[ipad] I need pros and cons on iPads in school stat!

[Little-Miss]

Guys!

 

I was hoping the assistant head/PTA had forgotten but it doesn't look like it...

 

I need pros and cons for peeps who have got ipads up and running. We're a primary. So things like further costs involved, issues with management of the devices, are they any good as an educational aid or is it the "ooh shiny!" factor.

 

I don't want just a list of cons! I need a balanced opinion to show people (but yeah, I don't want them! They can just about look after the netbooks!).

 

Pwetty please!

[eddyc]

Here are some that I wrote when buying a class set was brought up

 

Pros;

- Shiney ;-)

- Some very good apps for education - look at Mark Anderson's twitter feed @ictEvangelist - he is the head of ICT at Clevedon School where they have done 1:1 with iPads

- Battery has a very good life, so one charge overnight is probably enough for a full day of teaching use.

- Improved mobile device management via Apple OSX Server

 

Cons;

- No identitiy management - how can you log who has visited what on the internet, etc - unless you use one device per pupil on a static ip, etc.

- No flash - so does not work with some of our Frog VLE widgets.

- Students try to take them home (Not sure if this will be applicable to you though - being in a Primary)

 

 

Hopefully that's enough to get you started :-)

[synaesthesia]

Cons: Storage/security even when in a specialised locky uppy box.

Centralised management when you really want to avoid putting anything Maccy in.

Jealousy if you don't have enough to go round a whole class.

Finding things to do with them when the novelty dissappears

Having to teach people that it "won't just link to the network" and "they won't be accessing their My Documents" in 2 clicks (without considerable external investment)

 

Pros: Portable learning devices with lots of application WITH the right amount of forethought and planning

More and more apps and uses forthcoming from basic datalogging to gaming (educational and otherwise) and surfing

Cameras - great excuse to ditch and burn any DigiBlue's still lying around

Great incentive to help kids do things; at a primary level, they still find them a great novelty and it really piques interest in a given topic

Management can be done for free with Meraki really easily and also provides security should one go walkies.

 

(Obviously I've tried not to include the ones above)

Plenty of people are trying them out in different ways so it's certainly worth seeing what other people are doing and going to speak to them, see them in use.

[speckytecky]

I'm thinking the BIG downside is when the battery fails - as it inevitably will and the device has to be swapped by Apple to achieve a new battery. That's going to be a right pain and also surely holds some security issues?

[InterwebsGuy]

There have been some good pros and cons above, lots I agree with, but there is also one other big con I'd put forward: they are quite fragile. Drop one on a hardened surface / school floor and it will smash or be damaged.

I'm not sure how much of an issue the weight of them / holding them safely and securely while using them at the same time will be with some of the younger primary kids too. That may not be an issue, but I would certainly keep it in mind.

Edited October 2, 2012 by InterwebsGuy
Grammar :-O

[Max_Power]

Its a real mixed bag at when looking at iPads at the moment, with Windows 8 well on the way with its own app store, and Ive read you are able to use "some" android apps on windows 8 as well which will be interesting - quite possibly see if PTA or HT will hold out for windows 8 to at least look at it to ensure your making right decision in buying iPads. Thats what ive persuaded our SMT to do by showing them a pre release version of windows 8.

 

However if they are intent on buying them a few pros and cons from our experience of installing our first batch of iPads include;

 

Pros

Instant turn on

Massive amount of apps "proven" to aid in teaching and learning (make your own decision on the proven bit).

easy to use with smaller children (our primary school uses them)

Camera - good for various types of lessons, topics and gathering visual information

Volume licence plan now available - makes buying and licencing the apps a little cheaper.

Battery life is good

No Login process

Provides quick access to email and VLE

Apple TVS - allows you to display ipad on projector at the front of the room

 

Cons

Break easily if dropped even in a protective case - expensive to repair and recommend having a spare one or two to use as replacements

No Flash - unless installing various apps to achieve a workaround

Only MDM software i have used allows you to push apps out but not install them , still requires a 3rd party to type in apple password and approve the install

Takes time to update them all and manage on a whole. Also we have found since updating to IOS6 that we get frequent drop outs on wireless (apple working on an update to sort)

Not an easy way to get work or material off - yes you can use webdav but weve had issues with people deleting other peoples work, forgetting to transfer to their own My Docs etc - its a pain.

[januttall]

Guys!

 

I was hoping the assistant head/PTA had forgotten but it doesn't look like it...

 

I need pros and cons for peeps who have got ipads up and running. We're a primary. So things like further costs involved, issues with management of the devices, are they any good as an educational aid or is it the "ooh shiny!" factor.

 

I don't want just a list of cons! I need a balanced opinion to show people (but yeah, I don't want them! They can just about look after the netbooks!).

 

Pwetty please!

