There are many mobile devices out there today that allow users to surf the internet, play games and download applications. In addition to being a great source of entertainment, mobile devices are also an excellent tool for learning and education.

Technology has always played a major part in continuing the education of the human race.  Years ago, computers that filled an entire room were used to help with research at major universities.  Later, Desktop computers arrived in our schools at the same time as they became an appliance in our home.  Now, mobile phones and tablet computers are used by individuals of all ages for educational purposes. Below are 5 of the best devices available on the market today for Mobile Learning.

1 – The iPhone

Did you know that the iPhone (and other mobile smart phones) have more processing power than the computers used by NASA on their Lunar Missions?

The iPhone is filled with thousands of educational apps that let users of all ages learn all sorts of things. iTunes U, one of the now standard Apple applications which is used at more than 1200 colleges allows students to access textbooks, course material, videos and more for each class they take. This content may have been designed by a professor at MIT or their own class teacher!

In addition to university level courses being accessible via the iPhone, apps designed to help toddlers learn their shapes and colors are used daily by little ones holding their parents phones.

2 – The iPad

Like the iPhone, the iPad has access to thousands of educational apps, iTunes U, and a mobile browser that lets individuals connect to the endless information on the internet.  But the iPad also has some advanced learning opportunities.

Apple has released software, iBooks Author, that has allowed experts of all subjects to create amazing interactive books that can be downloaded by iPad owners.    These books can help people learn computer programming languages, new spoken languages, or even how to improve online marketing efforts.

3 – Samsung Galaxy Note.

Having one of the largest screens in the tablet market, makes this a great device for learning. Along with the front and rear facing cameras.

One of the keys features that separates this device from the rest, is the use of the S Pen which gives the function of pen and paper on the large display, great for taking notes in class or even jotting down your ideas and theories while on the go.  When integrating this technology with Samsung’s Smart School solution, you have a truly interactive experience.

4 – Google Nexus 7

The screen on the Nexus 7 is a bit smaller than most tablets (just 7 Inches) but the price of this powerful device makes it great for educational institutions and elearners. Unfortunately, this device only has a front facing camera, which limits it’s ability to conference with others for learning, discussion and interaction.

It includes built-in Google technology for easy and quick access to the world’s information and it also supports Google Now which learns with it’s user to display the most important information at just the right time.

5 – Kindle Fire HD

This device is much more geared towards content than apps, which make this a great device for textbooks, educational movies, and access to educational pdfs. This is the least expensive tablet and Amazon has been selling them at bulk discounts to schools across the country.  Additionally, Amazon’s Whispercast service allows easy management of fleets of Kindle devices. Many trials are running in schools in Florida and Texas, so we shall see where Amazon takes this. For a basic tablet to get rid of all those bulky textbooks, this is the one you want.

We have incredibly powerful devices in our hands every day and they are prefect for mobile learning.  Find the device that’s perfect for you and your needs and start learning while on the go today.

 That said, even these great apps, that no doubt you read about all the time – Evernote, Dropbox, iMovie etc, don’t do everything we need them to do.

The key to successful technology integration in schools is to get the staff on board. To get the staff on board, you need to show them how much easier life becomes with the technology, as well as how much better/enhanced the learning can be. There will always be a core group of teachers who get on board without much fuss and these people are what keep you sane when you’re trying to push things forward. I will discuss the role of ‘champions’ in a future post.

Back to what we need to get devices functioning at a higher level in a classroom. My wish list includes the following:

An integrated marking and record-keeping app

There are a number of mark books and registers out there to purchase in the App Store and there are a couple of perfectly reasonable marking solutions out there using PDF annotation apps like iAnnotate PDF and neu.Annotate+. I’m also testing out the beta version of an app called Markup, which is specifically designed for marking homework. All of these apps share the same sort of features – you can scrawl and in some cases type over student work once it is in PDF format. With the Markup app the clever bit is that it is delivered to the app and sent out of the app by a unique email address which is useful. But what all of these tools lack is a way of recording what you’ve just done. Whether that is simply putting a grade next to a students name or recording a few notes (written or verbal) about the work whilst it is still in front of you, you can’t do it and this is what we need if marking ‘online’ is ever going to take off. And until marking a text document on a tablet is as easy as using the ‘comment’ function in Microsoft Word on a desktop, you know that the right solution hasn’t made it to the market place.

