I’ve owned my iPad for several months now and while I enjoy it on a personal-level, I really love utilizing it professionally. When I bring it to the library and hook it up to our overhead projector for after-school programs, my teens can’t wait to find out what we’ll be doing. So far, we’ve only explored one aspect of apps-based gaming—trivia—and the teens have really responded favorably to it, so we’ll continue to incorporate this into our programming as we look to broaden our apps horizon.
The Scene-It? programs that are available, particularly the Horror version, are the current teen favorites, but the Family Feud app is gaining momentum. In both cases, the teens work together to answer the questions and beat the clock, and while they enjoy bragging rights for figuring out difficult clues, the teamwork they demonstrate supersedes everything else. They’re competitive without being cutthroat, and they enjoy showing off their knowledge of pop culture and trivia.
The teens and I haven’t even scratched the surface of programming possibilities; in fact, we’ll be trying Lego’s Life of George soon as well as other creative apps including Toontastic, ComicBook!, and Wordfoto. It will be challenging to coordinate a program where so many teens will have great ideas but only one iPad to voice them; my teens, however, have shown that they’re willing to try anything. While I’d love to have an iPad available for everyone, for now we’ll share mine as we continue to discover new apps and programming ideas together.