 

we don't have them at the moment, which im currently glad about. but i do know a school up in Scotland that have given one to each student. the Ceder school of excellence. apple send delegates there all the time so it might be worth giving them a ring for the pros. they do things ive never seen done on ipads anywhere else. con's well as we dont have any so i cant help there at the moment we have only one but it dosent like downloading updates through the county proxy, cant be joined to the domain or locked down. i know in lancs most are set to go direct to county filters bypassing the school networks for security concerns.

and there a little more sturdy than most people would have you believe.

 

http://cedars.inverclyde.sch.uk/ School Website.

http://cedars.inverclyde.sch.uk/ipad/ I Pad page of there Website

http://cedars.inverclyde.sch.uk/itunesu/ I Tunes University Page of the School site.

http://cedars-school.eventbrite.com/ They will even show you how they use them

 

 

ANY VIEWS OR OPINIONS OF EXTERNAL SITES OR LINKS ARE NOT MY VIEWS OR OPINIONS, AND ARE OUT SIDE OF MY CONTROL!!!

Edited October 2, 2012 by januttall
Addition of links to Cedars School Website, Inverclyde, Scotland

[zag]

I'm thinking the BIG downside is when the battery fails - as it inevitably will and the device has to be swapped by Apple to achieve a new battery. That's going to be a right pain and also surely holds some security issues?

 

Thats never happened here yet. We've been using them since Generation 1.

[Badzeye]

We have just recently given out iPads to 2 year groups in our primary school in a 1 to 1 scheme for those year groups. We tested out the uses of the iPads in a single class last year and the feedback from the teachers was great as they greatly improved the children ability's and are an incentive for them as well to help with their concentration. The past month has been interesting as some teachers have been quicker to warm to the iPads than others but from what we can see the children are enjoying them and the teachers are finding them useful learning tools as well as helping with behavior management of the children.

 

Cons for them from my point of view is how expensive they are and management of them is tricky especially at the scale we have deployed them at. We have had a few issues of children wanting to take them home and luckily none have been dropped and have been looked after quite well. We made sure to put across to the children that these are their devices to look after for the year and they have taken to it well.

[Little-Miss]

Thanks guys, keep em coming...

[dhicks]

they are quite fragile.

 

In comparrison to, say, a textbook, then yes, but your average laptop doesn't fare that well when dropped on the floor, either. The problem with the iPad is that it's so handily pick-upable that you tend to forget you are using a quite expensive bit of kit - I've seen people carrying iPads around jammed in the middle of piles of books, like just another A4 folder. There's possibly a similar problem with the iPhone/iPod - half the people here seem to have an iPhone with a smashed screen, but how much of that is down to the iPhone's delicacy and how much down to it being used / carried in ways you wouldn't use a laptop I'm not sure. We do also have an iPad here with an overly-mashed home button (I discovered when trying to tripple-press to set up Guided Access) - I'm not sure the average iPad/iPod is suitible to heavy use by random puipils.

 

We're investigating getting (new) iPods to use in classrooms as cameras. Compared to dedicated cameras, with motorised pop-out zoom lenses, they look a bit more robust, and the 5 megapixel resolution should be fine. We could also use them as IP phone handsets, saving us having to buy a phone handset per classroom, so in that respect they would pretty much pay for themselves. You can mirror the iPad screen to a projected screen via Airplay, giving you a touch-based interface to the front-of-classroom display, which might avoid you having to buy / replace a SMARTBoard or two.

[Michael]

I think it needs to be looked at from a different angle -

 

Rather than say what are the pros and cons of an iPad or any tablet for that matter, how will it be used to support the Curriculum and what applications can you get on the iPad which wouldn't work well on a PC or notebook?

 

Cost is also a big issue, but with more tablets hitting the market in November (just in time for Christmas), there will be a lot more choice available.

 

Other considerations are the fact that many educational websites will not work - Flash vs HTML5. It'll take at least another 10 years until all mainstream educational websites work/support HTML5. The iPad is unfortunately locked out of Education City and Mathletics (for example), until they make HTML5 versions of their websites.

 

Day to day managing of the iPads and also training staff how to use them are also extremely important, otherwise you'll have 20 white elephants gathering dust.

 

You may also wish to look at WebDav (search the forum), which allows you to open Word documents from your network on your iPad and save back to the network. You are limited as to what you can open or edit, but at least you could write notes on your iPad and save back to your home directory.

[jdoyle]

trying to focus on the pros (and I'm not suggesting that I agree with all these) :

 

mobility - providing there's a good wi-fi they can be used anywhere around school for indoor and outdoor learning

mobility - teacher with an iPad can move around the classroom better rather than being tied to the PC/IWB at front

cost - less need for dedicated ICT suites

speed - students can be doing great things very, very quickly without lots of teacher drone

cost - replace IWBs and projectors with cheaper HD TVs; use NearPod to share screens. Ditto with voting system; replace with iPad app.

cost - lots of good apps that are cheaper and better than PC/Windows applications

trust - does your school trust staff and students? Yes, iPads; no, PCs.

