Monday 7 January 2013

BBC News - Essa Academy: Bookless school where everyone has iPad

BBC News - Essa Academy: Bookless school where everyone has iPad:

An interesting article that offers a number of questions. I have a concern though whilst I am used to students contacting me at any time this is a culture change and needs managing. As teachers we are being expected to work longer hours and take work home - now the work may not stop. Whilst sat at home marking into the evening can I expect interruptions from students asking questions about their latest homework. Surely a better system would be to encourage the students to help each other, set up forums to enable students to help each other. But that's just 'cheating', I here you say, oh no my experience is that students just need a pointer and they do actually want to learn, anyway who's to say they are not learning by collaborating.

I am all for it, bring on the technology but please make sure our students can use a pen as well, we don't want handwriting skills to disappear in the same way as numerical skills have since the advent of the calculator.