Tim Scratcherd (the School House Partnership) and I were
recently asked to write a report for the Oxford Education School
Improvement Series on the use of Tablets and Apps. The
purpose of this report is to provide practical support and guidance for school
leadership teams who are considering the purchase of tablet devices. The report
is aimed at school leaders and teacher in England but the ideas within the
report are transferable to other parts of the world.
With permission from
Oxford I’ve be duplicating some of the report on olliebray.com over
the last week. You can download the full report or order a paper copy over at
the new Oxford School Improvement Tablet and App Help
Centre.
The final part of the report consists of
three primary school case studies. You can also download all three case studies
as a separate .pdf and the expectation is that we will add further case studies
over time. In particular we are conscious that we need to add some examples of
Android and Windows 8 in the classroom.
For the time being though have a look to
see how tablets and Apps are being used in the following schools:
Also, don’t forget that our report makes up
a small part of the larger OUP Tablet and Apps Help Centre. Were you can also
find a range of other great resources including:
Tim Scratcherd (the School House Partnership) and I were
recently asked to write a report for the Oxford Education School
Improvement Series on the use of Tablets and Apps. The
purpose of this report is to provide practical support and guidance for school
leadership teams who are considering the purchase of tablet devices. The report
is aimed at school leaders and teacher in England but the ideas within the
report are transferable to other parts of the world.
With permission from
Oxford I’ll be duplicating some of the report on olliebray.com over
the next week. You can download the full report or order a paper copy over at
the new Oxford School Improvement Tablet and App Help
Centre.
_____________________________________________
Part
Five - Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on teaching and learning – Policy
Considerations
However you decide to integrate tablet
technology into your school you will have a number of policy considerations to
take into account to ensure consistent whole school practice.
Responsible
Use
Your school should already have a policy on
acceptable and responsible ICT use. However, with the introduction of tablets
it is very likely that you will need to update or adapt your policy. You need
to be clear about what is and what is not acceptable on a school’s network,
along with any sanctions that you will use if the rules are broken.
As well as formal procedures it is also
useful to work directly with children so that they can create their own rules
around tablet and ICT use. Teachers who have worked with children to co-create
ICT rules have found that they are more likely to be adhered to in the long
term.
The important thing to remember is that
there is absolutely no right or wrong way to write such a policy. Your policy
needs to reflect your school, who you wish to communicate with and what you
feel comfortable doing. Responsible use policies should be dynamic and
regularly reviewed.
As well as including your proposed use of
tablets in your schools’ ICT policy, you should also make sure that this is
covered in your Learning and Teaching policy.
Equality
of access
Equality of access is important in any
school but it is particularly important if you choose this is covered a 1:1
learning deployment. Equality becomes even more important if you choose to
develop a model where pupils are expected to bring in their own device (BYOD).
Although this is not yet common in state primary schools, it is a growing
trend.
In this situation you need to make sure
that you have put systems in place to ensure pupils and families who do not
have their own device can be provided with one or are provided with some
capital funding make a purchase. It is important that you have clear guidance
to ensure that children are not deprived of their digital entitlement, and that
the model you are proposing for your school is financially sustainable in the
long term.
Network
access policy
Most primary schools have some sort of
network and network support service, whether it is an external company or an
expert in school (ICT Service Manager, ICT Co-ordinator). The role is often not
full time.
You will need to speak to your network
support service to make sure that the type of tablet devices you decide to
purchase have the correct security certificates to be able to connect to your
school network – this will often depend on how your school network is built as
well as the type of device that you choose to adopt.
Check if your school has Wi-Fi or
traditional Ethernet ports (this may limit the types of device you can actually
buy and will certainly limit their portability).
Finally, if you are considering a large
tablet deployment (such as a 1:1 deployment) you need to be realistic as to how
this will impact on your bandwidth usage within your school. This will
particularly be the case if you plan to use a lot of browser based cloud
applications.
Put simply, you could have the best tablets
in the world but if you don’t have the network and infrastructure to support
them they will be limited in their functionality.