A heads-up app

Reading about the spec of the new Amplify tablet was interesting as it was clear that the designers had actually talked to teachers. There are some ‘good’ functions in there, including a ‘heads up’ button. Personally I don’t entirely endorse this idea. but I also understand that for some teachers to embrace this technology they need to feel that they have controls above and beyond their old style of classroom management. And I understand this – it is daunting to be faced by 20-30 students all looking at a screen you can’t see. If there was a way of controlling at least when their screens were ‘live’ it would be reassuring, at least in the short term. I think building it in to the functionality of the device is a little limiting and perhaps even insulting to those that do know how to manage this environment effectively. It may also encourage those that can’t, not to reassess their teaching.

Live screen-sharing en masse

There is no denying that Nearpod is a great app. It does a lot of very clever things and I have never seen a class engage so deeply with a task as when I have used it. However, one of its limitations is the ability to share ideas that just happen in the class. Whilst you could build in these types of slides into your presentation, that would defeat the idea of a natural development of ideas! If we could have an app that did this, it would be a winner. Obviously Apple TV gets around this problem to a certain extent, but sometimes the personal and private nature of being absorbed in your own screen can be very powerful and focusing.

 Subject-Specific apps designed with Higher Order Thinking in mind

In many ways this was my primary motivation for writing this piece – the lack of really classy and sophisticated apps for specific subjects. Don’t get me wrong, there are some truly beautiful apps out there that have been designed by the best of the best, but these apps are not necessarily aimed at stretching the brightest minds and this is a problem. Technology will always suffer if skeptical teachers get their hands on an app and say ‘that’s too simple.’ They need to look at an app and be confident that it is more than just lip service to ‘real’ learning. An ‘education app’ also needs to be more than a one-trick-pony if it’s going to be ‘paid-for’. Free apps can do one thing well and nobody minds, but schools can’t justify buying a grammar app, a story-writing app, a handwriting app, a Shakespeare app etc all for the same group of kids – the economics just don’t make sense. A good education app will need to allow students to learn in a structured environment, at their own pace, pushing and testing them across a range of topics within a curriculum subject. It’s a big ask, but it’s also the only way to get cynical tech-denying teachers on board – you need to give them a irresistible proposition and in this instance it is an app that can teach at least as well as they do on their very best days in the classroom.

Microsoft Office App

I can see that this is probably going to be a controversial point to finish on and let me preempt this by saying that I do not believe that the iPad needs Microsoft Office apps. What I do believe is that as with the group of people I outlined above, you are going to get more people on board with your project if you offer them something that is a hybrid – something that is partly new and frightening, but partly familiar and comfortable. By offering a ‘Word’ app, you would be doing just that. I know that it’s unnecessary and that you can make Microsoft and Apple play nicely enough, but if using technology in the classroom is about making life easier for teachers and better for students, then sometimes you need to take the small, awkward steps to achieving that goal.

I’m sure there are lots of other things that education needs in the way of apps and software, but these are just some of my initial thoughts on the matter. I’d love to hear what it is you’re waiting for someone to invent/release/develop.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan. I might even describe myself as being someone close to the cutting edge of what is going on, but the more I read, the more concerned I become about the quality of what is going on in schools.

For every success story, there seem to be a couple of examples of really poor practice; schools that have launched a 1:1 initiative that has backfired, or teachers that use web-based-project-based learning as an excuse to sit down and let the kids get on with it.

I don’t blame these teachers. I don’t blame the IT guys who help rollout devices to students. So where does the blame lie?

 I’m not sure I have an answer, but I suspect that the ‘real world’ outside of school and perhaps the internet, might not be entirely without guilt.

The problem with the real world is that it functions at a different pace and in a different way to a school. Schools don’t need to be progressive to be successful, they simply need to produce good results. If you look at league tables in this country there are not a lot of ‘progressive’ schools at the top. There are however, a lot of schools that are built on a reputation of excellence. Excellence is defined in these league tables as schools which get really good exam results and sometimes by the number of students that they get to university. There is no doubt that these schools do very often give their students the most incredible of extra-curricular activities too, but one must wonder to what extent these schools are leading by example when it comes to looking to the future.

A business must be adaptive, flexible and innovative to keep itself afloat in today’s aggressive marketplace. A school must be rigorous, solid and dependable. There is an inherent contradiction here.

Businesses want to utilize the latest social media to let as many people in their key demographic know about the products they offer as possible. They want their customers to be excited about what is being offered to them, to know that they are valued and that they are getting a great deal. The business world is competitive, but this manifests itself in such a way as (generally) benefitting the customer, otherwise they lose out to someone else.