SEN - good tool for students with special needs.

pedagogy - if your school ethos is about command and control/petrol pump attendant style of teaching, go with the familiar PCs; if your school ethos is guided discovery, Q&A, feedback, inclusive teaching, creative thinking, go iPads.

pedagogy - students are more excited about using an iPad than they are about a laptop/PC

pedagogy - iPads can be a tool embedded in all subjects rather than having timetabled ICT lessons each week.

cost - my experiece with iPads is that there is less printing leading to less need for paper stocks, toner and printers.

mobility - options for taking iPads home; extended learning.

personalisation - ebooks, videos and other resources that the individual student needs can be loaded onto their iPad

marketing - are parents going to be more impressed with an iPad school or a laptop/PC school?

speed - very quick to display good quality student work on a digital signage system

decision making - does the school determine what ICT needs to deliver to support staff/students or does ICT limit the school to what it considers feasible technology?

resources - staff and students can create and share learning resources very quickly

[Disease]

trying to focus on the pros (and I'm not suggesting that I agree with all these) :

 

mobility - providing there's a good wi-fi they can be used anywhere around school for indoor and outdoor learning

mobility - teacher with an iPad can move around the classroom better rather than being tied to the PC/IWB at front

cost - less need for dedicated ICT suites

speed - students can be doing great things very, very quickly without lots of teacher drone

cost - replace IWBs and projectors with cheaper HD TVs; use NearPod to share screens. Ditto with voting system; replace with iPad app.

cost - lots of good apps that are cheaper and better than PC/Windows applications

trust - does your school trust staff and students? Yes, iPads; no, PCs.

SEN - good tool for students with special needs.

pedagogy - if your school ethos is about command and control/petrol pump attendant style of teaching, go with the familiar PCs; if your school ethos is guided discovery, Q&A, feedback, inclusive teaching, creative thinking, go iPads.

pedagogy - students are more excited about using an iPad than they are about a laptop/PC

pedagogy - iPads can be a tool embedded in all subjects rather than having timetabled ICT lessons each week.

cost - my experiece with iPads is that there is less printing leading to less need for paper stocks, toner and printers.

mobility - options for taking iPads home; extended learning.

personalisation - ebooks, videos and other resources that the individual student needs can be loaded onto their iPad

marketing - are parents going to be more impressed with an iPad school or a laptop/PC school?

speed - very quick to display good quality student work on a digital signage system

decision making - does the school determine what ICT needs to deliver to support staff/students or does ICT limit the school to what it considers feasible technology?

resources - staff and students can create and share learning resources very quickly

 

 

Wow some of those point you raised there are utter utter rubbish:

 

pedagogy - if your school ethos is about command and control/petrol pump attendant style of teaching, go with the familiar PCs; if your school ethos is guided discovery, Q&A, feedback, inclusive teaching, creative thinking, go iPads.

 

You are only cool and forward thinking as educators if you use iPad, tosh, seems like you maybe caught up in the apple marketing hype!

[januttall]

were supposed to be getting reports of how other school's are using them. sounds like were trying to keep up with the jones's bad idea find a need and implement don't just buy cus everyone else is (unfortunately the only reason our school does anything is because it dose nt want to bee seen as out of touch, aka every one else has we should)

[Michael]

@Little-Miss - For your reference also, the reason many website companies haven't moved over to HTML5 is due to cost but also compatibility. HTML5 as a standard hasn't even reached version 1.0, despite being in development for almost 10 years.

 

Flash has cross browser support on different platforms and it's just Apple who've made the wrong choice in my opinion with regards to the iPad. HTML5 isn't supported on all browsers and secondly, you're essentially asking developers to work/write a website with an uncomplete standard. It's totally ridiculous and quite rightly educational companies are not going to invest money only to have to re-write it again to be compatible.

 

Once HTML5 reaches an official level/standard or version 1.0 as I stated above, things would be moving considerably quicker. Windows 8 on a tablet for example will support both Flash and HTML5, so no matter what happens in the next 10 years, all websites should work correctly.

[jdoyle]

Wow some of those point you raised there are utter utter rubbish:

 

indeed they are, hence the caveat at the start. There are plenty on edugeek who will provide the negatives to iPads. Today is my day for being positive

[Little-Miss]

Im so undecided on this.

 

I'm annoyed as i was never consulted, but im pretty sure things that connect to the Network are my problem.

 

They do sound like schools are liking them (at the moment) and anything that works well with the kids is obviously good!

