Bandwagon: Thoughts on iPads in Schools
Use of iPads in Schools
Just after the launch of the original iPad, our chair of governors came to me with a plan to get every child in the school an iPad. I’m sure many other schools have considered something along these lines, and many schools I know have purchased large numbers of tablets in some form. This proposal really tore me in two directions; my gadget-geek self wanted to make this happen straight away, but the educator and realist in me couldn’t quite justify the money without ascertaining the educational benefits.
We had various meetings where we talked about using iPads for writing, presenting work, etc, and this seemed to be the main use that people could see for them – a direct replacement for the laptop.
However, whilst the iPad is not a bad tool for content creation, it’s an awful lot better at content consumption. Some of the best lessons I’ve seen with the iPads have been where children have been writing down information on something revolutionary called paper, often using an equally magical device called a pencil. The iPad has taken the place of the library, encyclopaedia, video library, teacher, etc, and allowed our pupils to find information for themselves, in the way that we always envisaged they would
be able to do through IT use, but rather than having to go to an IT suite or at least leave their seat to go work at a computer, they now have it on this little, unobtrusive device sat next to their 21st century analogue capture device (we like to call them exercise books, though I’m not sure the name will catch on).
Back in the dark ages of my school days, and probably yours too, the teachers had the information, and it was imparted to us in chunks that they thought we could handle and memorise or apply in some way. If you were very lucky you might even be asked to get some further information from a book.
These days, the children we teach find us less credible than the internet or television, and they are not used to giving undivided attention to a real person. I experimented with this earlier this term; I had two year 6 classes of mixed ability – for the first class I taught my lesson as normal, but recorded my delivery of the “teach” and instructions for the lesson using a Flip camera. For the second class I played back the video instead of delivering the lesson, and observed the differences.
The desired outcome of the lesson was that each pair would have created a fairly simple geotrail in Google Earth and then measured the distance of that trail. Hardly taxing stuff.
The first group, whilst I worked hard to keep their attention, were not always 100% focused during the 4 minutes I was showing them some of the skills they needed and explaining the task, and the end results showed that not everyone had concentrated as well as they might. The second group, however, who were taught by watching a video of me teaching another class, were rapt; their attention was total and effortless – at no point did I have to ask for someone to pay attention, focus, etc. The outcome from their task was demonstrably better, too; clearly everyone had listened and
listened well.
I think it’s clear from this experiment that my teaching and classroom management skills need a bit of work, but that I can bypass these shortcomings of mine by harnessing the children’s ability to focus on a computer screen.
The tablet computer, with the iPad currently the forerunner of the breed, is ideally suited to allow us to take advantage of all the good things the internet and information age can offer our children, without all the faff and disappointment that the previously generations of promised revolutions (e.g. an interactive whiteboard, a computer in every classroom, a class
set of laptops, the netbook, etc) have brought us, but only if we realise that they are content consumers primarily, content creators a poor second.
Note
Throughout this article I’ve talked about the iPad. I love my iPad, but I don’t think it’s the only device that fits this category. However, I do think it currently offers the best experience for our children, largely because of just how well made it is, and how well perceived it is (yes, the cool factor comes into play), how many of our parents have them at home (so an app that is popular at school can continue being used at home), and the range and quality of apps available. The iPod Touch is a viable alternative too; in some ways it’s a better option given the cost and size and the better camera on them. I’ve not yet seen an Android tablet that offers as
good an experience as the iPad, though the Asus EEE Pad Transformer offers some interesting additions and could work well, and the cunningly priced and sized Amazon Kindle Fire is going to be worth watching in the next few months. Its size, weight and price will certainly make it an interesting proposition for schools.
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andry and 
Day 3 – not missing anything, apart from speed. iPhone battery life, despite being two years old, still many, many hours better than the HTC. I have gone back to just browsing stuff on my phone because I can, etc.