iPad Schools (Primary)

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My school is going down the iPad route after trialling it very successfully with one class set. We've found it to work very well and I am really happy the funding has been agreed. I was wondering who else has done this, how it has worked, and how you have used them purposefully in lessons (rather then for the sake of using them,which I know is a trap some schools fall into!).

I'll start the ball rolling - just using them for independent research without having to decamp to the ICT room has been brilliant!

So much to list...
Music! We have an app so they can compose their own little tunes using different instrument sounds and so on, which is SO useful!

iBooks and Kindle on IPad means we now have a much larger range of books available for older children who can read on their own etc;

Then there's the apps about the human body and so on. It makes exploring and learning about it much more interactive, and means we can allow them to go at their own pace much more easily.

And also the stargazer app is great for teaching about space and stars, constellations and so on.

Think about how they will save there work because each ipad will get full.

So far, we've saved everything to an external place somewhere in the ether... It's worked well so far, but can see we will have to rethink housekeeping with 3x as many.

My ds (y5) has used them to video oral retelling of stories, and for acting out scripts for scenes written collaboratively as a group. He's videoed a news report that he wrote. He's worked in a threesome in gymnastics, developing a sequence of movements, then videoed and assessed (taking turns for a pair to practise, third to video, then all watching, discussing and improving). He's used an Art app, music app for composing and made an animation with Lego figures. I think they're brilliant.

They are great, mine like using the app 'pic collage'. Great for posters/making adverts/just being a little bit more creative when presenting work.

How is all this funded? We have a £50K deficit and can't afford pritt sticks, let alone iPads.

Ipadquietly, I'm at an independent school. I don't actually know if there's a subsidy from parents, but we have lots of techy parents who are very happy that it's going to happen.

I'm academy but parents are paying monthly for a portio of the ipad. After 3 years it is the child's to keep.

Ds' primary is an academy, recently converted, and they've historically had good ICT provision. They used last years ICT budget to buy 60 iPads (enough for 1:1 across the two form entry class structure), helped with a hefty donation from the PTA. The feeder secondary uses iPads a lot, and have been involved supporting training and uses.

Ours do research on them, and art, and play maths games.

Funded by parent contributions to school fund.

Ps sorry state primary!

Our PTA is funding our ipad package. We're a highly successful fundraising school and raise in the region of £6k every year. There's no way the school would do it otherwise.

We have 60 ipads at my primary. 3 sets of 15. BUT no one can show me how to download the apps across the set! I have had my own home ipad for over 2 years so know how apps work, but to get them off the school account we have to download onto the apple mac linked to each set and then the mac "cascades" it out to the ipads in one go. Except it doesn't! So irritating to have 15 ipads stored in my classroom and not to be able to use them to their full extent!
Apparently the head is the only one who knows how to do it but an error message came up that she didn't know how to overcome!