Aberdeenshire Council has a long history of commitment to and use of digital technologies to help deliver better outcomes for learners. This past year has seen them continue this as they have begun to explore the use of a range of devices in their schools with pilots trialling iPads, Android tablets and iPod Touches.

One of these pilots saw every pupil and teacher at Fishermoss PS in Portlethen being given an iPod Touch by the Local Authority ICT team. We were obviously very interested in finding out more about this ambitious pilot and visited the school late in 2012 to see how things were progressing.

We met with Ashley Rennie who teaches P2/3 to ask her how her early experience in using the devices with her young learners had been. She explained that she was still very much finding her feet with the devices and with what they could do but at that stage she was allowing the children to have their iPod Touches at their desks all the time to use when they saw fit. A number of learning apps have been installed on the iPods and she was allowing the children to use them when they thought it would help them with their learning. Although she is allowing a degree of freedom of use of the devices she is using them in structured ways when carrying out tasks such as spelling and phonics work and she is differentiating her input at these times based on who she feels requires direct teaching and who is more capable of coping with increasing levels of independent learning.

Fishermoss PS: iPods in P.2/3 Interview with Mrs Rennie about her involvement with the iPod pilot

Mrs Rennie remarked that simple things such as the World Clock on the iPods had created a real sense of enquiry and that it had stirred her learners curiosity about the wider world at large. As a result of a most probably overlooked facility in the iPod Touch the class have been motivated to explore areas of the world where they have visited and where they can see that the time is currently different from that in Scotland.

Technical challenges

Mrs Rennie told us that there has been some issues with the management of the iPod Touches in the early stages but that she did manage to take responsibility for ensuring that all the devices for her children had been synced and that all necessary apps had been installed. She felt that this was a challenge but that once it was done it was done and she could carry on with looking at how to use the devices in her practice. One problem that she did identify as an issue for her was the fact that the iPods could not play Flash games or resources that she felt were appropriate for her learners.

Fishermoss PS: Technical challenges with the iPod Touch Mrs Rennie discusses some of the technical challenges of the iPod pilot