I won’t bother making the comparison with schools; I think it’s fairly obvious that what is described above is not what we get in the classroom.

For a school to thrive it needs good exam results. For its students to survive, a school needs to teach them skills and prepare them for reality. At present this is an unhappy juxtaposition.

I am not naive enough to think that educational technology can solve these woes. The technology is only as good as the hands it is in. But, in this way, I think I can offer an important insight.

Technology used well in schools can offer a tangible link to the outside world – it can be a bridge in many different ways to what is happening outside of the classroom. It could act as a link to other schools, learners and countries that will enhance the experience that students can have in a classroom. They also offer an idea of the type of workflow they may experience when they leave school. Organizing your work on a mobile device is inevitably the future of schools, but it is the reality of many businesses already and certainly will be by the time the students currently starting secondary school leave.

There are a lot of people who think that students using things like iPads in classrooms are pandering to the pressure of being cool/current/getting carried along with a passing fad. In some schools this may be true, but in general, this is a naive assumption.

The world progresses. We don’t write on slate any more. We don’e use chalk. We don’t force kids to use fountain pens. We let them type work. We let them use the internet (sometimes grudgingly). Each of these steps were painful for the teaching profession to move away from. Many thought that those that leapt first were insane. But the truth is simple. The world progresses. And, so too do schools (eventually).

Educational Technology is not a gimmick if done right. It is an inevitable progression of how we teach our children. What is important is that we learn how to use it in the best possible way. This may mean changing the way we teach. It may mean changing the way a school functions. It may mean completely redesigning the concept of school.

I’ve said ‘maybe‘ a lot in the previous paragraph. I didn’t mean it. It definitely will mean these things change, I just know that this is frightening for a lot of people.

How can teachers help?

To start things off, I think teachers need to take a step back and evaluate where they stand at present.

There’s a very simple model from the 1980’s (Schulman 1986) which outlines what makes a good teacher that I think few would argue with. It goes like this:

Now, this model has been redesigned (Mishra & Koehler) to incorporate our current tech-centered needs and now looks like this:

The point is simple. Teachers need to be able to understand how to embed technology into what they do. But you can’t do this unless you’re already a good teacher. The technological side of it only comes into to play if you already knew how to balance pedagogical knowledge with content (subject) knowledge. Only then can you understand how best to integrate an iPad into a classroom.

The biggest problem with Educational Technology to date is that the people that sign off these projects, or design ‘education apps’ didn’t have Pedagogical Content Knowledge in the first place – they just guessed at what we needed and threw something our way expecting us to figure it out. Which is why there’s so much to read about on the internet – slowly but surely there is a great team of people around the world who are beginning to make sense of all of this and eventually, the people who make the decisions about these things are going to have to listen and look at the models that work. These are almost always going to come from the people who have been or are at the coalface of education.

What is fascinating about teaching 6th form students is how 2 significant things change in the classroom: the teacher stops standing at the front of the room, and the use of varied teaching resources stops. Of course this is a horrible generalization, but it is certainly true more often than it is in other lessons.

Frustratingly this combination is what stops pedagogical progress, both for the older students I have just described and the younger students who have a teacher at the front of the room, but more access to varied teaching resources.

Now consider what you usually read about the classroom of the future: picture huge, multi-purpose spaces that allow for seminar areas, group work using a projector for feeding back to others, private work areas and an area for IT use. How many schools do you know that have classrooms with this amount of space? Perhaps if we were building a school from scratch then this is the type of room you would make, but most of us are not starting over, we’re trying to reinvent with what we’ve already got – small classrooms on long corridors and class sizes we can’t do a huge amount about.

So there’s no magic wand to make the walls we’ve got disappear and the students contained within those walls to diminish to a number that we feel comfortable with, but, by utilizing technology in the right way, the dynamics of the classroom could be radically changed for the better.

There is no need for a teacher to stand at the front of the room. Whilst sometimes I teach a class size that doesn’t permit me to sit with them, because there aren’t any spare desks, since September I have at least had the option to change things, and not just when I’m teaching 6th Form and I can do this whilst utilizing the very best in technology-based pedagogy. But putting technology to one side for a moment and if you don’t action anything else in the wake of reading this article, simply try sitting amongst your students; it changes everything.

