IPad - any good for a junior school?

[julianc]

True but you can buy eclicker for£5.99. The client is free.
Your iPod Touches then become voting systems. This is where the iOs eco system saves schools money.
Quizdom suddenly becomes a one dimensional investment.

iPads and iPod touches are a luxury item as a one off purchase, but Apple's model is very cunning.
The more hardware you buy, the bigger the cost saving with apps. In these new post Labour spend times, the iPad and Touch take on the curious position of being both a cost saver and yet desirable luxury items. Not intending to spark a big debate here - but these are very interesting times.

[ZeroHour]

True but you can buy eclicker for£5.99. The client is free.
Your iPod Touches then become voting systems. This is where the iOs eco system saves schools money.
Quizdom suddenly becomes a one dimensional investment.

iPads and iPod touches are a luxury item as a one off purchase, but Apple's model is very cunning.
The more hardware you buy, the bigger the cost saving with apps. In these new post Labour spend times, the iPad and Touch take on the curious position of being both a cost saver and yet desirable luxury items. Not intending to spark a big debate here - but these are very interesting times.

LOL there is no way ipad/ipod touch etc can be said in the same sentence as "saving money", it costs NOTHING to have a show of hands and much less then ipad tax etc for Prometheans solution in your specific example of voting....

[spw]

Out of interest, how long did it take you to setup the 10 iPads?

Initially, each iPad needed to be synced to a machine running iTunes, renamed (I named that schoolname01 - 10), and then it was a case of updating the firmware as there had been an update since they were sent to us. Wi-fi set was a doddle, it found the network, I added the password, added the proxy address and it was done. Beyond that it was mainly cosmetic changes - altering the brightness, time before it turns off, adding an email account (I set up a school_ipad account on googlemail, and used the +1, +2, +3 trick to give each iPad an accountable address (oh, and I also have the ipad account on my machine so I can see what was sent / received on those email addresses)), and re-arranging and adding some apps on the docking bar.
That was it in terms of set-up. App adding is done on a single machine or via iTunes (only me and the HT have the password to sign into and download apps). Once new apps are added, a weekly sync ensures that all iPads are updated with the same apps.

Interestingly we had the technician in on Friday to update some things on the school network and laptops we have, and it took him significantly longer to each machine than it takes to sync an iPad.

[shutdownplease]

Our demo unit arrived this week. And after just 3 days the consensus from all 4 in our IT office is that they have no use as an educational tool whatsoever.

any teachers evaluate it?