Teacher
and school leader professional development
Appropriate professional development is
often overlooked during many tablet projects, but it is the most important
aspect of any large technology deployment. By creating a policy related to this
professional development you will formalise the need for training within your
staff team.
Professional development should include
both technical and pedagogical training. Schools should also consider a blend
of face-to-face (expert and/or peer led) and online learning which is cost
effective, and can occur at the learner’s choice of time and place. Staff
should be given as many opportunities as possible to share ideas and learn from
each other’s practice. It is also important that staff understand the decisions
that you have had to make in order to choose your technology solution. In
particular, emphasis should be placed on why you think tablet technology will
improve teaching and learning (e.g. culturally relevant, fast boot up time,
availability of apps, highly accessible, etc.).
In my next post I’ll point you in the
direction of some tablet and apps case studies? – you can download the full “Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on
teaching and learning” report now for free over on the Oxford School
Improvement Site.
Tim Scratcherd (the School House Partnership) and I were
recently asked to write a report for the Oxford Education School
Improvement Series on the use of Tablets and Apps. The
purpose of this report is to provide practical support and guidance for school
leadership teams who are considering the purchase of tablet devices. The report
is aimed at school leaders and teacher in England but the ideas within the
report are transferable to other parts of the world.
With permission from
Oxford I’ll be duplicating some of the report on olliebray.com over
the next week. You can download the full report or order a paper copy over at
the new Oxford School Improvement Tablet and App Help
Centre.
_____________________________________________
Part
Four - Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on teaching and learning – Choosing
and using tablets
Tablet technology moves very rapidly.
Before considering the current range of devices available, you will need some
general principles for choosing and using tablets. Moving to the use of tablets
is a development that requires the same sort of thinking as any other
development. So, a consideration of what you want to achieve, where you are
now, what it will cost, and how you will know it has worked, within some sort
of shared and agreed development plan, is a good idea. For tablets, you will
need to consider all the following questions.
What
will be the focus of use?
There are two main areas to think about
here: whether the tablets are to be tools for teacher use, to help them improve
teaching or make management and administration processes more effective, or
whether they are for use by pupils, to improve learning processes. In practice
it is possible to do both, but for effective planning it is essential to
separate these out, because they have different implementation requirements.
For example, if you were only to use a set of tablets for teachers to move to a
paperless environment, you would be less concerned about the quality of your
Internet access.
What
sort of learning are we looking for?
The case studies show that, while there are
significant benefits in developing teacher use, the real impact comes from a
well-implemented approach to pupil use. Therefore, for pupil use, what sort of
learning gains are we looking for? Exciting learning, described earlier, is
exactly the sort of learning which is possible with tablets. At the same time,
there are other ways to achieve learning gains. Do you want learning to take
place, where it was not happening before, or
not happening very much? Do you want to
engage parents through increasing learning at home and outside formal settings?
Or do you want to change the nature of some or all of the learning? This is
where Exciting
Learning comes in.
What
sort of development would we like? Is it top-down, or bottom-up?
There are many instances of schools buying
a small number of devices, not just tablets ‘to find out what they can do’,
with the implication that if it looks as though they might be useful, more will
be bought. This is, of course, an example of bottom-up, or piloting. An example
of a top-down development might be the decision to do without an ICT suite and
replace with tablets. Bottom- up approaches have the advantage that they are
less costly. Top-down approaches have the advantage of immediacy and equality.
In both cases, we need to learn from other schools’ experiences, and after
reading the case studies, this is the fastest way to find out what they can do.
Experience shows that, once a development has started, a mixture of both
top-down and bottom-up approaches start to surface. The beauty of tablets is
that there is a very wide range of uses which deliver different types of
benefit.
Are
we clear about the costs versus the benefits of tablets?
At the same time, there needs to be a
consistent way of judging benefit. A good method is simply to ask, ‘How
much more learning do we get? Is the learning better?’ The commonest
reasons for the adoption of top-down approaches to tablets are that they
improve motivation, and they increase parental engagement. In both of these,
the underlying reason is more and better learning. More learning can be
achieved in very simple ways. For example, the fact that tablets start up
immediately removes delays from the learning process, and thus progress in
lessons is improved at once. After the learning gains have been chosen it is
time to ask, is the learning worth the cost? For a rapidly growing number of
schools, the answer is a resounding yes.
