At Kalinda we are launching a 1:1 iPad program in 2013. As a part of that we are setting up a website where parents can buy or lease the iPads and read information relevant to the program. I’ve just finished writing our rationale for the program for this site, and as our journey is so similar to many schools at the moment, and there are so many parents asking the same sorts of questions of teachers and principals, I thought I’d share it here in case its helpful for anyone else.
1:1 iPads @ Kalinda 2013
“We believe the curriculum we present should be individualised to suit learning strengths, differentiated to meet academic need, and structured in a way that encourages and values our student’s creative passions. We strive to provide this within ‘real world’, meaningful contexts in a way that will develop the varied skills our students will need in order to be successful in the 21st century. We believe the iPad is a tool that can help us achieve that goal to even higher standards.”Our children are growing up in a vastly more complex world than we did. There is now so much information that is freely available on any topic at any time. Communication can happen in an instant with people in any part of the world. Because of this, the ‘basics’ of education have changed. Yes, literacy and numeracy are still the core of our school’s focus. However, school is no longer about learning content as much as it is about learning the skills and habits of mind that will allow a student to be a successful life long learner. Skills like information literacy, collaboration, creativity and innovation, critical thinking, problem solving, and of course ICT literacy all now form part of what should be ‘the basics’ of a child’s education.
As a result, what happens in our classrooms has changed quite dramatically from even a few years ago. Students are now involved in real world challenges that require them to solve problems as a part of a team. Their solutions are designed from their own investigations which involve researching a wide variety of resources and communication with experts and relevant members of our community and the wider world. They are not only learning about the topic at hand, but about the power they can have to affect change in our world, and what it means to be a global citizen in an increasingly interconnected world.
In this environment, ICT tools are essential. It is no longer good enough to have a scheduled ‘computer time’ on shared devices. On the other extreme, it is also not appropriate to have students ‘staring at a screen’ all day. The tools our students use as part of their investigations need to be there, in the background, available when they need them as a small part of a bigger task. Much of the student’s iPad use might be in 30 second blocks. They may need to check a fact, look up where a town is on a map, jot down a key bit of information. Having a tool on hand progresses their learning immediately.
It also allows them to document their learning in a way they never could before. Being able to take a photo or video of an experiment and save it to their blog along with their reflections, recording a video diary of their learnings at each stage of a process, sending photos or sections of a piece of writing to their teacher via email or a shared document to get real time feedback. These things, which were all fantastic futuristic visions only a few years ago, are now being made a reality for Kalinda students.
And of course, in the key areas of explicit numeracy and literacy teaching, our students will have 1:1 access to hundreds of thousands of resources and apps that can support them in their learning. Every imaginable resource is on hand for them, from a virtual calculator, to interactive tables games, to spelling and grammar resources – there are so many possible learning avenues that the iPad makes possible, with every different learning style now being far more easily catered for. These digital resources also allow our teachers to differentiate their curriculum to meet your child’s specific needs in a way that simply wasn’t possible before. Interactive videos explaining specific Maths or English concepts can be accessed by the students at any time in any place. It’s no longer a case of ‘if you didn’t understand the teacher when they explained it then you’ve missed the boat’. Kalinda is extremely excited by the possibilities our 1:1 iPad program represents for our students next year. We hope you are too!
(here is a link to our information session slides for those that are interested)