The big iPad in schools deception

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My child's school recently introduced iPads for all parents, effectively eliminating traditional textbooks and paper worksheets in favour of a fully digital approach. While I understand the move towards digital learning, I'm concerned that the costs are being transferred to parents in a private education setting. The school seems to raise fees but with this digital move they are also saving, a lot of money. I paid for the iPad. It seems that the school is heavily relying on digital technology, which I believe might not necessarily improve the quality of education. I'm skeptical about the idea that increased screen time will genuinely enhance the learning experience.
Are we inadvertently turning our children into screen-dependent individuals by providing them with iPads around the clock? iPads offer numerous distractions, and I'm concerned about the potential consequences of these constant digital engagements on our children.

Any opposing views?

Perhaps you're not using it correctly or haven't used it enough? I'm more than happy to use either, but find I use e-notes far more than pen and notepad. So much quicker and easier to cut and paste them into documents later on.

Sorry, not a useful phrase, particularly as educational standards have been declining over the years.
Singapore students use pen and paper and it seems to work astoundingly well for them

I support the tech. My child has had compulsory laptops in class since Y8 (just finished Y13 so 5 years of it) and she’s so proficient at digital learning. The teachers can access any of their essays instantly to mark, and write feedback, all the revision aids are digital, and exams are now going digital, university interviews are via zoom etc. Even emailing teachers regularly was a useful skill learnt. She’s never sat in class playing Minecraft or Fortnite. Lots of schools can’t afford paper textbooks anymore. Honestly the tech has been far better than I imagined it would be. And was invaluable during covid.

I mentioned this on an earlier post - who pays for the laptops? Many families wouldn’t be able to afford one, let alone one for each child.

proficient at digital learning

What does that actually mean and why is it useful?

And you can buy a lot of textbooks for the price of a laptop.

But the textbooks are out of date almost as soon as they are printed. As an example, the GCSE spec I teach was first examined in 2018. By 2022 they had changed the set works. Ok, most of the text book is still relevant, but the key information I need to teach is not there. I could buy a new book, but will that only be valid for 4 years? What about class sets? Having the information digitally means I can put the relevant stuff for each class into their Team or One Note and they can access it anywhere they have wifi.

As part of my KS3 curriculum, I do lots of whole class ensemble performing. Before they were all GIVEN laptops (for free - state school - massive fundraising drive) I spent a fortune on photocopying the music, only to find it would last for one class because someone folded it or ripped it by mistake, or asked to take it home to practise but then forgot to bring it back. Now I upload pdf copies of all the parts into their Team. They can work on it at home if they want to. Their parents/siblings can join in too as they now have access to all parts.

Regarding writing and iPads: as a competent musician, I have moved over to using an iPad Pro for all performance work. It's a game-changer. I can annotate copies really quickly and when a conductor/MD changes their mind about a bowing, which happens all the time, I can very easily change it using an Apple Pencil. Finally, instead of needing to carry a stand light in addition to everything else (large instrument, stool, bows, something to stop the spike slipping, music stand), I can change the brightness of the iPad so even the darkest halls/churches are not a problem. I have a bluetooth foot pedal which can turn pages backwards as well as forwards (good for repeats) and it's quicker than my paper page turning colleagues. When I get the chance, I intend to put all my instrument teaching resources on there too as it's so much lighter than a holdall of books.

Yes, the syllabus changes every 3-4 years (ish) but laptops don't tend to last very long either .

@chrisrobin Very interested to read your post about how successful the iPad has been. My dyslexic Y10 son uses one instead of a laptop. At the moment, the organisation is a bit chaotic and there is def an 'out of sight, out of mind' issue. How did your DC organise their iPad, to capture worksheets, prep, things they had done in class, notes? Any tips would be very gratefully received. Thank you 🙏

@Porridgewithnuts the school uses the OneNote app which seems to be good at helping the boys organise things and submit work to their teachers. Both have Apple pencils so they find it easy to annotate the teachers notes and add detail to things. They often use the camera to capture information from worksheets or books and make notes on the photos to add to their revision. My youngest also uses a keyboard case as he will be using a keyboard in his exams, which helps his typing speed.