What
is the impact on infrastructure?
Some things are essential for effective use
of tablets. The first is high quality broadband, with a robust high quality
wireless infrastructure, which all tablets can access seamlessly from anywhere
learning takes place. Specialist advice is recommended to review current
provision. It is also very important to consider display options for tablet
devices. They can be made to connect up to existing projectors, but often it is
advantageous to consider display specific to the device, such as Apple TV. This has the benefit of
being a local wireless connection for any Apple type device in the classroom. Intel’s classmate PC offers a similar
projection solution through its pre-installed software. Thereafter, there are
three main areas which require ongoing management.
The
first is the installation and use of apps. Here,
management issues are the same as for all software. All apps need educational
licences. It is important to check the cost of installing an app on many
devices. Schools will also want to control the number and types of app
available on tablets.
The
second is e-safety. The filtering of websites is an
issue schools already need to consider, but which also impacts specifically
upon tablets in a variety of ways. For example, tablets synchronise with other
devices, meaning that all information including any pupil information can be
copied onto devices not under the school’s control. It is essential that
schools have an up-to-date e-safety policy (see tomorrows post!).
Thirdly,
there is the storage of pupil work. Tablets are
designed as devices for individuals, whereas the work pupils produce needs to
be shared for a whole range of purposes; particularly for assessment including
marking and other feedback, and celebration through publishing. Typically this
has been done on PC based local area networks by having shared local folders
where all work is stored. There can be shared folders for tablets but these are
not local and carry with them security and copyright issues. Current solutions
are essentially work rounds involving pupils emailing work as attachments to
teachers or the use of a cloud based storage system such as Google
Drive or Microsoft Skydrive.
Have we
considered the total cost of ownership of tablets?
Schools are very familiar with the ideas of capital (start-up) and
revenue (running) costs, and these are easily identifiable from the above.
Don’t forget to include energy costs in calculations, particularly if you plan
to deploy a lot more devices in schools. One cost which can be often neglected
is the cost of professional development.
In summary, there are three forms of cost; purchase, maintenance, and
the time spent to use tablets correctly.
How are we
going to procure?
There will be a need not just to procure the devices, but also a review
of infrastructure in general, and possibly wireless connectivity upgrades and a
management service or tool for control over apps. This depends upon the nature
of the project and the availability of funding. It is tempting, when running a
pilot with a small number of devices simply to buy the devices. This leaves the
school open to all sorts of risk. Another option is for pupils to bring their
own devices (BYOD) which carries equal risk and also brings into question an
entitlement to learning for all. In the following case studies the devices
start off as being owned by the school, but pass into the property of the
parents after an agreed length of time. The two commonest routes taken by
schools are outright purchase, and leasing arrangements, whereby the devices
remain the property of the school, but parents pay a monthly sum until purchase
after a period of time for a nominal amount.
What device are
we going to procure?
There is a large range of devices to choose from, but there are only a
small number of operating systems used. These are Android, iOS and Windows. The
iOS operating system is used on Apple devices. A wide range of manufacturers
use the Android operating system to produce tablets of all sizes and
functionality. The vast majority of primary schools working with tablets are
using the iOS devices, and there are very good reasons for this: the huge and
growing range of apps available, covering practically all the ways both pupils
and teachers might wish to use the devices; the fact that the look and feel of
the device is the same for all of them; their comparative robustness; the
growing number of specialist support companies who understand the particular
needs of schools; the national network of consultants (Apple
Distinguished Educators) available to help with professional development; and
the wealth of practical experience available from schools and others.
There are also reasons for choosing devices with other operating
systems: Android devices tend to be cheaper, and Windows 8 offers the
opportunity of better integration with any existing PC based infrastructure.
There is a bewildering choice of Android based devices, and schools need to
spend the time comparing features and cost.
