Net worth of the iPad

Much interest was shown in yesterday's post iPad or iFad? It focused on whether schools should provide iPads for all their students. In the UK several schools are already doing this, and all have received great criticism from pressure groups who claim that it is an expensive gimmick. All down through the history of technology, as each new tool is introduced, there are those who will resist and complain, usually without any real evidence to justify their complaints. The main objection against one iPad per child projects is that there is little evidence to show that the new devices actually improve learning gain. The schools counter this argument by saying that with projects in their infancy it does take time to set up research and gather data, interpret it and discover whether an affect is in evidence.

The discussion on iPad or iFad was very interesting and thought provoking and I would like to express my thanks to all those who participated. The gist of the discussion centred not so much on the technology (and rightly so) but more on the pedagogy. You can follow it for yourself here, but generally, those participating agreed that if a new technology such as the iPad is introduced into the classroom it will only be effective if the the teaching and learning changes to harness the power of that technology. Too often we have seen new technologies placed into the classroom, and then used in exactly the same way as the old technology they are meant to replace. This video shows what not to do with an iPad:

One school I featured in yesterday's post was Mounts Bay Academy, near Penzance, Cornwall. Mounts Bay is one of the secondary schools in the UK that has adopted one iPad per child, and at the cost of over half a million pounds, has been the target for a lot of flak from groups such as the Tax Payers Alliance. Sara Davey, head teacher of Mounts Bay was yesterday interviewed on BBC radio, and reported an initial set of results from their school-wide iPad project as follows:

In a recent student survey 90% of Mounts Bay students agreed that iPads were very useful for their learning, especially in Science, English, Religious Education and History.  They reported that they made personal learning gains by working faster and getting more done. The students found the iPads very useful for their research and homework and they liked the fact that it is inclusive with a personal device for every student. Teachers observed that there were gains in Literacy learning, with communication now excellent between staff and students and improving greatly with between the school and parents.  There is a report on the website of a visit by teachers from nearby schools Penrice and Callington yesterday with comments, and an iPad showcase section. Data collected by the school indicate that Year 11 achievement looked very promising this year with a possible 10% increase in students gaining 5 GCSEs (including English and Mathematics).

As Sara Davey herself warns, these results cannot and should not be solely attributed to the introduction of the iPads. Yet it is significant that students have reported that they revise earlier because they are more interested in studying using the iPads than they are using text books.

Image courtesy of Fotocommunity

Net worth of the iPad by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

iPad or iFad?

In 2002 I was so enthused by the idea that a school could provide one desktop computer for every child, that I launched a research programme to study one of the first schools in the UK to achieve that goal for each of its 41 Year 6 pupils. We placed a research assistant in a classroom for several hours each week, over an entire term at Broadclyst Community Primary School, near Exeter in Devon, to observe and record what happened. The results were later published in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, and the 1:1 ratio certainly made a difference to learning engagement, but not necessarily to learning gain. Our major findings were that the 1:1 ratio of laptop provision encouraged greater creativity from the children, and improved their levels of engagement and enthusiasm across subjects.

Now, ten years on, more and more schools are finding the resources to offer their students a laptop each, and some schools are trail blazing by providing iPads for each of their learners. One such school, Cedars School of Excellence, in Greenock, Scotland has discovered that providing an iPad for each of its children has many benefits. Fraser Speirs, the teacher primarily responsible for the roll-out almost two years ago, argues that what attracts children to using the iPad to learn is its portability, accessibility and intuitive touch screen interface. The touch screen enables users, teachers and students, to get very quickly to the heart of learning by using natural gestures, without having to spend time discovering which key to press, how to navigate around, or start up a particular software tool. The school treats the iPads as 'everyday' rather than special, because when students leave school and enter the world of work, technology will surround them. Speirs claims that the iPads facilitate learning that is 'more flexible, engaging and interesting.' He says that it is too early in the project to report if the iPads have made a significant difference on achievement. You can read more about the Cedar School iPad project on Fraser's blog.

Another school taking the plunge into 1:1 iPad provision is Mounts Bay Academy, a secondary school near Penzance in Cornwall. Headteacher Sara Davey is a visionary who wants to transform learning in the school and facilitate world class learning. She is not short of critics, many of whom claim the scheme, costing just over £300 for each of its 900 students, is little more than a costly gimmick. She counters these criticisms by arguing that in the long term, iPads will be more cost effective than purchasing expensive books which go out of date. It will also be an improvement on the ICT suite, which takes up valuable space and resources and can only be used by small groups of students at a time. She sees learning on the move for all as preferable, because each child can take their iPad into lessons, use them across the curriculum, and take them home to continue their learning seamlessly.  Similarly to Speirs, Davey argues that the iPads will improve student engagement and make learning more interesting. Again, this project is at an early stage and time will tell whether there is a direct impact on the quality of learning.

What are your views about one iPad for every child? Is it innovative and far-sighted, or just another gimmick with little evidence to justify the cost?

NB: You can read more on the debate about whether every student should have an iPad here.

Image source


iPad or iFad? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

20th Century flops?

I have just recorded an interview for my local TV station Westcountry Television. The interview was requested because there has been public outcry about one school in Cornwall called Mounts Bay Academy (very close to where I live here in Devon) that has recently purchased an iPad for each of its 900 students. Here is the story as reported by BBC News. The moaning is from the Tax Payers Alliance, who consider the iPad a 'gimmick' and a waste of taxpayers money. It's to be expected of course. Whenever a school here in the UK announces an innovative scheme such as the iPad project that involves spending money, pressure groups such as the Taxpayers Alliance come out of the woodwork to complain vociferously. But their complaints are ill-informed and certainly not grounded in research.

The headteacher of Mounts Bay, when interviewed, said that she believes that touch screen technologies are the future of learning. She is right. But the future doesn't hang around for long. Schools that do not begin to innovate and adopt new technologies for learning will be left behind in the 20th century. It won't be long, I predicted in my TV interview, before we begin to see non-touch technology in our schools. It's coming, and it's only a matter of time. Our children will sit on our laps and ask 'did you really have to touch a computer to make it work?' That is the future, but for now we have the touch screen iPad and its mimics. Children find touch screen tablets intuitive and easy to use, because they are minimally designed, and there is little to distract them from the real business of education - learning. It is no longer enough for teachers to expect students to passively receive knowledge. Now students need to create their own content, organise and share it, and that is exactly what tools such as the iPad do. Schools such as Honeywood School in Essex (1200 students) and Longfield Academy in Kent (1400 students) and several others around the UK are already forging ahead .... and receiving flak for their farsighted visions. One Australian school in Melbourne - Trinity College - has already done an evaluation study on the 1-1 provision of iPads to their student population. Their Step Forward project findings reveal that iPads can be gamechangers, and can motivate and engage students significantly better than other tools. They have even reduced their paper consumption drastically as a result of the touch screen tools. In the short term, pedagogically, and in the long term, financially, investing in touch screens makes absolute sense. Have a look at this ultimate guide to using the iPad in the classroom, and you will see what I mean. It's a live online document that is constantly being added to by teachers as they find new ways to use touch screen tablets to transform teaching and learning.

It's no good for organisations such as the Tax Payers Alliance to complain about wasting public money on 'gimmicks' and then suggesting that the old tools will suffice. That won't wash at all. Don't they want the best for our young people? Do they want our teaching profession to be stuck in the past as 20th Century flops? Do they want us to prepare our children for the future or for the past?

Image by Ernst Vikne



20th Century flops by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.