P7 and IPads

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With all the p7s in primary schools being given their own IPads for p7, I’m interested to hear how it’s been going for parents and children?
What type of apps do the kids use and what way are the iPads being used? Is homework being set on them or is it just for general usage?
I’ve heard mixed things so far but would be good to get a broader range of opinions than my own circle!

Hopefully, this might bump your thread a bit.

Sorry, I’m in rural Ireland so I can’t answer your specific question but it might be worth looking ahead to what’s required in your secondary school?

DS started secondary school a couple of years ago and we had to purchase a specific windows based laptop/tablet device costing around €700 for the beginning of his first year. It has a touch screen and can be folded over so is both a laptop and a tablet device. It has been used for about half his lessons and homework is always submitted on it with only some classroom activities requiring handwriting.

However, a couple of the local feeder Primaries moved over to using iPads too in recent years and parents had purchased these devices for their children on the understanding that they would take the iPads with them to secondary school and use them there. Unfortunately, because they’re using different operating systems, they cannot be used in our local secondary school so those parents had to buy the new laptops too. Plus the children had to learn all about the windows operating system which is worlds away from Apple so another big learning curve at the start of secondary school for some children.

I bought DS an iPad when he was 4yrs old and to be honest, it was very successful as he very quickly learnt to read and also learn basic maths from the Apps available. DS is definitely a techie child and had his first laptop when he was around 8yrs and starting to learn coding at a local dojo.

The only downside of all this expense on technology is that there are still some teachers and a few students who are not sufficiently competent in its use. DS and other students have sometimes had to assist a teacher with a tech based problem which does worry me.

The laptops we had to purchase from a specific supplier are supposedly supplied locked down to prevent students downloading the wrong apps etc. but DS easily bypassed the system within the first 5 minutes of owning his. This wasn’t done deliberately but he was checking if he could update the operating system from Windows 10 at the time.

Apologies that my post doesn’t answer your specific question.

It's council specific - some get chromebooks, some ipads, some nothing. East Lothian don't give any at primary or secondary so I can't answer!

Hi, thanks for the responses so far. I guess my question isn’t so much about the tech side of things, more, what were the P7’s actually using them for?
So far, I haven’t seen any evidence they’re being used for learning purposes apart from sumdog. Even then, it’s not possible to see how kids are doing on that app-although I believe the teachers can see what’s being answered correctly.

What I can see being used so far is GarageBand and online games. I was more interested in hearing how other schools are utilising them and what they should be using them for in order to justify this huge expense!

I'm in Fife and haven't heard of this.

It appears to be a policy rolled out in most council areas. I don’t know if the uptake depends on individual schools or not
https://www.gov.scot/publications/laptops-ipads-handed-out-to-school-pupils-in-scotland-since-the-2021-foi-release/#:~:text=The%20Scottish%20Government%20provided%20over,also%20provided%2014%2C000%20internet%20connections.

My P7 gets excited when he gets a shot on the desktop computer 😆

Glasgow have rolled out iPads to all p6, p7 and secondary pupils.
They only have access to the apps the council have approved. There is no access to the normal Apple App Store.
Pupils use apps for recording learning, presentations, research. Also accessibility e.g talk to text, photograph textbook and zoom in / enlarge or highlight important parts.
The internet is also extremely restricted.
This is my experience so far, other councils may be different.

Sorry missed the point about homework. Yes, my experience is homework is shared via Seesaw and children send the work back to teacher to be marked on iPad.

Ours get them in p4 (borders) oldest two (secondary) use there's mostly for their schoolwork and homework. The younger two (primary) do have a variety of games on theirs but they're quite strict so not many. Ds does most of his writing schoolwork on his as his writings so bad...

None in PKC

I'm if Fife and we've been told P7s will get theirs by Xmas.

My S4 has had his since the spring.

At high school it's used for absolutely everything so expecting the same for primary.

Wow it clearly varies a lot from school to school - neither my primary or high school kids use iPads at all.

We're in Stirling. P4s upwards get chromebooks.
Very sceptical about the value in primary. They mostly seemed to be used in class for games.
But this year there's a bit more of a focus on handwriting, and consequently less use of the chromebooks.

All our homework is set online through the Seesaw app, although a 'real' reading book still goes home each week. We also use Seesaw in class a lot and share photos of learning experiences with parents. Personally, I use my iPads every day for translating as we have a lot of EAL children. It's also good for quickly finding visual prompts to help children who are struggling to understand instructions or need extra support. Some children benefit from functions such as enlarged text and text to speech as well. The other apps I use most are keynote for creating presentations, explain everything for lots of different things and Scratch Jr for teaching programming. The apps we have are restricted by the council. They are used for games too but the games all have an educational purpose and are linked to the teaching content. Sumdog looks like it's just "games" but each one is actually aligned to a specific experience and outcome from the curriculum. It tracks the player's progress and adjusts the difficulty level accordingly. The teacher has access to information on which areas the child has struggled with/excelled in and which level they are currently working at. You can also create diagnostic assessments and challenges to track pupil progress. Having said that, I wouldn't let the children play on it for longer than 15 minutes at a time, perhaps if there is a bit of downtime after assembly or jus before home time.

Sorry I should have added that only our P6s and P7s have iPads given to every pupil. The other classes share a set of 30 so have timetabled slots each week.

My son's got iPads from P6 onwards, in my experience it depends on how competent and confident the teacher is with them as to how well they are used in the classroom. Some teachers integrated them really well to enhance the learning and do some really creative things, and others just gave some 'app time' as a treat.

They are used for all homework. My older ds is in S2 and they're used for all communication with pupils, tests, teacher feedback etc. Only draw back is reminding him to charge it!

I like that everyone has access to the same so we don't need to worry about compatibility or having different versions of software. And it costs us nothing.