More about
cloud storage
There are many services offering to store files ‘in the cloud’, which use
remote storage through the web. Some of them are generic and some are for
specific files, such as photos. While there are many advantages to using these
services, all of them have different arrangements regarding copyright and
security, and many have other constraints, such as the age of those using them.
School leaders intending to use one of these services are recommended to
investigate thoroughly before committing pupil information and files to them.
Some
key things to consider when choosing a tablet
Have
a think about:
Battery life
Camera quality and direction
Build quality
Quality and range of apps
Methods for saving pupil work
In my next post I’ll discuss Policy
Considerations – you can download the full “Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on teaching and learning” report
now for free over on the Oxford School
Improvement Site.
Tim Scratcherd (the School House Partnership) and I were
recently asked to write a report for the Oxford Education School
Improvement Series on the use of Tablets and Apps. The
purpose of this report is to provide practical support and guidance for school
leadership teams who are considering the purchase of tablet devices. The report
is aimed at school leaders and teachers in England but the ideas within the
report are transferable to other parts of the world.
With permission from
Oxford I’ll be duplicating some of the report on olliebray.com over
the next week. You can download the full report or order a paper copy over at
the new Oxford School Improvement Tablet and App Help
Centre.
_____________________________________________
Part
Three - Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on teaching and learning – What
does good learning with tablets look like?
There is no doubt that good technology
integration has the potential to be transformational. This is particularly the
case if you decide to go down the route of 1:1, where there is one Internet
enabled device for each child in your class/school. It is important to note
that technology integration of this scale and teaching with tablets will have
an impact on models of learning and teaching.
It is also important that teachers and
school leaders have thought about what this new type of pedagogy might look
like within a tablet environment before any large-scale deployment. If you have
not done this then the technology is more likely to become a distraction to
learning rather than have the transformation impact that it deserves.
Tablets,
teaching and learning
When we consider what teaching and learning
might look like in a tablet environment it is important that we focus on what
makes learning good and how technology can improve the learning and teaching
process.
The concept of Exciting
Learning from Microsoft captures some of the components that make learning
engaging for young people.
For
learning to be successful it needs to be:
Culturally relevant
Include real-time interaction
Provide different learning pathways
Showcase learning achievements through authentic audiences
Accessible to all
The information below provides some further
background on each of these principles and the full report outlines
what these principals might look like when applied to a tablet and app learning
environment. A major factor with Exciting
Learning is that, because pupils are highly motivated, you get more
learning. This idea is important to further justify the investment.
CULTURALLY
RELEVANT: Learners learn best when they can see the
point of what they are learning and how it relates to them. We can also help
them engage with their learning more by using tools that they like to use.
INCLUDE REAL-TIME INTERACTION: Learners like it
when teachers use information that is current and up-to-date. They
also like to engage with real people either face-to-face or via
videoconference.
PROVIDE DIFFERENT LEARNING PATHWAYS: Learners like to have a choice of output. Sometimes this choice of output
can be incredibly motivating as it gives a more focused and personalised end
point for children to aim towards.
SHOWCASE LEARNING ACHIEVEMENTS THROUGH AUTHENTIC AUDIENCE: Learners like to have the work that they are proud of showcased to people
who care about them. Authentic audience is an important aspect of motivation.
ACCESSIBLE TO ALL: Learners need to be able to
learn in a variety of places at a variety of times. This includes in school, at
home and everywhere in between. Technology can also make learning accessible
for learners who have additional support needs.
A few words about assessment
Good pupil assessment should use a
combination of both summative and formative techniques. Tablet technology
integrated in the right way offers opportunities for both.
For example, summative tests can be
administered to learners individually through the use of multiple-choice tests
and other assessment generators such as Quizlet,
Google Forms (part of Google
apps for Education) and SharePoint 2010 (part of Microsoft
Office 365 for Education).
However the real power of tablet
technology is the opportunity to build on current formative assessment
practices and to provide learners with digital feedback on their work and
progress.
For example, tablet technology,
particularly in 1:1 environments, allows learners to quickly comment on other
pupils’ digital work (such as using Google
Docs, which are part of Google Apps for Education). It also allows pupils
to quickly be able to record their achievements through digital learning logs
and e-portfolio solutions (such as SharePoint Blogs, which are part of
Microsoft 365 for Education).
