Pilot model | 1to1 blog

Cedarspost3HL — iPads part of the everyday life of learning at Cedars

Cedars School of Excellence in Greenock is an independent school catering for children ages from 5 to 17 years. In 2009 they were inspired by the announcement of the Apple’s new iPad that would lead them to become the first school to offer 1:1 iPad provision for learners and staff. Since that time they have been working to integrate the use of this technology into the fabric of learning in their school. We visited them in October 2012 to find out what their experience with their 1:1 approach had been.

We met with Fraser Speirs (computing teacher) and Andrew Jewell (class teacher) to ask them what they had seen in terms of impact on learning as a result of their iPad initiative. Mr Speirs felt that that one of the biggest benefits with subsequent impact on learning was that life in school was very much like life outside of school in terms of their learners being able to access and use digital technology without having to make any adjustments or compromises. He also explained that much of the teaching in the school had been realigned in keeping with what the school felt was a change of emphasis on what was really important, an emphasis informed and influenced by access to tablet devices, always on access to the web and the range of apps that are now available. One example of this was that there was now less of a focus on tasks such as Word Processing with greater emphasis being place on developing a delivering effective presentations that communicated a message that was beyond text.

cedars_fspeirsimpact Listen to Fraser Speirs talk about impact on learning

Pupils at Dalreoch PS — Focused use of devices at Dalreoch PS

Sat Bance is the headteacher at Dalreoch and is someone who has been very keen to ensure that ICTs permeate the life of learning in his school and that they are not to be seen as an add-on or as a discrete subject. In our interviews with him he explained that he wanted to use the small resource that he had available to him in this pilot as effectively as possible. To do this he and his staff decided to employ a methodology that would see the iPads used in direct teaching contexts in relation to numeracy and literacy in the mornings, but then to be used more freely by the pupils in the afternoons when there was greater scope for inter-disciplinary learning. Mr Bance explained that he was very impressed with the way that the instant access to learning with a device such as an iPad meant that it saved much time otherwise wasted by movement to the traditional ICT suite and the process of logging on etc that comes with that. He felt that the devices were offering his learners a greater freedom to learn.

Mr Bance discussed the issues of sharing an iPad between learners and he argued that the way in which his school had designed and established a labelling system for the devices meant that there had not been any real issues in relation to sharing devices that did not allow them to logon with their own profiles and keep their materials separate and accessible only to them.

You can listen to Mr Bance’s overview on this audio recording:

Overview of the pilot at Dalreoch PS Interview with Sat Bance (HT)