Does your dc's school use iPads?

Rafals
I never used the word prove, as a scientist it would be something i would be very careful about.
I said our results back up our schools choices, they do, it certainly doesn't prove anything, and i do not have time to trawl through the progress 8 tables and check on the top and bottom 5%, interesting though that might be.

Ds's independent school use them. Each child provides their own. It can be any tablet, not just an iPad.

They have online planners & all homework is set on it. Their textbooks are available via a Kaboodle link & worksheets are uploaded.

In addition DS is allowed to use his to do all his writing on as he has diagnosed asd/slow processing speed/dysfluent writing.

Dds school has one per class and they don't come home. As far as I can tell the teachers mostly just use them for taking photos

The PTA paid for them.

I call it muscle memory. I'm sure it's like learning an instrument and your fingers remember how to solve an equation before your brain has to think about it.

It's the kinaesthetic aspect to learning (not to be confused with learning styles). If it's bad in maths, it's worse in spelling.

IIRC it's one of the reasons why it's no longer recommended that children with dyslexia aren't given computers as a writing aid early on. It just ends up increasing the gap between them and other children, rather than narrowing it.

And yet all the evidence (plus our collective experience) demonstrates that traditional learning methods - whiteboard classes, problem sessions, problems solved on pen and paper - are actually the most effective for learning and understanding high level maths.

Fully agree. My son (who's doing further maths GCSE) finds mymaths a truly horrid resource. He can spend 2 or 3 hours on a single topic to hit the 100% target but then still get poor marks on a written test on the same topic the following week. However, when he sits down with the exercise book, pen and paper, he can master a new topic in an hour and get full marks in the test. I really "don't get" mymaths at all - seems completely counter intuitive to just type in an answer when the actual exam papers require full workings to be shown and marked upon. Also, the way you have to do all the questions in a section again even if you just got one wrong is crazy and time-wasting. It's a prime example of how being trendy and techy can actually be worse than the traditional teaching/learning methods. But I suppose the teachers will love it as they don't have to do any homework planning nor marking.

It still only proves that if all or most of the other schools in the top 5% are using iPads too. And the ones near the bottom of the progress measures aren't.

Is there nothing else at all in the school policies that has changed either?

The school near us that has Ipads would make the same claims as Rosy's school- top 5 % etc. Their PP below Nat av with some year groups only 8%.
This school puts out a 'message' to parents all round- Ipads do put some parents off [expense], fancy trips and I smirk at the use of photos of children with orchestral instruments used at every opportunity in their publicity photos/ website. They want a certain sort of pupil..
I digress....
I would add more but would out the schools I am talking about...

They see it as a doss lesson and never learn as effectively as they do with a pen and paper (maths).

There is enormous pressure on maths/theoretical science at university to "get with the times" and incorporate more technology into lectures, make use of flipped classrooms etc.

And yet all the evidence (plus our collective experience) demonstrates that traditional learning methods - whiteboard classes, problem sessions, problems solved on pen and paper - are actually the most effective for learning and understanding high level maths.

Well it's good that the poor kids aren't being put off from applying.

My school looked into a scheme like this a few years ago, we were all set to do it, then the criticisms started to come out about how expensive and poor value it was to parents, and how little value was added.

I'm a big fan of tech, btw, but I don't even take my kids into computer rooms any more. They see it as a doss lesson and never learn as effectively as they do with a pen and paper (maths).

Ds's school uses them. (it could even be the school that Rosie teaches at.)
Pros are:

• some teachers use them really well to create engaging fun lessons and games
• massively improved 'comms' between teacher and students (homework put on the homework app thingy /handing in/ meetings/ timetables/ emails to teachers all there instantly)
• every dc has the same access to all resources all the time

Cons are:

• Expense. we paid a monthly fee that included insurance, all the packages the school wanted and maintenance
• distraction. if you are a student in an ipad school you have an ongoing conversation day and night with several hundred friends who also have ipads. Not easy to switch off the chat if it's popping up on your homework screen.

