Learning in the iPad age
19 Feb
Am I late to the party on this? That’s the way it seems looking at blog posts and videos from nearly a year ago trumpeting the importance of the iPad as it arrived on the market. The pace of change is so fast in this field that you can blink and miss a major new development. Looking back on the hype, you might have assumed that within a few short months schools would be full of iPads and we’d now be looking back nostalgically at all those desktops, wondering how we used to cope.
Not so. The cost of change in schools’ ICT strategy is huge, and to change budgetary direction in this way is like steering a ship. It’s not going to happen fast.
Making Plans
In reality, a year is nothing in the grand scheme of things. The digital ephemera quickly evaporates and leaves behind the kit and the tools that really matter. What is important about that time for me is that instead of an instant leap onto the iPad-adoring bandwagon (which has never been a challenge for me, I am a self-confessed enthusiast of all things Apple) this is a very considered and definitive step.
I am working hard at the moment on shaping the vision of learning in the classroom in my department at school. Being a firm believer in principle-led change, I’ve been spending the past few months developing the basis on which to move forwards.
IT Rooms and Languages
I am absolutely convinced that learning in Languages should be facing forwards, looking upwards and collaborative. Too often, the school IT room experience isolates students with headphones and keyboards into a virtual space where they only engage with the screen in front of them; probably facing a wall or the back of someone else’s head. The teacher, having set the students off on their digital tasks, will mill around the room dealing with dysfunctional headphones and misbehaving mice rather than facilitating learning in any meaningful way. At the end of the lesson, the students disengage from their virtual world; often leaving the product of their learning behind them, only to be revisted on their next visit to the IT room if the file-naming pixies haven’t whisked their work off to some dark abyss on the shared area, never to be seen again.
I don’t want that. Outstanding languages lessons need more real interaction between students and teachers than this set up allows. Stretch, challenge, support and experience all matter. Multiple-choice fling the teacher is not a substitute for ‘proper’ learning. We know that great language acquisition happens in classrooms with students looking up, taking part and engaging with their teacher and their classmates. Follow that with individual and small group practice with a focus on the students being productive with language and their teacher giving meaningful feedback to help them improve. That’s what progress looks like. Of course, learning platforms have improved the join between classroom, IT room and home, but we aren’t there yet.
My students still use an exercise book as their main working space. It’s 2011.
What next?
So let’s assume my classroom isn’t going to change. Let’s assume my lessons are short and my aspirations are high. Let’s also assume my school community will support saying goodbye to the exercise books as the main evidence base for learning.
I want a device that will get my students working and playing with language. I want a device that brings a world of authentic cultural material as well as tailored learning resources into their hands. I want the flexibility to move from paper resources to digital ones seamlessly, all on one desk. I want simplicity of function and speed of operation. I don’t want to have to shape the learning to fit the limitations of the technology. How many starters have I had to ‘stretch’ as we are still waiting for everyone to be logged on in the IT room? I want a device that makes kids, parents and teachers say ‘Wow’.
It has to be an iPad.
Yes, there are other devices, other platforms and other developments that are moving in the right direction but I haven’t held anything in my hand that has come even close to the iPad and what it will deliver in my classroom.
Vive la revolution!
This post officially marks the beginning of what I hope will be a really great journey. My own iPad will be arriving within the next few days. I’ve made a formal request to the leadership at my school that what we want isn’t another suite of computers but class sets of iPads. The response so far has been positive and it might just happen. All my fingers and toes are crossed. I am working to build a programme of learning that won’t just bolt on to my schemes of work, for when we’ve finished the ‘proper’ learning. I want these devices to jump right to the heart of what we do.
I can’t wait!
Completely agree with everything except the brand.
I can envisage a situation where the software you prefer the pupils to be using has been refused entry to the IOS platform, and you are forced to use inferior and more expensive apps. Apple have already shown favour towards established publishers, giants like Pearson will be keen to lobby against smaller competitors, very much in the same way they had BBC Jam shutdown, for committing the henious crime of offering educational material for free.
Apple’s ethical stance towards the software industry makes microsoft look like saints by comparison. It’s impossible to buy software for their locked in systems without paying them a commission, no wonder they’re keen to make their platform an educational standard.
The idea that my tax dollars should be sliced into by apple before they can be appropriated by our education system is nothing short of criminal, when there are more open platforms available and on their way.
With a rumoured ChromeOS tablet from Google, plus their Android3 OS being aimed at tablets, and some more offerings with Windows, 2011 looks to be the year of the tablet. Like you, I can’t wait, but I’m patient enough to wait for a competitive open platform, and any responsible educator should be also.
