remember the Rolling Plum and Open Road? Would love to read your recollections. Please leave a reply below with your own stories! Much appreciated!

I cannot watch that happen. Some students struggle. Some students lack confidence. I walk up to the student and write a sentence or two in the first person, the beginning of a story, based on the topic of the task.

Just before I compose the two sentences I ask the students names that they like and I use those as the basis for the fictional characters that I weave into that opening sentence or two. I then ask the student to finish the story using the ideas in the opening sentences and the knowledge that they possess of the topic.

They put pen to paper and the story continues. It is now their story. They are writing. They are thinking. They are getting their ideas down on paper. That is the important thing. A quick head-start. Then a little creativity and a little knowledge.

If students stall towards the  end I ask them to simply write a dozen or so key words that they can remember. Moments later I then ask them to use the keywords in three or so sentences. Just to keep them writing, thinking.

I cannot let the students simply sit there… not writing. Give them a boost, a handle, a hook. Give them some words. Something that they can tap into so that the words will come and the ideas will flow onto the paper.

Photograph acknowledgement: Pen en papier / Pen and paper

Nationaal Archief / Spaarnestad Photo / Wiel van der Randen, SFA001001739. Kinderen met pen en papier in de schoolbank in de klas. [1937]. Plaats onbekend.
Children / pupils writing on paper with a pen in the classroom. The Netherlands, location unknown. [1937] Collectie Spaarnestad.