In my next post I’ll discuss Choosing and
using tablets? – you can download the full “Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on teaching and learning” report
now for free over on the Oxford School
Improvement Site.
Tim Scratcherd (the School House Partnership) and I were
recently asked to write a report for the Oxford Education School
Improvement Series on the use of Tablets and Apps. The
purpose of this report is to provide practical support and guidance for school
leadership teams who are considering the purchase of tablet devices. The report
is aimed at school leaders and teacher in England but the ideas within the
report are transferable to other parts of the world.
With permission from
Oxford I’ll be duplicating some of the report on olliebray.com over
the next week. You can download the full report or order a paper copy over at
the new Oxford School Improvement Tablet and App Help
Centre.
_____________________________________________
Part
Two - Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on teaching and learning – What
are Tablets and Apps
Tablet computers have been on the market
since 2002. However, tablet computing has become more popular in recent years.
This ‘tablet revolution’ is partly due to the success of the Apple iPad that
was first launched in 2010. The iPad is currently one of the most popular
tablets on the market and its success has spawned a variety of competing
devices that run different operating systems, such as Google’s Android and
Microsoft’s Windows 8. Some of these devices and their operating systems are
discussed in more detail in Jan
Webb’s excellent comparison table.
Tablets
A tablet is a mobile computer that usually
has a touchscreen or a pen enabled interface (or both). A tablet computer does
not normally have a built in physical keyboard which means that text input is
normally carried out using an on-screen touch-screen keyboard. Physical
keyboards are often available for tablets as peripheral items. Some of these
keyboards, such as the one available for Microsoft’s Surface, also
double up as a protective cover.
Tablet computers tend to be less powerful
and have less physical storage space than traditional desktops and laptops.
They also tend to have a very fast boot up time. Most tablet devices are Wi-Fi
enabled and increasingly there is also capacity to connect to the Internet via
3G or 4G cellular services.
As well as their operating system tablet
computers also often run apps (see
below).
Tablets
vs other portable devices
Tablets
are great, they are not the only portable device available on the market. Other
portable devices include:
Laptop
computers are portable computers that can be used
with or without the Internet (eg: Apple
MacBook Pro).
Netbook
computers are portable computers that gain most of
their functionality through the Internet (eg: Google Chromebook).
Smartphones
continue to blur the lines between being phones and
being powerful Internet enabled devices that link to the Internet though Wi-Fi
but also cellular networks such as 3G and 4G (eg: iOS, Windows Mobile, Android, Blackberry, etc.).
Tablet
Computers fall somewhere in between laptop-like
computers and large smartphones. All are wifi enabled but some also allow for
3G and 4G connectivity (eg: Microsoft Surface, iPad, Android Tablet, etc.)
eBook
Readers in their purest sense are designed for
people to engage with text, although many also allow you to check you email and
do other things (eg: Kindle, Kobo, etc.)
Audio
and Video MP3/MP4 Players let you play pre-installed content but may also allow you to connect to
the Internet (eg: iPod Touch).
The
power of tablets in teaching and learning
Tablet technology allows teachers access to
a wide variety of resource though the Internet and/or their school VLE.
Ubiquitous access to this type of technology helps teachers collaborate with
other professionals from both within and outside their own school. This can
help with the sharing of ideas, increases professional dialogue and can
facilitate collaborative lesson planning. Although other technology may also
facilitate the above, it is the portability, long battery life, quick boot up
time and user experience that make tablet technology unique and powerful.
Tablet technology also has the potential to
develop more personalised learning opportunities for children, where they use
their devices to pursue (sometimes with support) their own personal interests
and passions.
Tablet technology can also be used to
assist with the personal regulation of learning through a variety of built in
productivity tools, such as calendar, electronic mail and tasks. As well as
supporting learners to self-reflect, track and be reflective of their own
learning journey.
