tablets in educationDigital Book World’s latest ‘survey’ on tablets in education came at a timely moment for me: We’ve had eight new iPads sitting in the principal’s office for over a week waiting to get set up.

As the nominal ‘iPad person’ at school, I keep getting nagged as to when they will be available for general usage, and I have flat-out refused to touch them until the IT people come in and put them on a server for me.

It’s been enough of a time-suck manually managing the eight we have already; I’m not doing anymore without some server-based push functions to automate things, and I’m worried we’re going to run up against Apple’s number of devices limit if we don’t get these things on a group system.

So you can imagine my complete lack of a surprise at the finding in this latest report. Writer Beth Bacon details the findings of a survey conducted by a website called E-Books and Kids, which found that accessibility, support and cost issues continue to be problems in the education market.

From the article:

“Of the 229 educators surveyed, 78% reported no tablet use at their school. Only 10% of the respondents had tablets in their own classrooms. ‘I have 5 in my classroom of 28 students,’ said one respondent. ‘I don’t have my own to use regularly,’ said another teacher. The ideal one-to-one ratio of students to tablets is currently extremely rare.”

The study overwhelmingly found that teachers are receptive to the benefits of tablet devices: their portability, their utility for self-paced learning, and the interest and engagement students show with them were all cited as advantages.

On the negative side, a few teachers struggled with how to best integrate them into planned lessons (my own school has several teachers who use them primarily as ‘free choice’ activities to occupy one group of students while they work on real stuff with another), and over half of them cited concerns with resource budgets. It’s not enough to just buy the device; you have to have money for apps, books and so on, on an ongoing basis.

There were no surprises in this study for me, but I’m a teacher with some experience in this area. I do think the tablets in education market is still in the very early stages. Eventually, I think we’ll see the cost of these devices drop enough that more students will have their own, and further down the line I can see them bringing them from home just like they would a backpack or a gym uniform.

Ideally, the app system would allow for some kind of site license model where the school can allow its students to log in via a password and be able to access all the apps they need on the device of their choosing. That would be much simpler than the current model. I’ve been spending an average of 10 minutes per week updating each single iPad—not a lot, but when you multiply it by eight or nine devices, that’s my whole Friday afternoon!

I just don’t have the time to add another dozen to the rotation unless some of the process is automated for me. The IT people have assured me there is a way—but until they come over and install it for me, I am leaving those iPads sitting there unused!

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"I’m a journalist, a teacher and an e-book fiend. I work as a French teacher at a K-3 private school. I use drama, music, puppets, props and all manner of tech in my job, and I love it. I enjoy moving between all the classes and having a relationship with each child in the school. Kids are hilarious, and I enjoy watching them grow and learn. My current device of choice for reading is my Amazon Kindle Touch, but I have owned or used devices by Sony, Kobo, Aluratek and others. I also read on my tablet devices using the Kindle app, and I enjoy synching between them, so that I’m always up to date no matter where I am or what I have with me."

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  1. You pretty much hit the proverbial “Technology in education” nail on the head with this article. As a teacher, I am fond of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device Initiatives) in that they force students to revisit the potential of the technology that they interact with, on a daily basis. The learning curve can be substantial the further along the “digital immigrant” path one is. I am fortunate in that I have been able to keep up with most of the major technological innovations over the last decade. The trick is to replace guided information sessions with heavy practice. Paulo Freire had it somewhat right -if one avoids the radicalization- in that students have to be the primary source of information. It is no longer viable to have educators pushing information. Construct the parameters, teach them how to use the tech tools, and then get out of the way. You will be surprised by the results that they produce.

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