How iPads Can Totally Revise the Way We Teach Kids to Write

Everyone knows the drill of writing a five-paragraph essay for school: the blank notebook paper or Word document, and the daunting process of brainstorming and organizing. But that writing process can all be changed by the iPad. Tablet apps provide a variety of options for students to brainstorm and compose according to how they work best. And using technology, teachers and peers can easily leave feedback both in the form of written comments and videos. Using iPads also opens up new opportunities for collaboration among students or classrooms — like when students from a school in Chicago collaborated with students in Iceland to write a book about communities. The iPad takes the writing process and its many stages of drafting and editing off a static page and into a dynamic, digital learning environment — exactly what students need to engage with the process of creating essays and stories.