Apps
An ‘app’ is short for ‘application’, which
is another name for a computer program. Apps aren’t exclusive to tablets. You
can also get apps for smartphones and more traditional PCs. apps are just
computer programmes that you download from the Internet from places called app
Stores or Marketplaces.
Apps let your tablet do almost anything
that the programmers can imagine, within the technical limitations of the
device. Apps often make use of the hardware features of the tablet that they
are running off, for example the camera and GPS.
Apps can range in price from free to around
£50 for some specialist programmes. But most apps tend to cost between £1 - £3.
Most app stores will allow you to browse specifically for free apps, and many
of these have some relevance in education. You should check licensing
arrangements if you want to install an app on a large number of devices.
The
Post PC era
The Post-PC era is a term coined by Apple Inc. to describe a trend in the consumer
electronics industry, where the use of a personal computer (PC)
as the primary form of technology is
declining in favour of other devices such as smartphones and tablet computers.
The popularity of smartphones and tablets
have influenced the economy of the computer industry; sales of traditional PCs
(in particular desktops) have steadily fallen since surge in popularity for
post-PC devices that was started by the introduction of the iPad upon its
launch in 2010.
More
about Net Books
A net book can be the same size as any
normal laptop or smaller. The key difference between a netbook and a
traditional laptop is that a netbooks gets most of its functionality through
the Internet. The term Netbook comes
from Internet - this means that they
are likely to have less physical storage, run less proprietary software and
have lower processing power to a normal laptop. A chromebook is the best
example - because it is literally just as browser in a laptop shell.
In my next post I’ll discuss what good
learning with tablets might look like? – you can download the full “Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on
teaching and learning” report now for free over on the Oxford School
Improvement Site.
Tim Scratcherd (the School House Partnership) and I were
recently asked to write a report for the Oxford Education School
Improvement Series on the use of Tablets and Apps. The
purpose of this report is to provide practical support and guidance for school
leadership teams who are considering the purchase of tablet devices. The report
is aimed at school leaders and teacher in England but the ideas within the
report are transferable to other parts of the world.
With permission from
Oxford I’ll be duplicating some of the report on olliebray.com over
the next week. You can download the full report or order a paper copy over at
the new Oxford School Improvement Tablet and App Help
Centre.
_____________________________________________
Part
One - Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on teaching and learning – The Big
Picture
In many countries across the world we will
move to ubiquitous 1:1 (one computer per child) learning environments within
the next 5-10 years and it is highly likely that tablet technology will be at
the heart of these deployments.
However, the technology itself will not be
enough to drive the whole school transformation that is needed within many
schools. Infrastructure, good pedagogical practice, school leadership and
teacher professional learning are all key ingredients for success.
For the schools that get this right, good
technology integration through the use of tablets has the potential to unlock
the wonders of an education future that we are only just starting to imagine.
The
Place of ICT in Schools
In the UK during the first part of the 21st
Century there was a real focus on ICT in schools. In England ICT has been a
statutory subject since before 2000. Many of the ICT lessons that were taught
in both primary and secondary schools focused around office based administrative
and productivity skills. In doing this, schools fulfilled their statutory
requirement to teach ICT to young people but this was often at the detriment of
children learning real computing skills. The result was a whole decade of
children who were unable to code, build and create things digitally. The extent
of this problem for the UK is well documented in two reports; the Next
Gen Review, researched and written by Ian Livingston and Alex Hope and the Royal
Society Report Shut down or Restart. Both reports found that the teaching
of computing in English schools is highly unsatisfactory, based upon evidence
provided by a wide range of stakeholders.
The political response to this emerging
problem in many countries (including the UK) has been very interesting. Almost
overnight schools have been instructed to teach ‘real’ computing again. There
is also a third area of ICT in education, which is arguably even more
important. This third area is the use of ICT to support learning and teaching
in all areas of the curriculum and not just the domain of the computer suite. It is the use of ICT to make learning real,
relevant and exciting for young people.It is the use of ICT as a methodology and a pedagogical approach to
raising standards. The schools exemplified in this
guide are already doing this well though the use of tablet technology.
