Last week New Zealand hit the edu-geek press with the news that a school in Wellington is trialling using Tablet PCs amongst their year five and sixes.
There has been lots to say about this project and about some of the dollars that are being spent on increasing connectivity and capability for New Zealand teachers and schools. Computerworld journalist Stephen Bell provided an interesting analysis of the press release information. He notes that the initiative could be a useful little earner for HP as it is one of the few vendors still selling tablet PCs.” Not quite true. There are several big name vendors selling Tablets , it’s just that many of the vendors are not well known here in New Zealand. Motion Computing? NEC? Fujitsu? And Lenovo or IBM? Toshiba? Off the top of my head …
Overall the article is a positive report about the value of putting tablets into the hands of kids and the importance of the government putting some dollars into ICT in schools in general.
Stephen Bell’s last paragraph is worthy of comment:
The children say the tablets provide for a quicker method of recording data in real-time, but say they would prefer a simple spreadsheet rather than the specially set up, but perhaps inadequately explained, database entry form provided. (italics mine)
In this case it’s not the tablet that is the issue, it’s the activity that is the problem. The kids can use the Tablet PC but are not quite sure about the activity they are doing. Surely the same issue would occur if they had been using a regular laptop or desktop computer – or even a pen and paper. So in this case it’s the design of the activity that is the problem.
Apparently there was a bit of controversy about this story:
There is little need for computers in day-to-day education. It may be nice to use Google Earth to see where you live, but Google this (or that) is not going to teach you the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic.
and this:
Kids doing this kind of survey should stand outside with clipboards and pencils, and make marks on sheets of paper. They should then transfer the results to the white/blackboard. After that, they should draw, on paper, their own little bar chart showing the results and then colour it in.
And on the discussion goes.
What is being ignored here is the reason why we put kids in front of computers (on in this case, computers in front of kids). It’s to allow access to other ideas. It’s to allow data and ideas to be manipulated and shared and focussed upon. Yes, children need to do the old tally charts and construct graphs by hand. But, they don’t need to stop there. They need to be able to look at those tally charts and elegantly constructed bar graphs (and pie charts and line graphs) and identify what the data is telling them. Once a child has made a few graphs in their maths book do they need to go on forever making pretty colourful graphs? Or does it then become more important to analyse the data and develop some ideas or conclusions? And then maybe find ways to appropriately share their conclusions.
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As a new tableteer, I am interested in how they are being used in education. One of the huge advantages of a Tablet PC over a traditional desktop or even a ‘normal’ laptop is the smaller form factor and the way that it combines the best of paper with the best of digital. Sometimes a screen becomes a barrier in a discussion; the tablet, because it resembles a diary or notepad, is far less intrusive. I quite enjoy entering information using the stylus pen and it’s an amazing way to work on digital art. A lot of the time (like right now), it’s easier to type but if I am in a meeting, then I prefer to go into slate (tablet) mode and draw on my screen.
The DigiOps website says:
Brooklyn School is part of the Digital Opportunities Project, a joint initiative between the Ministry of Education and technology partners and is looking at how emerging technologies can help improve student learning. The school’s three-year project named CHaOS (Children Having Ownership of Schooling), is investigating whether pen-based technologies such as the Tablets, help increase student engagement levels and contribute towards enhancing student learning.
I am interested in the Tablet Classroom project. I hope that we continue to discuss what is happening in all of these inovative projects and actually get some hard data about whether “whether pen-based technologies such as the Tablets, help increase student engagement levels and contribute towards enhancing student learning.“
Related posts:
Ahh Nix, intersting analysis,
At issue with any of these market driven intrusions into teaching and learning is whether they make any difference to student learning outcomes – and then whether this difference is unique to the ict involved – and then whether the extra cost of the intervention warrants its adoption
Some literature has suggested benefits for the learning of children when they use Tablet PCs but much of it comes from the manufacturers.
Think you should read Stylus or the Mouse? Using a Tablet PC with young children C. Paul Newhouse Edith Cowan University
The exploratory study did not identify any real advantages of the tablet PC over a desktop computer for a child at the pre-writing literacy level.
None of the advantages claimed by McLean or Warner were evident, in that for the types of tasks, the use of the stylus did not reduce the need for using the keyboard, and merely replaced the use of the mouse which the child was adept at using anyway.
It appeared that for some tasks, such as selecting some of the drawing tool in KidPix he found the stylus more difficult to use than the mouse …
For the child in the study the use of the Tablet PC neither significantly improved nor retarded his use of the technology with the types of educational tasks he completed.
I fear that it is likely the Brooklyn School Tablet initiative will prove to be yet another example of the BPB edu_game