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Originally Posted by nephilim
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Originally Posted by mthomas08
Definitely not a 'disgruntled tech'. Just one of the <900 students who doesn't agree with the school's fake fame and how us kids and most teacher's get treated.
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Originally Posted by Quackers
Sorry, I am behind a VPN/Proxy as a precautionary measure as many of us have already been told off for voicing our own opinions about the school on our personal twitter accounts. Don't want to take any risks :D
Also, within the past 2 weeks, 8/9 iPads have been stolen from students as they walk to and from school. Fortunately, police and senior staff now patrol the streets whilst we all come to school and when we all leave.
Some interesting debate going on here. The postings by python IMHO may have some truth, but....
I have recently spent a goodly amount of time with both the Essa NM (Not the managed Service techs) as we are implementing a 1:1 solution ourselves using iPad Mini.
He was happy to admit that it was not all rosy in the garden but .. like us, they are moving to a Lightspeed MDM solution, allowing much greater control of the devices. Their network load is mainly web traffic as most services are now cloud based apart from a Citrix env for SIMS access. Staff laptops, student devices etc are not tied to traditional corporate networking ie most IT users in the building do not login to pull shared drives etc..
My first tour was the corporate thang, however further visits have been more informal and info gathering, and it is for me at least, the fact that on the further visits it is evident that the tech is a means to an end and not "on show" proves that the approach can work.
Guys this is about pedagogical change and transforming learning . It has to be led by a well planned strategy stemming from an SLT that is committed to making these changes through careful planning and delivery. A great deal of time in planning and prep has been taken here and wether right or wrong education cannot stand still. Yes not everyone is convinced, yes not every member of staff will use the technology to its limit
"If we teach today as we taught yesterday we rob our children of tomorrow" John Dewey
I'm all for innovating but its a complete waste of money this early in the technology cycle of tablets.
This is a big point for me - I have seen several forum entries previously with "The school / Head/ SLT/ has just bought.." or "I have just been told to order.." - There appears to be a case of "we are a school - we have to have ipads!" rather than - this is the problem and the IPad is the most appropriate solution. Evangelists are targeting Heads and SLT and telling them that they have to go down this approach - often citing Essa - and they are then blindly obeyed. There appears to be no evaluation, planning, product research, testing or financial feasibility study involved.Quote:
Originally Posted by marekbrad
I have no problem with innovating or changing approach on things if needed - but I am seeing more and more "get the shiny thing in and make it work" rather than we have this problem / we need to do this - what is the best solution.
If IPads are the ideal solution for you then great - however there appears to be this myth in education that everyone has to have IPads to learn in the modern era.
We seem to be bringing in a device because of what it is then altering or installing all the systems around it to make it work in the way we need - as opposed to identifying what we want to do and tailoring the solution into our existing system.
Precisely.Quote:
Originally Posted by CamelMan
We have just had a survey go out, many staff want tablets and iPads and their reason for it "Its what the students like". There is no "We can do this" or "Improve this". In fact many staff don't know what it can/can't do, the two staff members who have iPads still have laptops and at the end of the day they only seem to use the iPads occasionally.
We also had another member of staff responsible for students with writing issues, she went to another school and got told "iPad can do all that". She came back here and said she wanted some, we sat her down and told her what we currently can do and what are the cheaper options.
She now has accepted that iPads are not the best option but because she was "told" to go iPads instead of looking at all the solutions she came back and said she wanted them. All she wanted was a group of students to do some special exam in a room and a program tells them the text is on the screen.
So instead of being told the systems she can use she was simply told "it can all be done on an iPad".
At the end of the day its the right tool for the right job and I have met a lot of people who are never willing to accept the flaws of some systems.
I agree. we're trialling things now, but it's hard to pull the reigns in and make sure things are planned well. As they said at a seminar at the BETT_show - build your road before you buy the cars or something similar : https://twitter.com/ajacksonict/stat...88961573916673 actually the #lutonipadbett tag is a good one to check out.
Many MDMs shown at BETT. Meraki is free :) lightspeed and some others recommended.
A good tool is nearpod - worth checking out.
As techs, if might be easier to get ahead and start finding tools to help, rather than fight the battle against the hype.
Be helpful if the right tools were there, and the right ones to do the job properly, problem is the tools are rubbish.