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I have a school interested in obtaining some "tablets" for their pupils to use - educational apps etc.
They have no specific model in mind and they want about 6 to start with - can anyone recommend any they are currently using and / or give me some advice on support for them in schools.
Thanks
Polly
We trialed a few before budget restrictions stopped us continuing further. I must say I was very impressed with the RM tablet as it ran pretty much everything we wanted it to. Being a windows PC at heart also meant that we could apply some of our policies to it (all be it slightly ammended) and gave us much more freedom than the likes of the iPad did. Of course the iPad had more of a 'wow' factor associated with it.
It all really comes down to what sort of apps they would want to use. For example does the App store with the iPad have the apps available or would a more open tablet where almost any app can be installed be better.
In the end we actually went with getting a few iPod touches to run some educational games at a much cheaper price than a tablet PC would of cost but we would of prefered to of gone with the RM tablets.
I've brought an Acer Iconia with W7 starter... it's very usable but for for the price (just shy of £500.00) it's a bit hard to see the value. I had far less to spend per laptop when a NM!
The A-Pads are OK for browsing/VLE getting to but the reactiveness on the screen of the cheap ones is really poor.
We trialled an RM Slate with a lad with quite severe SEN and I was impressed with it.
Unfortunately the LA couldn't see beyond conventional computers (even recommending a small laptop mouse when what he needed was a big trackball... we could afford to ignore that one) and we had to get him an ordinary laptop which was a real shame.
I can tell you what not to get; the creative Ziio. I've seen Alfas which are more reliable! Crashes regularly, solution= wait until the battery runs out! No market therefore no apps. No multitouch therefore many apps wont work anyway. Flash can only be downloaded as a firmware update so its out of date therefore more and more websites wont work... Slow, laggy, cheap feel... Terrible product.
I can recommend the RM Slates as a starting point, and I would suggest you download and install the Windows 8 preview on it to give your SLT an idea of just what is to come when it comes to the new Windows touch interface which is a lot better than running W7 in tablet mode, but this also reveals some flaws. The RM Slate currently does not have enough graphical grunt to run many of the Metro apps that come with the preview edition, although this may just be a driver issue. That aside, I have installed and run many Windows applications such as Office 2010 without issue. Tablets that will be able to run W8 fully also seem to cost a lot more than the RM device currently, although the price of these should come down somewhat by the time W8 is finally released.
What about fizzbooks - best of both worlds - especially for primary
Very nice idea of using a tablet in class for interactive and effective learning of students. I will highly recommend an Android Tablet which will provide you with a lots of applications and interesting stuff.
Tablets with Encyclopaedia Britannica online edition on them is the best learning tool for kids