Ok, so it’s sunny outside..that means some blue sky thinking. I think.
I’m thinking about a scheme similar to ones running in many secondary schools already where pupils can buy/lease a device by paying monthly over a number of years. In my mind, netbooks would be great, but if you’re spending £300-£350, then obviously the ipad comes into play too. But then if you’re talking tablets, you might also want to investigate the Android ones too. There should probably be a small mention for Chromebooks too at £300, but for that I could almost get a ‘proper’ laptop/netbook which could be used for animation, movie editing and game design too.
So, before deciding on a device I want to decide what it will be used for and why I want it. To do that, some context is needed. We have 9 classes (if you don’t include Reception who have a few desktop PCs) using 68 netbooks. There are also 18 or so desktop PCs in the corridor for children to access and a suite of 20. The suite will last another year at most and as it only holds 20, doesn’t get used much (once/twice a week) due to class sizes of 28+.
The netbooks are great and I am totally converted after thinking that I would hate them. They have decent-sized screens and they boot up in 5minutes. Battery life is 4-6 hours too. So the easy option would be to have a scheme where children can buy their own netbooks. I could image them very quickly using the system we already have and life would be simple.
But then what about the tablets? As I have never really played with an i-pad (except for a bit of browsing and a bit of a play in a shop once) and never used an Android 3/4 tablet, it’s best to list the things that I want and then hopefully some lovely people will leave comments to say if it is possible.
- The device needs to be able to sync with others so that if I download apps on one, they go to all devices. (do I need to think about licensing???)
- They need to work through our proxy settings
- Will there need to be multiple accounts setup so that when they are used in school the child sees the ‘school’ apps but when they’re at home, and it becomes a home device, they can install angry birds?
- Can I therefore stop pupils from purchasing apps in school?
- Can I ‘force’ a certain look on all devices e.g. making a maths folder and a science folder with relevant apps inside?
Of course there are also other questions that are more teaching and learning, than techy:
- Will my teachers want a range of devices in class?
- Will they want to have different activities being done by different children at the same time?
- Will children want to use it so much that they forget how to write? Will they be allowed to choose when to use it and when not to? I don’t want it being a flashy way of doing their times tables!!
- Will we use it for a range of different stuff often enough? If it’s just going to be a ‘research’ machine for finding out information, why not buy a Blackberry Playbook for £170? (and this has Flash)
- What if only 5 children in a class sign up to the scheme? Will this create haves and have-nots? Will this be a problem? Should I just buy a couple of ipads for each class and avoid the issue?
Ideally I’d like a couple of devices to play with for a few days but I have no idea how to go about this. I tried a few places and it wasn’t in their policy to let me have shiny things to play with in case I broke them.
There is obviously the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) argument too and I think we could allow this providing it worked through the proxy settings.
So, am I being ambitious? forward-thinking? mental? Would/could/does this work and how do I go about trying? I’m not a Distinguished Apple Blokie so I’m looking for something that any teacher can go and do. Comments, questions, rants, opinions are all welcome, so please help if you can!
I can only mainly speak for the iPad as that’s a device I’ve spent a lot of time with in many enviroments. We have used a toshina android tablet for the purposes of app development but I haven’t had as much facetime with these devices.
A lot of things you want to achieve can be achieved through parental controls and the apple device management tool they recently released. This allows you to push apps, make changes and update all your devices in one go. iOS also supports proxy settings which android has only just started doing in version 4.
One thing you could try to see if it is suitable for the educational enviroment is get in touch with local apple store (Southampton) and say your a business educational customer interested in seeing whether the iPad could fill your needs. That way you could arrange some time with the iPads… possibly even with some students.
The other week in my local apple store they had 6 different educational sessions lasting around 1-2 hours long where students and teachers from local schools had an in depth look at the iPads and how they could be applied in an educational enviroment.
Tablets have their short comings in areas, but I think they make up for it in the interactivity, battery life and portability.
I think one of the main things you need to look at is how much drive apple has to market this as an education tool. They’re really keen to get this device into schools and childrens hands and I think it’s important to have the company behind it.
The developers are also there, in droves and there are so many apps already developed for the device. Android has far fewer tablet apps and even less when you narrow it down to education.