The entire school uses them and the teachers are very good at teaching the lower years how to use all the apps to organise their work. I'm afraid I don't really have any tips, they have been using them since Yr 7 so it is second nature to them both. There is a scan function on the iPad notes app which your son may find useful, but taking a photo works just as well.

When schools roll out iPads it becomes impossible to remove it from the children’s room before bed. They will also spend a lot of time on the thing, claiming it is “school work”.
At school they spend break and lunch sat on it, instead of running around outside with a ball. I am stunned that schools are pushing this beast on children.

I wouldn't like it, it won't be good for their eyesight to be staring at screens all day. I'm lucky that DD's school uses paper and textbooks, ipads are only used for specific things (it lessons and occasionally maths games) and they don't have their own. But it quite likely will be different in upper school, I think they use laptops and online textbooks there, DD will hate it as she struggles reading on screens.

My adult school has everything on our laptops (provided for us but we don't take them home) but several people in my class just print everything off and read from the printouts instead, and I write everything down in my notebook as its the way I learn - nothing sticks in my memory if I just read it from a screen, and I can't be the only one with that issue.

It means she is proficient at using Word and One Note, annotating on screen, giving video or Teams presentations, using digital gantt charts in Excel, organising work planning via a digital diary, following 2 years of GCSE spec and curriculum via the schools OneNote structure. All the sort of stuff that just transfers easily to functioning in a digital world. How could that possibly not be useful?

My younger DC has had a school issue ipad for over a year (he's year 9)
It was compulsory to have a school one rather than one you might already have (we are pretty awful with tech so he didn't have one at home) and we could pay in instalments albeit the first 2 instalments were £100 each so fairly chunky payments.
He still has to take books in to school. It's a state comprehensive

In terms of price- be glad if it is just an ipad. My DS has to have a mid-range Surface Pro 9 at a cost of 2k. They do all their work on them and the school is effectively 'paperless'. It is very efficient and I like many aspects of it but I do wonder how he will cope with writing his GCSE and A Level scripts by hand.

I teach in a specialist autism setting and all of my pupils have a Chromebook. It is a game-changer for them as so many of them have perceptual and motor barriers to handwriting. They all have EHCPs so they will be able to write their exam scripts using a laptop.

Not our experience at all. Our boys were given iPads to use from Y7-Y11 (the school leases them). They didn't have phones in their room at night, yet alone the iPads ('impossible' to set and enforce rules for your own children?). And when COVID struck, the transition to remote learning was seamless. Likewise when the school has to shut down half its classrooms because of RAAC recently. The key to effective tech use in the classroom, is to know exactly what it is there for; if you just chuck it in for the sake of it, then yes, it can be a problem. But as part of a clear pedagogical approach, iPads can be a fantastic tool to support learning.

I can’t stand them. The school seem to be trying to just provide the same course materials they would use normally but digital versions rather than adapting their approach the fit with the technology - so handouts to be completed are on Teams but the answers are in random pages
jotters. Every topic has materials spread out all over the place and the kids aren’t on it enough to put consistent headers and dates at the top of their physical stuff so they can tie it back to the digital stuff. So all these kids with terrible attention spans are distracted by trying flick through different folders online and jotters etc for topic revision rather than just work through a folder of work as I used to. For my DC1 this would be manageable but for DC2 it makes the whole process harder.

I agree OP
At our DS's school his maths homework is an app on an IPad. He doesn't do it.
His reading was on an app on an ipad. He didnt do it.

I won't encourage our DS that he needs a screen for everything.

What happens for pupils who families can’t afford the school iPad particularly those with more than one child at the school?

Was a disaster for us. School moved to iPad in year 6 and last year was GCSE for us. Kids went from never writing to writing for hours over consecutive days and a lot of them didn't have the hand strength or dexterity and couldn't manage multiple exam sessions in one day.