ICT
and the National Curriculum
Although specific support was lost as part
of substantial cost savings, the current government in England sees ICT as an
important subject on the curriculum, a tool in support of learning, and as
preparation for life. To improve the current position of ICT in schools, the
Programme of Study has been retracted, and future study of ICT will also
include substantial elements of Computing Science. The aim is to provide
schools with more freedom to develop the use of technology for learning, and to
make taught ICT more relevant.
ICT
and School Inspection
Although there is no explicit mention of
ICT in the Ofsted Inspection Handbook, there remains to be areas where
inspectors look to see the use and impact of ICT. As part of reviewing
behaviour and safety, inspectors expect to see all elements of e-safety
effectively in place. The Ofsted report The safe
use of new technologies makes it clear that systems with excessive
filtering are a barrier to learning;
“In the best practice seen,
pupils were helped, from a very early age, to assess the risk of accessing
sites and therefore gradually to acquire skills which would help them adopt
safe practices even when they were not supervised.’
An ongoing issue is how schools create and
manage filtering polices that protect children from inappropriate and illegal
content without blocking powerful tools for learning.
In schools where the National Curriculum
remains statutory, inspectors look to see that there is appropriate use of
technology, as required by their Programmes of Study, which remain in force.
This includes ICT, even though it has no Programme of Study. Inspectors are
aware that the use of technology in lessons can add significant value to the
learning process, and it is becoming more difficult to demonstrate good and
outstanding teaching without some use of technology. For Ofsted we need to know
our pupils very well. In addition, the need to demonstrate that every pupil
makes progress in lessons over periods of time, and the identification of
pupils qualifying for the Pupil Premium are two examples where very good
recording systems are required. These are only effectively delivered through
the use of good information systems.
ICT
as a subject of the Curriculum
School leaders will know that schools,
unless they are academies, are required by law to deliver the National
Curriculum. Many will also know that the ICT programme of Study was dis-
applied after consultation. However this does not mean, as commonly believed,
that schools do not have to teach the subject of ICT any more. ICT remains a
National Curriculum subject, and therefore must be taught, and the retraction
simply removes the need to follow the definition of what ICT is. Schools should
still provide an ICT curriculum that is broad, balanced, relevant and
progressive. One way to do this is to consider what the outcome of such a
curriculum would be, and that is, ICT-Capable pupils. ICT-Capable pupils will
be able to complete a piece of work or solve a problem by safely using their
own choices of tools and processes.
ICT
in Support of Learning and Teaching
There is an expectation from both
government and Ofsted that technology will be used in learning and teaching to
raise standards, and make learning more relevant and exciting. ICT in support
of teaching should be considered separately from ICT in support of learning.
Although ICT in the hands of a teacher may directly improve learning, it is
more likely that the learning gain is indirect. An example relating to the use
of tablets is for a teacher to use a tablet to record a wider range of
evidence, including still
images and recorded sounds for assessment purposes. A convenient way to
separate these two aspects is to note that it is only when pupils are actually
using technology that we can say ICT is supporting learning.
What
the research tells us
Research over many years has largely
established the connection between the use of technology and improved learning
outcomes in a wide range of contexts. In England and Wales there have been two
reviews, which provide increasing evidence and further detail of the relation
between the uses of technology and the impact on learning; Becta
(2007) The Impact of ICT in Schools – a Landscape Review found that there
was some direct impact on attainment, and greater impact upon intermediate
outcomes such as motivation and independence in learning. Nesta
(2012) Decoding Learning – The Proof, Promise and Potential of Digital
Education shows that technology can have an impact on learning outcomes if
it is used to support learning through making, learning through inquiry and
learning from assessment.
There have also been a number of other
research projects that demonstrate the potential of technology to transform
education. Of particular note is the recent Innovative
Teaching and Learning (ITL) Research sponsored by Microsoft Partners in
Learning;
“Innovative teaching that leverages ICT happens more
where students have access [to technology] in their classrooms.”