In my opinion, if we were looking at tablets alone then I’d pick the iPad. If we were comparing netbooks to tablets in general.. then it gets a little harder as I don’t personally feel tablets are ready to take the place of latops/netbooks just yet.
You’ve asked a lot Ian!
I have used ipads a lot, and own a galaxy tab, so hopefully I can answer a few of your questions.
Ipads can be sync’ed. At the moment one copy of an app can be sync’ed with lots of ipads (upto 25 I believe), there are companies selling docks to achieve this. However Apple are soon to be bringing out a multi licence portal which will presumably put a stop to this. I don’t believe you can do this with Android tabs.
iPads will happily work on proxies. Either by using Proxy pac files, or manually adding the details. Andoird tablets with android v3 or above can use manual proxies (I use mine in school every day). Android v2 has limited proxy support depending on vendor.
Tablets are single users devices. There are no different logins for school and home or multi accounts in school. In education this is their biggest downfall I think.
My understanding is to install apps you would need to use the itunes / google account used to setup the tablet originally. If school set it up, only school could install extra apps.
I did hear that at Bett a company was showing android based tablets that displayed different apps depending on the user scanning a QR code on the way into the classroom. Neat idea, but I haven’t been able to find them since.
In a presentation by Tom Rees I was present at last year, he suggested that in his school they use a mixture of devices which aid learning. The nicest idea I remember was asking the kids who never get the demo first time round to use ipod touches and video the demo so they could watch it back. It also meant they watched more intently the first time round!
Using tablets for all tasks would be a bad idea in my opinion. They should be brought out with specific purposes in mind. Technology to aid learning, not transform learning (although they may also do a bit of the latter). They can be used as note takers, but the possibility to get off task is surely too great.
Apple has more, better quality apps than android / playbook. There, I said it. I love my android tab, but apple has managed to get developers to create better tablet apps than android. This might change however with android 4. If all you want is a browser (and there are very good arguments for being platform independent and doing everything ‘in the cloud’) then as long as the browser supports google apps, skydrive, box, dropbox etc. and all the web 2.0 tools you want to use, then why not go for a cheaper alternative (although people will still insist on calling them ipads). Flash is often a stumbling block for schools, so many of the subscription education websites totally rely on flash.
The have and have not argument is really important I think. I often argue here, that our VLE is fantastic, but what about those kids who simple can’t get online on an average evening to do their homework. Schools either need to find a very attractive, cost effective way of getting parents to pay, or have to dig deep and provide the technology themselves.
Just me 2 pence worth.
iPads can support several iTunes accounts at the same time (some conflicts with the original region of the iTunes accounts). I have a set of 30 deployed with teachers and some use the school account in addition to their own.
Our set of 4 for checkout keep getting loaded up from the students’ iTunes accounts, but that can be blocked with parental controls. From an educational perspective, though, I think it’s great that the students are engaging at that level and for the most part I leave their additions be – some have proven to be useful to others!
I’m a big advocate of BYOD. The modern world is going in that direction and especially for the primary years, by the time these kids are grownups I expect BYOD to be ubiquitous in the workplace. I would find several different options for the families and focus on getting teachers with enough open summative tasks that can be done on any device. Being a Google school helps – things submitted via Google docks are device-independent.
So I would say look at the learning first and the devices second – are your teachers ready for full-on integration? Are the parents? Do they work enough in a cloud-based environment? Once you answer these questions, the device becomes clearer.
Also, I think the iPad 3 and the next i0S round will see iPads coming a LOT closer to the performance of laptops with better screens and UI. The only drawback is the Google-Apple war going on that means that Google docs isn’t that great on the iPads. I’m EVER hopeful they’ll stop acting like grownups and start getting along.:-)!
Hi Ian
Couple of helpful pointers:
The co and device referred to in the second comment was the Avantis Learnpad.
For advice with 1 to 1 financing try the e-learning foundation.
The Learnpad looks easy to manage centrally via a web interface.
I am looking too but not for one to one just yet!
I think the lack of Flash and expense rules out Apple for my school who have lots of online content.
Good luck and I will follow the comments with interest!
Have a word with @simonpridham123 – he’s been looking at rolling out ipads, and has been working closely with Cedar’s school in Scotland at the lessons learned from their roll out.