My classroom is pretty standard in size; it has a desk at the front with an Interactive Whiteboard dutifully mounted on the wall behind it. I then have my desks arranged in two horseshoes, one inside the other. When I sit with my students I sit in the outer horseshoe as this still allows me to survey the group quite easily. From a practical point of view I was able to make some interesting observations bout the room, the way I teach and the ease with which my students are able to take on the information being relayed to them.

Observations:

1. The shape of the desks would work so much better if there was only one horseshoe as then everyone would be able to see everyone else.
2. Sitting at the back of the room, the quality of the screen is poor and it’s hard to read – either I need glasses, or it’s time to increase the size of font I use.
3. There is a lot of wasted space at the front of a classroom – the teacher’s desk is  ridiculous dividing wall between student and the content that is learned during a lesson.
4. There is no need to stand at the front of the room, but you still need to move around and engage one-to-one; whilst sitting with them improves the dynamic of the discussion and the quality of what goes up on the screen (because you see it as they do and not as something you are doing for them to absorb), being ‘static’ in the classroom can only work in short bursts.

But what matters more is the less tangible aspect of what happened. When I sit with my students they pass me their work far more often – they ask for feedback at ‘irregular’ times, ie. not at the end of a unit, or a set time, or after a homework. They just felt more able to let me look over what they’re doing. This kind of constant, informal feedback has been really useful in stretching the most able but also supporting the weaker students. It may seem obvious, but it also meant that often we were looking at the same thing in the same way. By this I mean that because I have my classroom set up so that in any given lesson, at the very least I have an iPad (often the students do too) and an Apple TV, no matter where I stand or sit, I can show my students whatever I’m doing, looking at, researching, teaching and they can do the same. So our attention may still often be set to the front of the room, but now I don’t get in the way. I see what they see – I see if what I’m showing them looks worthwhile, if it’s presented in an engaging way, if it’s even legible. All of these things matter, but when we’re at the front, we don’t remember that they matter.

In a 1 iPad classroom, it is still possible to go around, take a quick snapshot of someone’s work and push that up to the board through Apple TV. This in itself revolutionizes the classroom. If you have a 1:1 environment then you can bypass Apple TV altogether on some occasions and use Nearpod instead. This way there is no front to the classroom, there is a just a group of learners focussing on their device, but absorbing the same information. What makes Nearpod revolutionary is not the fact that they are all looking at the same presentation but on a personal device – this is barely any better than PowerPoint – what makes it great, is that each student can respond to questions within that survey with complete anonymity and yet their response to any question may be pushed out to every students’ device for discussion. Every student responds and engages in their own way, the stakes are raised as anyone may have their answer chosen and the quality of the learning improves as a result.

By moving away from the front of the room, you don’t have to give up teaching using dynamic resources, you simply need a way to take them with you. My current setup lets me do this. I can be delivering quality content (in fact often the content is better than it was when I only had the Interactive Whiteboard) but I can do it from anywhere. Anytime, anywhere learning isn’t just about students going off and learning in their own time, it’s about finding ways of making the classroom a more dynamic space. I can now be an anytime, anywhere teacher in my own classroom. The technology that students could have access to allows them to work in a variety of different ways. Without knocking down walls or installing multiple projectors and mini IT suites, they can work in groups, do private study or reading, create presentations and feedback to the class with just one device and I can be anywhere in that room and immediately show the rest of the group, the learning that is happening. The learning is more personalized, there is the feel of a smaller, more closely knit group and yet the makeup of my classes hasn’t changed. That, I believe, is the reality of the classroom of the future.

From 8th January – 22nd March I chose one class, my First Year class (aged11-12) to give up using exercise books, reading books and textbooks. Instead, they would use only digital mediums that were available to them through an iPad that they were supplied with during each lesson.

Evernote would do two of the key things I really needed – it allows my students to curate their work (which can be produced in a multitude of mediums) in an orderly, logical fashion, and, perhaps most exciting, it allowed me to observe their work as they created it, through shared notebooks. In addition to this, we have utilized other parts of the Evernote family by using Skitch and Penultimate which automatically sync drawings and handwritten notes amongst other things) straight to your main Evernote folders.