Overall I think my dcs have probably benefitted academically a little but the ipads have improved their general school experience a lot.

Cons

I hate this sort of thing they just serve as a distraction.
Am sure they are OK in some circumstances with some kids but I doubt they are useful to all.

More

More or less than the other schools?

Wealth selection, school is in middle class area but % of pp and fsm kids has increased over past five years

But aside from that, my school's results have also improved steadily over the last 5 years, best in the county etc and we don't use iPads.

They have improved year on year for the past five years since we introduced iPads

There is the possibility that your policy is a form of wealth-selection.

No, it was merely am example, but the fact that we are now in top 5% of schools nationally ( as mentioned above) for progress 8 does

I don't think you can conclude that your results back up your choices based on a selection of 3 schools.

Badbad. I am very far from a trendy, however i am very keen on making sure my students learn well and effectively, and if that means surrendering 15 minutes of a lesson to make playdoh movies of mitosis, then so be it. It also acts as an immensely useful assessment tool, as while i am circulating round the class i can see immediately who understands and who needs a clarifying chat, much more effectively than trying to read nearly 30 written answers.
All our students have the apps they need anyway, that is what the monthly sub covers along with insurance, gorilla case etc. The guardian article linked to above was rather scathing about that, but they need all of these in order to make it work.
Noble, a really rare event, a British teacher that is not part of SLT raving about korean and chinese schools. The bbc link is a brute comparsion, so many things are totally different about the education system that trying to pull out computer access is not valid, the extended school day and other factors are almost certainly the main drivers in the success of those students.
They should be replcaing text books so the school bag should be lighter.
I make no apologies about being an advocate of their use in schools, and their ability to help prepare our students for life in the future, and our results back up my schools choices. ( They have improved year on year for the past five years since we introduced iPads, and we are now consistently the best performing local school, having year on year outperformed the 2 schools whose results were previously better than ours and who do not have personal devices. )

Funny enough I went to a display of my granddaughters last unit of work today. They started it in September. One of the tables had things she could show me they'd done using the iPad. One of the things was a daily blog. It was very interesting. Each child in the school that goes from aged 3.5 to 18 has an IPAD to use.

oh. i thought the text book replacement was the main point of them!

Hi nocampinghere that's the thing, it doesn't. Every subject has a textbook and a heavy folder or notebook. Sometimes things don't even fit in the bag. It doesn't replace anything, just offer apps and extra tools for class.

noblegiraffe thanks for article.

Our secondary doesn't.
Nearby one does. Both state schools. One that does very middle class. Not sure if that is the pattern with secondary Ipad insistence/ purchase?

badbadbunny you might enjoy this article by Tom Bennett who this week was torn apart on Twitter for publicly suggesting that lessons taught on Minecraft might not be the best way of teaching stuff.

behaviourguru.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/blocked-minecraft-and-taboos-in.html

But the gist is "And I said that. I think there are a lot of activities we use in classrooms that share this problem. Superficially they seem to interest pupils, but it’s more because they act as a seductive distraction rather than a supplement to the lesson, like turning the Gettysburg address into a Manga strip or something. Kids might spend happy hours (or not) drawing Abe Lincoln as a Japanese hero, but that’s a long road indeed to learn about the 16th President.

I have no issue with hooks; I use hooks all the time- culturally relevant landmarks that act as seasoning for the meat of what we’re covering. In my philosophy class I used to show 30 seconds from X-factor or similar, then use it as way to discuss Virtue Ethics or Kant. But that was a heartbeat. Activities that invite students to think for an extended period about something other than what is being learned- and I mean something trivial, like the workings of a computer game- is time wasted.

This matters. This really matters. Because I’m used to teaching students who don’t get a second chance at education; who (whether they know it or not) rely on education as their lifeline into alternate futures. Into literacy, jobs, opportunities. I take that seriously. Anything that wastes that opportunity is a crime against a child, against their options. And theft from the already poor is a felony. Many of them can’t afford tutors or catch-up classes, or bags of cultural capital. For them, education is their life boat."