How Apple’s Classroom App for iPad Could Transform Teaching

In February, we looked at how the iPad has already helped Sophie Post with teaching history at the London-based Falkner House School. But, with Apple’s recent release of its Classroom app, how could classes around the world now change?

Apple intent on helping teachers with Classroom

It’s a good reflection of how far Apple has boosted the iPad as an educational tool that the company has also recently overhauled the Education section of its website. Apple’s profiling of Sophie Post has, as a result, moved to the following page – but our attention has been drawn to a new addition to the site…

How Apple's Classroom App for iPad Could Transform Teaching

On the same day as iOS 9.3’s release, Apple launched its Classroom app. Now free to download from the App Store and explained in detail on Apple’s website, the Cupertino company has declared it “a powerful new iPad app that helps teachers guide learning, share work, and manage student devices.” So, what practical differences could its features make?

How Classroom could work in practice

Let’s imagine how Sophie Post could use the Classroom app in a history lesson. After handing out iPads to her students, she could help them all to log in with their own accounts. If, for example, any of the students have forgotten their passwords, Sophie could reset them directly from her own iPad. It’d be just a small bump in the road…

How Apple's Classroom App for iPad Could Transform Teaching
Apple Inc.

She could then use the Remote Control feature to launch a specific app on each student’s iPad simultaneously. That app could be GoodNotes 4 – Notes & PDF. Pictured in action below, it allows Sophie to give each group a worksheet looking at a particular part of the timeline of the royal House of Tudor’s tenure on sixteenth century England’s throne.

How Apple's Classroom App for iPad Could Transform Teaching
Apple Inc.

After also using Remote Control to lock each iPad to the GoodNotes 4 app, therefore preventing any student from changing to a different app and becoming far too distracted from the test at hand, Sophie could closely monitor with use of Screen View. This feature would enable her to see any student’s iPad screen on her own iPad screen, and could especially help her in judging how far each student is progressing through their given task.

There’s even good integration with Apple TV

If a student has really excelled in their task and Sophie wants to show the rest of the class, she could do so surprisingly easy – provided that her classroom has an Apple TV. Through the set-top box, she could mirror that student’s iPad screen to a large TV monitor or projector. With just one app having all of these features, it begs the question: what more could Apple have up its sleeve for the education market?

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