It's not failure, it's learning.

At the TLLP training I recently attended, one of our speakers (I'm sorry, I can't recall which one) encouraged us to consider the idea that when things don't work out the way we had envisioned, we should simply reflect on the learning experience and move on. "There is no failure, there is just learning".

Well, having spent the past few days working with the Toontastic app, there seems to have been a lot of 'learning'. Relatively speaking, a lot of time was put into understanding and working with the app. On Friday afternoon the class gathered to watch the creations of the groups that worked with the iPads. To my displeasure, none of the creations were acceptable. So, what did my students and I learn? As we watched the cartoons, I took some mental and written notes - this is what we LEARNED:

1) None of the cartoons were reasonable audible. The students didn't speak loud enough into the microphone area on the iPad. Volume was bad. Moreover, a lot of the students didn't use their natural voice, they created different voices based on the character they were playing. This is a fantastic idea, and I support it. However, with the volume problem, it did not help the situation but it did make it worse.

2) All of the cartoons had some type of aggressive tone. This amazed me in that I have rarely seen this in their writing. I asked why the cartoons had aggressive components to them and one students responded by telling me that they had to have a "problem" in their story. I then asked them why they don't usually have this type of aggression in their paper & pencil  writing and they responded by telling me that it is because I don't allow it! I then asked what the difference is between writing on paper & pencil and doing the same activity on the iPad. No one attempted to answer that question.

What did I learn? Perhaps it is necessary for me to support my students with the high technology the same way I support them when they are not using modern high technology. What do you think?