“At Cedars School of Excellence, in Greenock, all the lessons are now taken using iPads,” McFadyen reports. “The pupils, aged from five to 15, will even do their homework on their new Apple handhelds. And the days of blackboards and chalk are gone too, as teachers use projectors and online lesson plans.”
“The move is the brainchild of IT teacher Fraser Speirs,” McFadyen reports. “Last year, the 105 kids at the school were forced to share 12 laptops between them. Now they’ve each been given an iPad to work on lessons… Fraser said: ‘We wanted to give each of the pupils an opportunity to use the best equipment available… Before we had the solution, the children were only able to get around 45 minutes a week on computing studies as they were sharing the existing laptops. But now they’ll be some of the most technologically advanced in the world.'”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “snapperjohn” for the heads up.]
Those are some lucky kids!
The first of many… nay EVERY school to do this.
The inability to have a chat window opened at the same time as the digital text book is probably a good thing.
Those are some idiot teachers if they put aside the pen and the paper for the 5 year children.
The Scottish always seem to be innovating the classroom first.
The iPad is the most advanced technology in the computer industry today. Putting the world of technology, science, education, entertainment and the worlds knowledge in a personal handheld device, a device that is not isolating nor disengaging from the rest of the world around you.
too cool.
“Those are some idiot teachers if they put aside the pen and the paper for the 5 year children.”
Hmm,
Consider it, saving trees and enhancing education.
Scots. Not Scottish.
“Hmm,
Consider it, saving trees and enhancing education.”
Hmm,. consider it, a new generation unable to write their names, or sign a form, or…. Technology is great, but people are forgetting that the basics are necessary for a lasting foundation of skills.
I always knew the Scots were smart! My gr-grandfather (and all the ones before him) would be proud!
The iPad works quite nicely with a stylus. There is no reason to imply that using an iPad denies the ability to learn handwriting, or picture drawing.
Fraser Speirs has a great blog about his experience at speirs.org. Wish I had a teacher like him when I was in school.
He is also the owner/programmer for connectedflow.com. He makes really great plug-ins for iPhoto and Aperture to interact with Flickr and a cool photo finder called Viewfinder. On the App store he offers Darkslide for iPhone and Viewfinder for the iPad. Cool stuff, check it out.
BTW, I have no connection with him other than being a user of his products.
Frasier Speirs, as it happens, is also a well-known Mac and iPhone developer. His apps are available here:
http://connectedflow.com/
-jcr
@ Hmm
Similar words were probably uttered when clay tablets were replaced by the new technology of papyrus
I don’t know what you can and can’t do with the SDK but if button remapping is one they could make a special app that they use instead of iBooks and then disable the power and home button until the teacher “unlocks” the iPad from their own
heck at that point they could even do a reward system, if they finish a test with so much accuracy in a certain time the app could unlock the iPad for say 5-10 minutes
or if they can take them home give them time based on how well they do in school for the non-school apps
with a jailbroken (and probably SDK) iPod (and probably iPad) you can change the use of the USB port so they can disable the USB so the students couldn’t just restore the iPads (easily)
In Washington DC they’re still getting used to pen & paper. When they can afford it on $13,000 per pupil. Vouchers are the answer. Rein in the teacher unions.
I love Scotland. The greatest country I’ve ever visited.
Scotland – spiritual and original home of the MacIntosh.