On a smaller scale, research carried out by
the University
of Strathclyde on Future Schools includes a case study of Cedars Schools of
Excellence in Scotland (which was the world’s first 1:1 iPad School). Amongst
the many of the things that the report highlights perhaps the most revealing is
the following statement from the school’s head of Computing and ICT;
“This is a device we bought, but it’s not just a
textbook or an instrument, or a set of art tools – it’s all of those things and
more.”
It is clear from emerging research and case
studies that now populate the web that tablet technology has a vital role to
play in the development of ICT in schools and the transformation of our
education systems.
In my next post I’ll discuss what tablets
and apps are – you can download the full “Tablets
and Apps: How to ensure impact on teaching and learning” report now for
free over on the Oxford School Improvement Site.
Tim Scratcherd (the School House
Partnership) and I were recently asked to write a report for the Oxford
Education School Improvement Series on the use of Tablets and Apps. The purpose
of this report is to provide practical support and guidance for school
leadership teams who are considering the purchase of tablet devices. The report
is aimed at school leaders and teacher in England but the ideas within the
report are transferable to other parts of the world.
With permission from Oxford I’ll be
duplicating some of the report on olliebray.com over the next week. You can
download the full report or order a paper copy over at the new Oxford School
Improvement Tablet
and App Help Centre.
The Oxford School Improvement Tablet and App Help
Centre aims to be a hub of advice and resources on the use of Tablets and
Apps in Schools. As well as the report written by Tim and I there are also a
whole range of other resources that will be of interest to school and school
leaders.
These resources have been produced by
respected educationalists such as David Mitchell, Ian Addison and Jan Webb. Ian’s guide to the
‘Top Ten Apps for Maths’ and the ‘Top Ten Apps for Teaching’ are worth a look.
David and Ian have also been busy recording some advice on the how to get started
using tablets and apps in the classroom on a wide variety of topics from basic
functionality to getting children blogging. Jan’s jargon buster andtablet
comparison chart are also very useful to anyone looking to make a tablet
purchase in the short term.
The thing that I enjoyed the most about
working on this project for Oxford is that Oxford University Press is ‘arms
length’ to many of the big tablet manufactures. It meant that we could talk
openly and honestly about the range of different tablets and other devices on
the market but at the same time keep a very strong focus on learning and
teaching.
I’ll kick off the series of posts tomorrow
but talking a little bit about the ‘big picture’ – but please remember that you
can download the full report at any time from the OUP Tablet and App
Help Centre.
I wasn’t too keen on the RM Notebook 320 – mainly
because it didn’t have a touch screen and Windows 8 needs a touchscreen. But I
did like the Asus W510 and I gave it a pretty robust test over the Christmas
holidays when I was away in the Alps.
Shape the Future is now in Edinburgh and
Glasgow and I’m hopeful that other Local Authorities might start to follow
their examples as it seems to make a lot of sense to me.
"Shape the Future is an innovative, simple and cost effective way to get all students using 1:1 devices at home and in the classroom. The affordability of this device and software package is supported by Microsoft's global digital inclusion programme, in collaboration with RM Education and Intel. Exclusively available from RM Education, this has been specifically designed to help you provide a great value 1:1 device programme for all students and their teachers."
I enjoyed this TED Video of Mike Matas talking about a next generation digital book for the iPad. Worth 4 minutes of your life if your interneted in that sort of thing. Looks like from the end of the video the company Mike is working for (Push Pop Press) are developing an SDK to make it easier produce very media rich content.
Lots of talk about the iPad in education at the moment. It really is a fantastic device but I worry that its not at a price point that makes it affordable to schools. However, I was interested to read that Marvell are aiming to release a tablet by the end of the year and they want it to hit the $100 price point in the USA.
Obviously, it is not going to be as high a specification as the iPad but it might just do a lot of the things that we will need it to do for school (eg: access the web and cloud based applications). The press release states that it will initially either run Google Android or Windows 7 Mobile. I’m guessing the Windows 7 version will be slightly more expensive as Android is free?
In another article I read that the next version of the OLPC (One Laptop per Child) will also be a tablet and it will also be designed by Marvell. Again this will initially run Google Android but they hope for it to eventually run Lynex.
The YouTube clip below shows the concept of the new OLPC – for the price it looks great!
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