The answer is, yes. As a result of this experiment I have had to adapt and adjust the way things have been done in the past. The most obvious change is the way I have approached my marking of their work. I felt that if I had gone to the trouble of setting up a digital portfolio of their work, then asking them to print it off each time I wanted to mark it would be a backwards step, especially given that I had access to the work whenever I wanted it. So, I marked the work on my computer. For each note that they created, I had a corresponding Text box on a Pages document. As I read the work in Evernote, I made both formative and summative assessment of the work as I saw it. The flaw in this plan at the moment, is that I’m not physically putting ‘pen to paper’ in order to correct work, instead I’m pointing out errors through my comments. Whilst I don’t see this as a particularly bad thing, it is something I am going to experiment with in this second half of term using a PDF annotating app, which will allow me to open up their work in a secondary app and make actual corrections to the work. That said, the summary sheet that accompanied this scheme of work was very well received by parents; there was a sense that this document gave them the clearest possible indication of how their child was progressing in the subject and was more accessible than trying to look through an exercise book. I have also got the impression (though I will attempt tot collect data on this) that parents have been quite heavily involved at home with regards to discussing and using Evernote and the iPads in general, which has had a very positive impact on how the whole ‘experiment’ has been received. 

Evernote, the related apps and then the iPad in general have allowed my students to produce more varied work than they would have without it. There notes are organised, unlike their exercise books. There is far less missing work, there are no missed deadlines and they feel that this work is more important to them. 

In this next four week period these same students will continue in this trial. I will collect data from them about their own perception of how their learning has been challenged/improved and how they would hope to progress from this point. They will be studying A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which they will read as an iBook. They will continue to curate their notes in Evernote, but in this second half of the trial I hope to challenge them to use a wider variety of apps, come to me with their own recommendations, and maintain the high standard of curation that they have started. I hope to address the difficulty of marking, so that I can feedback in a wider variety of ways and I hope to continue to produce work in as many different mediums as possible. Already they have created a short film of the opening of the play using Puppet Pals, and I’m looking forward to seeing how things progress. 

 Apple TV has been around for a while now, but it is not as famous as the devices and machines that the company have become famous for. In many ways, its use in the domestic household is limited to a few really neat tricks. But, when you get this device into a classroom, I would argue that it is a game-changer.

1. You are the front of the room

With Apple TV you don’t need to stand at the front of the room. You can move, you can sit with your students, you or your students can teach the lesson form anywhere in the room. By standing at the front of the room we often act as a barrier to our students seeing what we want them to see – our personality (good or bad) can hide the more significant message that we are aiming to deliver. You can also divert attention away from the board at the front by sitting with your students – keep them guessing and keep them focused by moving their attention away from where they would normally expect it to be, whilst still being able to deliver the content you want them to see at a moment’s notice.

2. Improved pedagogy

Once you’re sitting or standing with your students, you get a pretty immediate picture of what it’s like to be them. You will see what they see. Sometimes this is quite alarming and disappointing. That resource you thought looked great, is barely visible to the kids at the back of the room, or the quality of image that you chose simply doesn’t cut it. If we want our students to engage with our teaching, we need to show them that we care about what is put in front of them. Similarly, you will have a clearer sense of the variety of resources you put in front of them. Standing at the front delivering learning day in day out, you can forget how repetitive you can become in your methods. You will soon get a clearer sense of what works and what doesn’t by sitting with your students.

3. Instant Feedback

Even if you only have 1 iPad in the classroom, you have the option of going round to any student and taking a photo or video o f their work and pushing that up to the board for all to see. This sort of immediate feedback is difficult to replicate in any other way and the ease with which Apple TV produces this effect is impressive. It has been difficult for student work to generate and indeed be the focus of a lesson until we have already seen it, marked it and photocopied it for the rest of the group. Now, it can become the lesson simply because you’ve seen good learning happening in the moment.

4. More dialogue

Coming hand in hand with instant feedback is the fact that you will be able to generate discussion with individuals and the whole class about the work that they are doing. Just as the ‘flipped classroom’ model allows less time to be spent on going over the mundane or repetitive aspects of learning and allowing instead for the focus to be ‘deeper learning’, Apple TV allows you to concentrate on soft skills such as collaboration and discussion whilst still being focused on specific learning tasks.

5. Improved motivation

At any moment you could ask a student to beam his screen to the front of the room, or take a snapshot of what a group has been doing. Knowing this has a real impact on motivation within a group. Some will be excited about this prospect – having an outlet for their work being publicly acknowledged is a thrill and a just reward for those that work hard and need their confidence boosted; students want to be praised and dislike being embarrassed, indeed this is true of most people. So, the flipside of this point is that those who don’t readily work hard, have a reason to.

