How fantastic for a little country school to win that prize, that’s wonderful. I’m pleased that you and other teachers have commented here on the educational value of the equipment, so really, I just have to suck it up and bear the cost, and hope for no breakages. Wish me luck.

Thanks for your great comment. It’s wonderful to hear how they are actually being used in the classroom. Love that you built a blog! I agree that technology has an important place in classrooms, my big concern with this is the idea that the kids are carting this very expensive equipment around in their school bags, I really don’t want to be replacing iPads throughout the year, but if every kid has one you would have to otherwise your child is disadvantaged.

In my primary school, each class has 10 iPads for the students to use (mostly 30 children per class and it’s provided by the school) – that’s from Reception to Year 6. I’ve downloaded (with the help of some of my Y6 children) quite a lot FREE educational apps that we used for Literacy and Numeracy. It’s very interactive and if done effectively, it’s such a fun way to learn! They can send/connect their work to our printer and stick the tasks to their books (as evidence). We never use Facebook to interact to other students. There are apps that you could use to help them with their communication skills or you could build a WordPress blog for interactions and peer feedbacks (like we did in my class).

“I’m not convinced that i-Pads to every Year 7 student is necessarily the way to go” – YES! I agree with you on this. This is just absurd, not to mention, VERY EXPENSIVE! How about the parents who can’t afford it? Our 10 iPads in our class are used alternately between students. So usually, it’s 2 per student or even 3-4 students. Half of the class can either go to the laptops (again provided by the school) or research to the books provided for them then the groups of children swap after 30 minutes.

Oh and our iPads doesn’t have any protective covers. We emphasised (and say it over and over again!) to the children HOW MUCH EXPENSIVE IT IS! So they only carry two iPads at a time and we have a safe to keep all the iPads.

Right, sorry, this is too long. Such a good entry!!!

It seems to be the latest big thing for 2013, I know there are other schools in our area implementing them in primary school (although they are getting a choice of which tablet they would like to purchase). I do get that for the teacher’s sanity it’s important to have everyone using the same piece of equipment. It’s interesting to see such an enthusiastic take-up by the school for this equipment, we live in fascinating times, nobody really knows what all this access to technology will have on kids in the long term, I hope it’s really positive. But as someone who has been spending a lot of time online with this blogging thing I can see the benefits but am also very aware of the negatives as well.

I think it is another tool, and probably a useful one, I think what gets me riled is that it is a large expense and do they really need to have access to a personal iPad both at school and home? Gosh Year 4 is early. Thanks for the heads up on the bed thing, that’s the first place I’ll look when we lose it (should be around week 2 I reckon).

I have this image in my head of them all sitting around “messaging” each other rather than interacting, but I could just be over-reacting!

Wow no individual computers even in Year 12, that’s incredible.

Isn’t it annoying when those pesky kids interrupt your computer time!! Joy to you too Noreen.