 

It's the management of them i cant get my head around. When i moaned that it would end up being me she said it didnt have to be. So do i just say ok, here you go and dump them on her or do i actually think well, they're on my network, i need to deal with them and the pile of other stuff i also have to deal with cus i obviously have all the time in the world.

[zag]

It's the management of them i cant get my head around.

 

The only management we do in school is to get them on the wireless network and proxy server.

 

Once thats done they are just devices.

 

Your thinking the same way as I did when we first got them. Microsoft Windows needs to be managed and controlled. Luckily Apple iPads really don't need very much as they are very locked down. Its actually rather refreshing.

[Little-Miss]

Thanks Zag. Yeah, maybe i do just need to do that then. But how are the App's managed? Do the staff just sort all that out?

[zag]

Thanks Zag. Yeah, maybe i do just need to do that then. But how are the App's managed? Do the staff just sort all that out?

 

Yep, we leave it to them. Don't forget there are no hard installs, drivers, errors, permissions like Microsoft ecosystem. It just works from our experience.

[kaphc]

Just for info with regards to Flash not being supported on iPads, there's a apparently an app called Skyfire which is a web browser you can download in the app store that supports Flash video (though not Flash apps).

 

In terms of managing apps, we only have 6 ipads in my primary school - we have an iTunes account set up on a PC and then we sync (or restore etc when needed) from that PC. set up 4 iPads yesterday and it took just over 10 minutes for it to register as a device and load the Windows drivers, name it on iTunes and then sync the apps.

[dhicks]

But how are the App's managed?

 

For larger sets of iPads / iPods, seemingly the Mac OS X based management console is now pretty useable, although I haven't had a chance to try this out yet as we're still only thinking about getting iPods. You'll need a Mac OS X machine as a server (probably a Mac Mini), but it should let you properly distribute apps out to multiple devices rather than having to sync them with iTunes on a computer.

 

If you just want people to use one app, then the Guided Access feature does seem to work well - it simply locks the machine into a kiosk mode. Sneaky users (i.e. anyone who can Google "get out of iOS guided access") can get past this, though, so a BubCap might be an idea - it prevents the user pressing the home button at all unless they have a pin handy.

 

Depending on what, exactly, you want to be able to do with your devices, it rather strikes me that a new app launcher might almost be an idea - lock the device on to a single app that can launch just the apps that you want to enable - sort of like RM Connect but for iPads.

[Sylv3r]

Pros:

 

Speed

Portability of the device

Anywhere / Anytime learning (within reason)

Engagement of students on task, using new technology devices (some people may not see extended engagement, but we have)

Various educational apps available, but staff need to put the time and effort into researching what works

Great as an admin tool outside of teaching, note making, diary, e-mails etc

Familiar technology to students as often an increasing number have these devices at home

 

 

Cons:

 

Management of charging

Ideally needs a good wireless infrastructure

Management of installing apps

Booking - staff often come to collect the iPADs when booked, but aren't as keen to return them when they are finished!

Management of locking down the devices - changing background wallpapers

Gimmicky toy at first, until the students get used to using them

Purchasing a lot of apps could become expensive

Easily stolen

Easily damaged by being dropped

 

We use them extensively here across a large range of subjects, they were initially used for devices to go on the internet and do a bit of internet, but we are not developing the pedagogy and staff and students are seeing the benefits. We are taking part in numerous whitepapers and action research projects with various stakeholders about our active use. I do still feel however, that the true benefit comes from a 1:1 scenario and the user keeps the device, a student creating an essay or presentation on a bookable device has no guarantee that the following lesson that the work is still going to be on the iPAD for them to complete it. We are looking strongly into providing a device for a cohort of students next year, possibly or sixth formers and will reduce our reprographics, student planner costs etc, but we need to seriously consider how students will be able to charge the devices in school, security and insurance aspects, how to lock them down sufficiently as well as how my IT Support team will have the capacity to support them.

[DavidScott]

Whilst a list of pros and cons works well to gather experiences - I think it's very much a question of what you intend to do with them. If you dissect the Apple hype then without an app written for exactly what you want to do then the iPad becomes a locked down product that cannot be efficiently managed by teachers in a classroom either.

 

For Primary environments I would prefer using a Windows netbook product (preferably rugged in design) connected to a classroom management software product. In this way you can run everything that the school previously used software-wise, connect them to your domain for saving/backing up work, and open URLs/share files/actually teach something with them. My personal experience of the iPad is that once the initial 'shiny' factor has worn off they just become rather expensive toys. A teacher cannot really keep control of what the kids are doing on them in class and therefore I would not be confident that they're doing what they've been asked to do.

 

I'm recommending a trial of the new Classmate - Classmate 2S - a rugged netbook and convertable touch tablet, Windows 7, with management software that works with the SMART Board. Hopefully the best of both worlds.