The affordances of iPads for learners, teachers and teacher educators in the documentation of visible learning and teaching

Abstract

This chapter engages the pedagogical affordances of iPads as used to document learning and teaching (L&T) at three levels: by learners to document their own learning, by a teacher to document and understand her own classroom practice and their potential use by teacher educators to train teachers in a systematised classroom pedagogy for young learners. We report and draw on a classroom ethnographic research project conducted in a Grade 7 Reggio Emilia class at a Johannesburg school. This study investigated the affordances of iPads in actualising the documentation of visible learning. We adapt a model of the pedagogic affordances of iPads described by Drennan and Moll to describe the learning of learners in the classroom and the pedagogy of the teacher herself. This has significant implications for the way in which teacher educators might employ iPads in training student-teachers to document and understand their own emerging classroom practices as novice primary school teachers.