We've moved schools back to a paper and pen one with compulsory laptops which aren't used a significant amount. It's also got a mobile phone ban. The iPad has gone in a cupboard and removed from use.

Fully agree. My son is 21 now, so slightly too old to have experienced the "compulsory" digital schooling, but even 10 years ago, when he started secondary, they were using the show my homework app, an online VLE for viewing worksheets, revision notes, etc., electronic textbooks, and email for contacting teachers and for teachers to email worksheets/work for cover teacher sessions etc. Most pupils had smartphones and would take photos of the white board and lab experiments, etc. In music, sometimes the homework would be to write their own piece of music using a music generation app. To learn vocab in languages, they'd use an app called quizlet that they could do on the move, such as when on the bus. They even had to make a video in French to put images to a French poem. Using excel, word, and powerpoint was very common.

It did DS no harm at all. In fact, he benefitted massively because he was terrible with handwriting, so he could do his homework much quicker and more accurately (and better edited etc) by doing it on Word rather than writing by hand.

By the time he got to Uni, it was all online anyway, nothing was on paper. All "admin" with the Uni was via their portal. Lecture notes, worksheets, past papers etc were all online. Any "hand written" work he did was scanned/photo'd and uploaded to the portal for marking. Yes, end of year exams were a worry for him, but he managed, and he'd already "passed" his degree anyway because he'd got very high marks in the projects, weekly tasks, etc., so all he had to do was get 40% in the final exams to get the "pass" in them. In the end, he did far better than that and got his First in Maths!

Now he's working in one of the UK's biggest insurance firms. Everything is done on the work provided laptop. His entire office block is entirely paperless. He's only used a pen twice in the 3 months he'd been there. Once to sign a leaving card, and the other time to sign in at reception when he forgot his lanyard/pass! He's doing further studying/exams to qualify as an actuary, and all that is entirely online too, even the exams.

Pen and paper is the past. If people want to use it, then they're free to do so, nothing is stopping them, but people need to realise that most workplaces are now computerised and needing pen & paper in a working environment is getting less and less common. I watched my car being MOT'd at the weekend - the mechanic did all the "ticking boxes" and recording measurements etc on a tablet!

Yes, at the time, we worried about him spending too much time on screens as he also spent a lot of time gaming on his xbox and laptop, but we "parented" him to make sure all devices were turned off mid evening to prepare him for bed, and we made sure we took him out enough, or that he went out playing footie with his friends or whatever, to get a change of scenery away from the house and his screens.

I genuinely don't think he'd have done as well as he has in a "pen and paper" World. His handwriting was awful, he hated reading books, etc - all that was before his screens!

Evidence?

Yep, I'd love to see evidence too!

My son fully embraced tech in school, which meant he easily adapted to full use of tech at Uni, and now full exclusive use of tech in the workplace and further professional study. He's far from being handicapped!

Use of tech greatly improved his organisation, dexterity, planning, etc. Although he doesn't have a disability nor handicap, he really struggling at primary school, and when he got to secondary and started embracing the tech, it was like flicking a switch for him. It was clear that in the "less tech" subjects, he continued to struggle, but in the lessons where tech was embraced he absolutely flew!

My DC does none of this because they use the iPad. Typing essays with two fingers hunched over an iPad while their laptop gathers dust on a shelf as they say they can’t access all the school stuff on it. I tear my hair out at all the Word and Excel skills they could just be picking up naturally using their laptop which they are missing out on and are going to have to learn separately. I’ve been working for 30 years and v little if that pen and paper but in the places I have worked, most people are using actual PC/laptops and not iPads. Those who have jobs out and about in the community speaking to service users have iPads for good reason - they have a place - but they are not suitable for everything and I think laptops in school are far more sensible.

So get him a keyboard case for the iPad... masses of choice on Amazon and they also protect the iPad from damage.

DD uses one instead of a laptop as it's lighter weight and has the added photo functions. At 14 she's now a fluent touch typer.

You can also install Word, Excel etc via Office 365, and things like Grammarly.