How the iPad can boost classroom creativity

Bringing creativity into the classroom has numerous benefits - it engages pupils in subjects in new and innovative ways, helps them to learn new skills and boosts confidence.

Technology such as the iPad can provide high-quality and user-friendly hardware and software, meaning it’s never been easier for schools to let pupils try different creative pursuits in a classroom setting - from music and drawing to photography and film-making.

Of course, it’s not enough to just give pupils an iPad and tell them to be creative and expect fantastic results. Good teaching is about giving suggestions, providing feedback and guiding pupils.

Yet teacher workloads are already heavy enough. Expecting them to be skilled photographers, musicians or film-makers, and to easily pass these talents on in a classroom, is unrealistic.

Helping hands

As such, more and more teachers are turning to resources that help them  to guide pupils through using an iPad in a fun, engaging and straightforward manner - Apple’s Everyone Can Create guides.

The guides are free to access and contain numerous lesson ideas and step-by-step instructions for using apps such as Keynote, iMovie, GarageBand and Pages as well as hardware features such as cameras and microphones, multi-touch display and the Apple Pencil to help teachers foster pupils’ creativity in different forms.

For example, teachers can use the Everyone Can Create Photo guide to show pupils how to make a photo documentary, tell a story with a single photograph and capture images of objects in motion. While the Everyone Can Create Drawing guide focuses on still life, portraits, logos and infographics. 

The Everyone Can Create Video guide can spark ideas for making different types of projects, from a silent movie to a documentary or a video of a live event.  Everyone Can Create Music covers a range of abilities to help students learn to express themselves in ways they may not previously have thought possible.

Bringing creativity into the classroom

As well as these, Apple has also produced the Everyone Can Create Teacher Guide, which includes some 300 ideas to integrate creative skills into lessons, from maths and English to history and social studies.

Leigh Milligan is a teacher and an Apple professional learning specialist who leads the digital learning team at IT solutions company XMA. She helps teachers to get the best from the iPads they have deployed by using the guides for lesson ideas.

One way she does this is by working with teachers in the same way they might with pupils: “I basically do a flipped learning experience. So [if working with modern foreign languages teachers], I might get them to take photos around the school and then use the markup tool to highlight certain objects and put the relevant words next to them in French or Spanish and be really creative about how they do this.”

She continues: “Or we might get them to make a video and then they can ask their pupils to do this - as pupils are often more comfortable speaking to camera - and then the teacher can assess them on that, rather than making them speak to the teacher directly, which pupils often don’t like doing.”

Laura McEachran, a leader of learning at Glasgow’s Improvement Challenge and an Apple Teacher, is also full of praise for the guides: “The Everyone Can Create guides are a fantastic resource to help upskill staff and get children involved in new learning opportunities. They’re really accessible and give you a lot of ideas for lessons.”

She gives a powerful example of how they were used by one school she has worked with to help children mark the centenary of the First World War in a creative, reflective manner.

“We used the Everyone Can Create Music guide to teach the pupils how to use GarageBand so they could compose their own piece of music that they then used as a soundtrack to a video they made - also using the iPads - of them reading poems and letters from the trenches.”

Celebrating creativity

To encourage more children to embrace their creative side and start experimenting with what the iPad can do, XMA recently ran a competition that challenged children to draw a self-portrait on an iPad.

The winner was nine-year-old Charlie Arnold from Wickhambrook Primary School, whose winning image can be seen below. He said his image was inspired by Picasso after the teacher had explained about the artist’s work and the concept of abstract art: “I was inspired by the bright colours he had used and different shapes to create a self-portrait.”

Teacher Sophie Jolland from Wickhambrook, who taught Charlie, said the children loved using the iPad to be creative, and it made a nice change to more traditional art lessons based around pen and paper: “The children were really inspired using the iPads to draw their portraits. I told them all just to be as creative as they liked and everyone really came up with something unique and enjoyed the process.”

Ben Brown, head of schools at XMA, added that the competition was a great example of how digital tools such as iPads could help teachers to engage pupils in new creative pursuits in fun, innovative ways.

“Technology is not a replacement for traditional teaching and learning methods, it is a tool or a facilitator. It provides an alternative way to engage, to bring many methods together,” he said.

“We had over 220 entries and what I loved was that there were many different styles and techniques used, all from a single tool, allowing every student to use their imagination and get creative on a single device. The winning entry was highly expressive of the early 20th century avant-garde art movement Cubism that revolutionised self-portrait painting. Charlie had taken inspiration from a physical art from and translated into a digital image, showing not only creativity but also learning.”

Ultimately, taking advantage of the activities within Apple’s Everyone Can Create resources, and using the iPad to develop creative skills, allows teachers to provide stimulating and inspiring ways for children to be creative, confident and engaged learners.

XMA will be at the Bett 2020 education technology show from 22-25 January, with a dedicated Apple for Education stand, where it will be showcasing the benefits that the iPad can bring to the classroom through demos and offering the chance to get advice and insights from experts