Tablets for school

[toomuchicecream]

I teach in a very small primary school and have responsibility for a number of subjects, including ICT. I'm happy to use MN, discussion forums, DH's ipad, my iPhone and a windows laptop, but that's as far as it goes. I'm the most technologically aware member of staff at school....

All ICT teaching/use at school is via a trolley with a half class set of laptops, so the children either share or half are on the laptops and half doing something else. That's fine, but as the server is so ancient (and due to be replaced in 2014) it takes ages to fire the laptops up and get them ready to go - and can't be done too long before the start of the lesson because then the battery won't last all morning (not long enough to charge them up between successive classes using them). Also, each class is restricted to when they can use them to 1 timetables slot per week plus any time no one else has them.

So I'm thinking the way forward is a set of tablets - half a dozen to start with, so one group can be using them at a time, and then once we've got the hang of how to manage them we can get more. At least that way we'd get round the problem of only have 2-3 hours battery life and the amount of time wasted waiting for them to be ready. I'm thinking that initially they'd be used for the internet (including some subscription websites we buy into where each child has their own account) and then apps for phonics/grammar/maths practise etc.

Does this sound like a good plan? How do I decide which tablets to go for? And most importantly, can anyone suggest any killer arguments for the Head Teacher about why it's a good use of funds! Am I missing something obvious? TIA

I've seen some primary schools using cheap android tablets and Bluetooth keyboards to good effect but they did also have some classroom pcs. You may get a better response/more ideas if you post your question on the TES forum or the forum pages of Computing At School.

(MB: I am assuming that you are connecting your laptops via wifi, not plugging in with an Ethernet cable)

If your laptops are taking a long time to connect at the start of a lesson, you probably need to have a look at your wifi network, not just your server.

I work at a junior school and we have class sets of laptops and iPads, but we had major problems connecting before we upgraded the wifi. An ordinary wifi access point won't usually take more than about a dozen connection without problems, whereas the managed system we now have has coped with all 30 laptops in one classroom and all 30 iPads in another (plus all the teachers' slap tops) without any problem. And that's with a pretty old server which, like yours, is due for replacement next year.

Can you contact a school already using them? Dd2's primary has loads of iPads and there are a set number for each year group.

Dd says that sometimes there are enough for every child in her class to have one and they use them for maths games, on the internet (looking things up), making movies, using garage band to make music, bebot to learn directions, telling the time apps and times tables stuff.

The school also has a studio and does a lot of creative arts work including making movies and radio shows.

Pm me if you want their contact details, I'm sure they would love to tell you the benefits of technology on learning.

One thing to think about - if your subscription sites include ones that use Flash (such as education city) you will probably need androids not iPads. Although you can get browser apps that can play flash based stuff, I haven't yet found one that will work with a proxy server, which most schools use.

My DH is the ICT chap for the primary school where we both work. We are a largish school with about 400 pupils.
He has looked long and hard into some kind of tablet for our school. He hasn't found anything that will do what we need and work with the proxy servers etc. We have decided to stick with laptops.

The question you need to ask is what do you want to do with them. Remember many tablets can't print.