Self-pimp: iPads in schools feature in MacFormat
This month’s MacFormat includes a feature called Top of the class, where I interview Fraser Speirs about his project to supply every pupil in his school with an iPad and how this is affecting teachers and kids alike.
The article provides insight not only into the iPad’s potential as a tool to aid schooling, but also its scope in general as a device for media consumption and creativity.
Speirs:
The iPad beats a PC because it removes that whole layer of ‘we’re doing computers now’, and you end up with ‘we’re doing maths’ or ‘we’re doing music’.
In traditional teaching, you spend time learning how to write a sum properly, how to lay out a jotter, how to lay out text on a page. You must do that before you’re expressing thoughts and ideas. But with an iPad, you open Pages and you can immediately start writing an essay or play.
” But with an iPad, you open Pages and you can immediately start writing an essay or play”
Other devices that can do this at a lower cost.
– A piece of paper.
Those guys still use pen and paper, but, as the article says, the iPad has freed up the technology side of things. Lessons are no longer built around access to a few dozen laptops, not defined by plug sockets and chargers, and staff can use whatever products they like. The net result has been a massive boost in creativity, technology use and indie software use.
Personally, I think it’s great, but I can’t imagine this happening UK-wide. It would certainly be affordable, but there are too many bureaucratic systems in place to stop it.