[Offtopic] Ipads

Wed Mar 2 16:10:50 EST 2011

We did a trial of Netbooks last year and found that they were very slow to boot up and didn't handle high-end software (Adobe Creative Suite) very well. The screens were hard to see and the keyboard a bit too small and our staff and students tended to avoid using them. 

Our staff laptops were up for their 3 year change over at the end of 2010 so after much thought, we gave them all a MacBook with virtualised Windows. A few teething issues but it is great to see staff who have never touched a Mac now using iMovie, GarageBand and PhotoBooth to enhance their teaching after only a few weeks. The way the staff take up this big change will determine how far we head with the iPad or equivalent in the future. I'm getting daily requests from students asking when iPads are going to be throughout the School.

In relation to a mix of devices, I think school networks need to cater for a wide range of OS and devices to best prepare students for the wider world. School network administrators who can only cope with the one type of platform are not doing their students or staff any favours. It is a big wide world out there. A large percentage of our students leave Strathcona and go into Creative Industries courses and jobs that are predominately based on Apple Mac hardware & software. If we didn't offer both Mac & Windows environments for our students and staff we would not be preparing them as well as we could be.

Keep up the great discussions

Ta

Tim

Dr Tim Kitchen
Head of Learning Technologies
Strathcona Baptist Girls Grammar School
http://timkitchen.net

On 02/03/2011, at 1:59 PM, Paul Chandler wrote:

> Thanks to everyone for their various contributions.
> 
> To some extent, this discussion about netbooks/pads/pod/etc has some features of the platform wars of years ago - it's not my intention to escalate a debate.
> 
> In my first e-mail, I'd noted that the ipad is really nice to use, has found a home in our family, but I'd also asked - in the classroom context - what teachers are ACTUALLY DOING with it.  I don't know that I've actually go any answers to this.  Tim has elaborated it's possibilities (and with very few exceptions, they are all things that can be done with a netbook), and Roland has described what he does.
> 
> Hey Roland, funny isn't it? I can't stand lugging the bulky iPad around. I do a lot of the same things on my iPod touch that fits in my pocket.  ;)
> 
> I think there's something to be said for that.
>  
> 1) There is a government funded trial of iPads. This has been at no cost to the parents. Why aren't people waiting to see the results of the trial? What is the rush?
> (Although if you look at http://www.ipadsforeducation.vic.edu.au/  there is absolutely no mention (that I can find) about exactly how they intend to measure/quantify the results of the trial.) I suppose a "trial" is not a "study"?
> 
> ... and my initial question was from the point of view of a parent of a student in a non-trial school which has nevertheless decided to go with ipads (in lieu of textbooks).
> 
> 2) I agree that tablets seem to be the way we are going
> 
> Agree.
>  
> 3) The iPad is very much a personal device.  Put yourself into the position of a "working family" to borrow a phrase, a notebook can be easily used and shared amongst family members with appropriate security and separation of work. More than one family member can use the device if needed. We have had some issues in my household with younger brothers wanting to play with my daughters iPad. Family harmony dictates that we have a policy of sharing just about everything. This has been a bit of an issue when 3 year old starts meddling with daughters school work, rather than simply playing Angry Birds.
> 
> It's a challenge.  Maybe ipad users need to be more into dropbox or googledocs.  But the mind-shift there is cloud computing as the baseline for educational documents, not the platforms its done on.
>  
> 4) I am trying to use the iPads in the Science classroom - schools often have lots of money/resources/experience tied up in Dataloggers and other peripherals (microscopes etc) which almost universally use a USB. Must we need to double up and have both notebooks for hooking up peripherals, and iPads for recording and reporting, or just use one device and sacrifice something?
> 
> Agree that this is a level of duplication which should not need to exist.  If the ipad (or ipod) were to provide (a) USB interface and (b) some level of virtualisation (eg java, or qemu running a win32 box 'inside' the iOS), then I think the discussion about desirability would be a different one.  But my question of "what are you doing with it" would stand.
> 
> As to affordability, the school communities where our children go are far from affluent.  There has been no hue-and-cry about the ipads in lieu textbooks, because they are mainly compliant communities.  But some families will have genuinely struggled to provide for it.
> 
> I bought a new PC for about $750 last year. A good deal for what I wanted (for a small office which I support voluntarily).  A netbook-style machine was purchased for $180, too.  You could add $129 for a 3G modem, and another $129 for 12GB over 12 months. If you're pessimistic, and say that the machine might only last 2 years, then it's about $280 pa for a fully-working, anywhere anytime system.  If I were asked to set up a school from scratch these days, I wouldn't be sinking $1M into infrastructure and buying PCs for $700 a pop.  And if it was happening in a relatively disadvantaged community, I'd be hard pressed (and this stage) to adopt the ipad.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> -- 
> Dr Paul Chandler
> Research Fellow: Multimedia grammatical design and authoring pedagogy (Kahootz) project,
> School of Education, University of New England
> (Project website: http://www.une.edu.au/kahootzresearch)
> 
> located at Australian Children's Television Foundation
> 145 Smith Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne, 3065
> e-mail: paul.chandler at une.edu.au
> Ph: 0400 198 187
> Fax: (03) 9419 0660
> Skype: paul.d.chandler
>  I am pdchandler on Delicious
>  Add me to your network
> 
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Dr Tim Kitchen
Head of Learning Technologies
Strathcona Baptist Girls Grammar School
http://timkitchen.net

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