A Scottish independent Christian school has opted to educate its pupils by ditching paper and pens and instead issuing the children with iPads.
Students at the Cedars School of Excellence in Greenock, Scotland will learn using Apple’s tablet PC, at a cost of about £14.50 per user per month.
Head of computing and IT co-ordinator Fraser Speirs said the move began as an exercise that the private school carried out in January 2010.
“Up until then we had used iMacs in the computing lab, then we moved to laptops, which could be used in other classes outside of IT," he said.
“These laptops were booked constantly and the students couldn’t get enough of them for the things they wanted to do.”
So Speirs decided that the iPod Touch could be a solution to this demand from classes as it is relatively cheap and gives children access to the web.
“However, there were a few problems with it: it didn’t have a word processor that was suitable, you couldn’t put a keyboard on it and we couldn’t connect it to a projector.”
About a month after that exercise, Apple launched the iPad.
“It resolved all the problems we were having with the iPod Touch and many more besides,” said Speirs. “We realised this was the ideal thing we were looking for.”
Speirs explained that the major challenge in rolling out iPads was adherence to Apple’s terms and conditions. The terms of Apple’s App Store meant that the school could only have five desktop computers synchronising with each App store account. But it could have a reasonable number of iPads synchronising with each desktop computer.
“So we developed a system whereby each form group would have a desktop computer and that form's iPads would synch to that one computer.
"This allowed us to buy an app from the desktops and move it onto the iPads. Those intricacies were the most difficult thing we encountered,” he added.
Speirs revealed that owing to the popularity of the iPad, the school was not able to obtain much of a discount and had to pay close to retail price. It is currently on a rolling three-year lease.
“When you look at the amount we spend on education, £14.50 per month per pupil regardless of how many classes we take, it is quite affordable really,” said Speirs.
He said that the results have already been quite dramatic. Student engagement has vastly improved, but working out how it affects attainment will take some time.
“Even though we’re not teaching new subjects – we’re teaching the same material – but we’re teaching it in a new way.
“It strikes me that it just makes sense to the kids. They deal with information electronically and so we’re doing things in a way that suits them. We find kids are engaged for so much longer than they were with just pencil and paper – it’s remarkable,” he added.
As a parent of one of the children at Cedars I feel utterly blessed that a child of mine has this opportunity. He can use a pc at home or his ipad and now has an understanding of both technologies. The children are excited to learn and long may it continue. Technology constantly changes and the better children are dealing with it the more opportunities will open to them.
Posted by: G Kyle 08 Oct 2010
I would like to disagree with the previous comments - I think the idea merits '5 stars'; it has caught the attention of the children (something that is hard to do at the best of times with children), it is giving them an insight into the world of computing (albeit only from an apple view at the moment) and will hopefully challenge them to take on new ideas and broaden their horizons and build on what they learn - isn't that what school is all about? I agree that there are other operating systems that they should be learning about but, one step at a time please! As for the costs involved, while it maybe more practical to buy desktops it's not possible to take these everywhere you go and if the school intends to use them on school trips or outings then the iPad a much more practial solution!
Posted by: Lynne Mellstrom 10 Sep 2010
"We didn't have enough laptops to satisfy demand so we bought iPads". Yet the iPads have a higher unit cost than the average industry laptop.
This is spending to be trendy, not spending to be effective - one hopes the fee-paying parents will ask why this largesse could not have gone towards something more useful...
Posted by: Lawrence 03 Sep 2010
Instead of learning about "the computer" these kids are learning more about all the other subjects than they did before simply because of how the iPad engages them in a way that nothing else does.
As for the puerile comment about learning "only iOS" that's just risible. Some of today's best programmers learned on a BBC Micro before moving on to more advanced things.
All learning on a PC does is teach secretarial skills in Office. That's not computing, but that's what most schools call computing... some even give up teaching GCSE computing to teach these Microsoft Office programs.
Posted by: SwissMac 03 Sep 2010
There have been 10's of OS's used in education over the past 30yrs. Hopefully there will be many more...especially as the OS becomes less relevant.
Understanding the critical significance of interoperability and innovation is the key...comments about 'normal' OS are very outdated
Posted by: Robert McKenzie 02 Sep 2010
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