My class are really keen to have iPods in the classroom. Their iPods, that is.

So, when it came up as an issue across our four Upper Primary classrooms, I decided that the best way forward was for the kids to write a Position Statement to inform and persuade their peers and their teachers. As you can read for yourself, many of these Statements had well thought out ideas and make the case for the strategic use of personal iPods in the classroom.

Then Julie, the other coordinator came back yesterday after a Boys Forward conference run by Dr. Ian Lillico, where she posed the question that my teaching team have been asking, "What do you think about iPods in the classroom?"

She said that while he believed that iPods were ideal learning tools for recording and listening to specific educational content, he had concerns about kids using them as a "wall of sound" to block out distractions and improve their on task capabilities. So, I'm wondering what my readership thinks and whether you have kids utilising iPods in your classroom. If you read their Statements, they are mainly arguing for their use in non-instructional time where they have a specific task or assignment to work on, and it is at the teacher's discretion. They consider issues of equity, hygiene, health and appropriate content in the classroom. When I went Googling, I struggled to find many documented examples to inform my own perspective.

Maybe I'm not looking in the right places - what do you think?