Do schools need ipads

[CrownCoats]

My daughter’s primary school wants to fundraise for a handful iPads for each classroom. I believe they want to use them for IT lessons and to allow kids to further research the topics that they are studying.

Is this normal for primary schools in the UK? Is IT really best taught on a tablet? My first instinct was that screens have no place in the classroom. Would be interested to hear what others think.

I'm pretty anti-screen and don't like that my child's infant school uses homework apps but I think you're being naive if you think IT doesn't have a place in schools. Primaries are in general incredibly old fashioned and so, so far away from going paperless so there is no concern about not writing with a pencil. Ipads or chromebooks are absolutely essential to teach the Computing curriculum and brilliant particularly for maths apps like Times Tables Rockstars - because they use an algorithm it gets children to practise at exactly the level they're at. I have absolutely no doubt that teaching multiplication is most easily done through IT, having spent many years doing it via paper as well.

Re shelf-life, IT in schools isn't new. Schools had computer suites and laptop trolleys when I started 15 years ago. They also had dreadful shelf lives! That hasn't changed. Buying ipads is inconsequential compared to staffing and building maintenence budgets anyway.

Swedish schools (and I think sone other skandi countries too) used e-learning early on and have found that it had a detrimental affect on learning and retention. They're using pen and paper for many subjects now as there can be a neurological advantage in physically writing out words etc. Computing is a discreet lesson for learning programing etc.

Are people on here cheering for iPads in primary schools not aware the massive issues around the exploitation of children’s personal information , by edtech companies , for their own commercial purposes / financial
gain ?

https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/122639/1/DFC_briefing_on_amendment_146_published.pdf

lots of research from DFC at LSE and 5 Rights Foundation on this. Children are being commercially exploited in order to receive the education that they have a statutory right to.