Tim Scratcherd (the School House Partnership) and I were recently asked to write a report for the Oxford Education School Improvement Series on the use of Tablets and Apps. The purpose of this report is to provide practical support and guidance for school leadership teams who are considering the purchase of tablet devices. The report is aimed at school leaders and teacher in England but the ideas within the report are transferable to other parts of the world.
With permission from Oxford I’ll be duplicating some of the report on olliebray.com over the next week. You can download the full report or order a paper copy over at the new Oxford School Improvement Tablet and App Help Centre.
Part Four - Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on teaching and learning – Choosing and using tablets
Tablet technology moves very rapidly. Before considering the current range of devices available, you will need some general principles for choosing and using tablets. Moving to the use of tablets is a development that requires the same sort of thinking as any other development. So, a consideration of what you want to achieve, where you are now, what it will cost, and how you will know it has worked, within some sort of shared and agreed development plan, is a good idea. For tablets, you will need to consider all the following questions.
What will be the focus of use?
There are two main areas to think about here: whether the tablets are to be tools for teacher use, to help them improve teaching or make management and administration processes more effective, or whether they are for use by pupils, to improve learning processes. In practice it is possible to do both, but for effective planning it is essential to separate these out, because they have different implementation requirements. For example, if you were only to use a set of tablets for teachers to move to a paperless environment, you would be less concerned about the quality of your Internet access.
What sort of learning are we looking for?
The case studies show that, while there are significant benefits in developing teacher use, the real impact comes from a well-implemented approach to pupil use. Therefore, for pupil use, what sort of learning gains are we looking for? Exciting learning, described earlier, is exactly the sort of learning which is possible with tablets. At the same time, there are other ways to achieve learning gains. Do you want learning to take place, where it was not happening before, or
not happening very much? Do you want to engage parents through increasing learning at home and outside formal settings? Or do you want to change the nature of some or all of the learning? This is where Exciting Learning comes in.
What sort of development would we like? Is it top-down, or bottom-up?
There are many instances of schools buying a small number of devices, not just tablets ‘to find out what they can do’, with the implication that if it looks as though they might be useful, more will be bought. This is, of course, an example of bottom-up, or piloting. An example of a top-down development might be the decision to do without an ICT suite and replace with tablets. Bottom- up approaches have the advantage that they are less costly. Top-down approaches have the advantage of immediacy and equality. In both cases, we need to learn from other schools’ experiences, and after reading the case studies, this is the fastest way to find out what they can do. Experience shows that, once a development has started, a mixture of both top-down and bottom-up approaches start to surface. The beauty of tablets is that there is a very wide range of uses which deliver different types of benefit.
Are we clear about the costs versus the benefits of tablets?
At the same time, there needs to be a consistent way of judging benefit. A good method is simply to ask, ‘How much more learning do we get? Is the learning better?’ The commonest reasons for the adoption of top-down approaches to tablets are that they improve motivation, and they increase parental engagement. In both of these, the underlying reason is more and better learning. More learning can be achieved in very simple ways. For example, the fact that tablets start up immediately removes delays from the learning process, and thus progress in lessons is improved at once. After the learning gains have been chosen it is time to ask, is the learning worth the cost? For a rapidly growing number of schools, the answer is a resounding yes.
What is the impact on infrastructure?
Some things are essential for effective use of tablets. The first is high quality broadband, with a robust high quality wireless infrastructure, which all tablets can access seamlessly from anywhere learning takes place. Specialist advice is recommended to review current provision. It is also very important to consider display options for tablet devices. They can be made to connect up to existing projectors, but often it is advantageous to consider display specific to the device, such as Apple TV. This has the benefit of being a local wireless connection for any Apple type device in the classroom. Intel’s classmate PC offers a similar projection solution through its pre-installed software. Thereafter, there are three main areas which require ongoing management.
The first is the installation and use of apps. Here, management issues are the same as for all software. All apps need educational licences. It is important to check the cost of installing an app on many devices. Schools will also want to control the number and types of app available on tablets.
The second is e-safety. The filtering of websites is an issue schools already need to consider, but which also impacts specifically upon tablets in a variety of ways. For example, tablets synchronise with other devices, meaning that all information including any pupil information can be copied onto devices not under the school’s control. It is essential that schools have an up-to-date e-safety policy (see tomorrows post!).
Thirdly, there is the storage of pupil work. Tablets are designed as devices for individuals, whereas the work pupils produce needs to be shared for a whole range of purposes; particularly for assessment including marking and other feedback, and celebration through publishing. Typically this has been done on PC based local area networks by having shared local folders where all work is stored. There can be shared folders for tablets but these are not local and carry with them security and copyright issues. Current solutions are essentially work rounds involving pupils emailing work as attachments to teachers or the use of a cloud based storage system such as Google Drive or Microsoft Skydrive.
Have we considered the total cost of ownership of tablets?
Schools are very familiar with the ideas of capital (start-up) and revenue (running) costs, and these are easily identifiable from the above. Don’t forget to include energy costs in calculations, particularly if you plan to deploy a lot more devices in schools. One cost which can be often neglected is the cost of professional development.
In summary, there are three forms of cost; purchase, maintenance, and the time spent to use tablets correctly.
How are we going to procure?
There will be a need not just to procure the devices, but also a review of infrastructure in general, and possibly wireless connectivity upgrades and a management service or tool for control over apps. This depends upon the nature of the project and the availability of funding. It is tempting, when running a pilot with a small number of devices simply to buy the devices. This leaves the school open to all sorts of risk. Another option is for pupils to bring their own devices (BYOD) which carries equal risk and also brings into question an entitlement to learning for all. In the following case studies the devices start off as being owned by the school, but pass into the property of the parents after an agreed length of time. The two commonest routes taken by schools are outright purchase, and leasing arrangements, whereby the devices remain the property of the school, but parents pay a monthly sum until purchase after a period of time for a nominal amount.
What device are we going to procure?
There is a large range of devices to choose from, but there are only a small number of operating systems used. These are Android, iOS and Windows. The iOS operating system is used on Apple devices. A wide range of manufacturers use the Android operating system to produce tablets of all sizes and functionality. The vast majority of primary schools working with tablets are using the iOS devices, and there are very good reasons for this: the huge and growing range of apps available, covering practically all the ways both pupils and teachers might wish to use the devices; the fact that the look and feel of the device is the same for all of them; their comparative robustness; the growing number of specialist support companies who understand the particular needs of schools; the national network of consultants (Apple Distinguished Educators) available to help with professional development; and the wealth of practical experience available from schools and others.
There are also reasons for choosing devices with other operating systems: Android devices tend to be cheaper, and Windows 8 offers the opportunity of better integration with any existing PC based infrastructure. There is a bewildering choice of Android based devices, and schools need to spend the time comparing features and cost.
More about cloud storage
There are many services offering to store files ‘in the cloud’, which use remote storage through the web. Some of them are generic and some are for specific files, such as photos. While there are many advantages to using these services, all of them have different arrangements regarding copyright and security, and many have other constraints, such as the age of those using them. School leaders intending to use one of these services are recommended to investigate thoroughly before committing pupil information and files to them.
Some key things to consider when choosing a tablet
Have a think about:
- Battery life
- Camera quality and direction
- Build quality
- Quality and range of apps
- Methods for saving pupil work
In my next post I’ll discuss Policy Considerations – you can download the full “Tablets and Apps: How to ensure impact on teaching and learning” report now for free over on the Oxford School Improvement Site.