Essa Academy: Bookless school where everyone has iPad

[mthomas08]

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.

 

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.

 

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.

[vikpaw]

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 :

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.

[caffrey]

Be helpful if the right tools were there, and the right ones to do the job properly, problem is the tools are rubbish.

[bossman]

We are trialling the following:

 

IPad V2

IPad New version mini's

Galaxy Tabs 2

HP100e notebooks converted to SSD and 2GB RAM

Laptops various

Mobile phones various

 

We use Aerohive as our managed wireless system AP120's X 25

 

 

 

Altogether we have approx 120 devices and as yet the only feedback I have received is from the Head of English telling me what a turn around in their department, they have said it has transformed their department, their words and not mine.

 

Which device or devices do you think this applies to?

 

Answers please

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

We are trialling the following:

 

IPad V2

IPad New version mini's

Galaxy Tabs 2

HP100e notebooks converted to SSD and 2GB RAM

Laptops various

Mobile phones various

 

We use Aerohive as our managed wireless system AP120's X 25

 

 

 

Altogether we have approx 120 devices and as yet the only feedback I have received is from the Head of English telling me what a turn around in their department, they have said it has transformed their department, their words and not mine.

 

Which device or devices do you think this applies to?

 

Answers please

[zag]

Gotta be the ipad mini, its so easy to use for people I would imagine this works best from their point of view.

 

Laptops, phones and android tablets take a lot of configuration from my experience.

[vikpaw]

Knowing teachers / the hype - ipad mini

Knowing you @bossman - Samsung Galaxy or S(whatever number) slab of a phone

[GrumbleDook]

Pen and paper?

[vikpaw]

They used the old iPad as a clipboard didn't they?

[Dos_Box]

Pen and paper?

 

*tsk*

You are so 20th century Tony!

[Ditto]

It's too long a story as say how I stumbled across this thread. I'm hoping many of you are still subscribed to it. As it's four years old and many future looking statements were made, I'm very interested to hear some reflections on previous statements and how this might inform opinions over the next four years.