I am all too familiar with your anti-Apple stance John, and I get your point. However, I’ve been waiting for a viable alternative to the iPad for some time now and it still hasn’t appeared at the right price point. If the Google tablet makes the grade, it may not be too late as we are planning to purchase for the autumn. However, we’ve been waiting for it since last April (I remember reading this post with interest) and it still isn’t here yet! There comes a point when you have to bite the bullet and get on with it. Educators could sit around waiting for the next thing ad infinitum, but every year they wait is another year of learning for the students in their classes.
Great post Laura! I’ll be watching your posts on the success of this venture keenly. Much of what you’ve written strikes a chord; especially that of students disengaging from the virtual once they leave the IT suite. My interest is heightened particularly as I’ve seen tweets from several saying that the iPad is slow to access the net and is not as good as a notebook at being a workhorse. I don’t know this conclusively, so am delighted that you are potentially leading on this.
Kerry
Absolutely agree – we have 24 iPads at school & are getting more! We aim to make one available for every Year 5/6 child & 8 per class in the rest of the school. They open learning, excite the children & you see children hitting objectives with learning that they have initiated!
Hi Laura,
Your evocative description of the problems facing a teacher in the ICT room unfortunately sounds all too familiar. We face exactly the same problems.
I too like Apple – very much. However I remain unconvinced (as of yet) of the value of the iPad in a creative classroom.
I say this because, currently, unless students produce work on a Keynote presentation, a Pages document or a Numbers spreadsheet (all of which are rather old fashioned means of delivery and have to be purchased separately) the iPad does not seem to be an innovative, creative platform, but rather one which employs centuries old means of content delivery, akin to traditional book publishing.
There are games to and fun apps you students can play, but as you say in your piece, they are a poor substitute for proper learning.
I am a fervent deliver in learning by doing, which is why I bang on so much about using web applications as part of the teaching and learning that goes on in my school. Unfortunately, most of those web apps are not available on the iPad due to software restrictions placed by Apple.
I will follow your experiences with your iPads and your classes closely, as I have not given up hope and I there is always the very real possibility that I am utterly and completely wrong in my assessment of the iPads possibilities.
José
Thanks for your comment Jose. It is in part thanks to our Google learning platform that I feel we can make all the difference in terms of quality collaborative output. There’s a lot of scope there for creating real and valid language learning experiences. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes!
Apple’s iPad may not be the ideal solution but for now it is the only device of its kind with a usable software ecosystem, the apps. We always have to make do with what we get. Why should we wait? If people hadn’t taken to the first cars built, the concept of automobiles would have never taken off and we wouldn’t have the cars we have today. Instead we would probably still stick with horses and buggies and trains.
Other tablet PCs will come and open open up new venues for software development for schools.
As an aside – I’m even certain tablet PCs are only one of several steps in between before we come to a widely accepted portable personal computing and communications device. Tablets are bulky and limited for now. Perhaps it’s closer to something like the Motorola Atrix which you dock to a display and keyboard or a notebook type dock. It’s small enough to be a permanent companion same as a smartphone right now. If the peripherals are cheap enough school districts put them in every classroom. Students will have them at home to.
Very interested in what you will do over the coming months. How many of your colleagues are engaged in using the devices too?
There is a mixture of enthusiasm and healthy scepticism in my team. One of the issues is that we haven’t seen how much the iPad can do yet and I think ‘seeing is believing’ is key. Managing classroom routines, embedding expectations about online behaviour and the monitoring of work are all areas we need to think carefully about. I also want to make sure that the devices have enough of an air of the workhorse about them that they aren’t considered as toys. They need to be taken seriously!
Hi Laura,
We got our own iPad(1) not long after it first came out, and I was completely blown away by the possibilities it offered to education. The ease and confidence with which my then 4 year old took to it was amazing.
What I found most frustrating and annoying, was the fact that there were so many many free and wonderful learning resources available online (through web browsers) but because of Apple’s tiff with Adobe about the use of Flash – none of these can be used on the native Safari browser on the iPad.
I understand that a ‘new’ app SkyFire (costs US4.99) translates Flash in to HTML 5 which might be a work-around. However have yet to get in to the reviews.
I would so love to recommend the iPad as a fantastic tool for schools, but the whole concept of having to pay (a lot of the time) to access what is free on other platforms is rather galling.
I would love to know how you get on. Do keep us posted!
And Good luck!
Just wanted to say – having looked at SkyFire a bit more closely, apparently it doesn’t do Flash websites – only Flash videos.