Apple TV is one of 3 reasons that set the iPad in the classroom apart from the competition. It really does allow for change that improves the learning of our students and if you get a chance, you should try it. As with all of the best things that Apple has invented, it is simple and it works. (In case you’re wondering, the other two reasons for using an iPad over a different device are iTunesU and iBooks Author.

Aside from the fact that they were both free, the two events could not have been more different. One was chaotic, overwhelming in its size, underwhelming in its ability to inspire and poorly lit, the other was cool, calm, slick and intelligently indoctrinating. It doesn’t take a genius to work out which was which.

For all it’s faults, BETT was one of the better exhibitions I’ve seen at the Excel centre and it does give you a quick snapshot of what is out there right now. I was able to see all the tablets on offer, including a very interesting prototype device from Promethean, which has real potential in the primary market. What was evident immediately though was the lack of Apple’s presence. It’s hard to imagine how Microsoft’s Surface would hold up to a direct comparison with an iPad and I left BETT with the realization that there are a lot of teachers and directors of ICT who ma;y never have that opportunity. Because without this side by side comparison it’s just not possible to answer the most fundamental question when considering what you’re going to invest your money in:

Which device fits the needs of my school?

Is this the question people ask though? Do they simply look at the Surface and think, great, it has Windows and a USB port, i knowhow to work that, it is what I want. Or do they look at the iPad and think, great, I’ve got an iPhone, Apple is cool, the kids will love this.

It’s important to be as clear about your needs as possible before you go to an event like BETT because it’s so easy to be jollied along by a good salesman, or turned off by a bad one. Which mobile learning device to buy is probably one of the most important decisions anyone in your school is going to make in the next few years, with regards to teaching and learning. Not because the device itself will make students more or less clever, but because if you get it right, everything you do could change for the better.

If you choose the right device, students will be more engaged, attendance improves, learning is recognizably more independent and more thorough. Choose wrong and things won’t get worse, they will simply stay the same.

Whatever you think of Apple, they understand what is needed in the classroom to make positive changes happen. No, they’re not cheap, no they don’t make it as easy as it could be to integrate with your Windows environment or you plutonium-grade filtering system, but when you get the technology to work, you can really see results.

The reason for this is that they do exactly what author/speaker Simon Sinek suggests: they start with the WHY?

At the Apple Education Leaders Summit I found myself sitting in this classy venue, listening to motivated and engaging speakers constantly hitting me with answers to that question – Why Apple?

Whether the answer was ‘engagement’, or ‘results’, or ‘pedagogy’, they had an answer based in evidence and inspiration.

When I asked why the Microsoft Surface would be the answer to my classroom needs, I was told that it ran Windows 8 and had a USB port.

The Surface is a great product that IT departments are going to love, because it offers a solution that fits in with their current ecosystem.

As a teacher, as someone that wants to help move education on to the next stage of its journey, the ‘why?’ is important. The ‘why?’ needs to be more than a twist on the ‘what?’

As a teacher I don’t care if the device has a USB port, what I care about is that there is a workflow which means students can have access to their work whenever and wherever they are and that they can get that to me. Ports and sockets aren’t the only way to facilitate this.

There are a lot of different ‘why?’ questions that you might need to ask. The answer might be that you end up with a device you didn’t expect. The most important part of this process however is not 1 person in an exhibition hall, conference or shop floor thinking that they have found an answer; the answer can only come once you have put devices in the hands of staff and students and shown them (or had them show you) what that device can do for teaching and learning. If it becomes a centre-piece, it’s failed, if it becomes invisible, then you’ve got it exactly right. The device must facilitate good practice, it cannot replace it.

In no particular order, these are the criteria that I looked for when choosing the right device. On a physical level the device must allow:

1. creating ebooks
2. creating video
3. creating presentations
4. sharing of screens with peers and teachers
5. printing
6. making and curating notes in multiple mediums
7. annotation of different mediums
8. cloud-based storage and sharing of files

Most importantly, the device must be simple enough to use that it facilitates independent learning, whether there is a teacher to supervise this or not.

A good friend of mine (also a teacher) came over for lunch last week and he said to me that his school, like so many others across the western world right now, are in the process of making ‘the decison’ – what device and when? Actually that’s two decisions, and he wasn’t even quite convinced that mobile learning works yet. I thought he scepticism was refreshing. I’m often surrounded by people that are pushing an agenda; my device, my app etc is the best and you should use it.

He said to me that he had been on a couple of courses and no one had yet addressed what he believes to be the most important question – where’s the proof that this method works. Where’s the actual evidence that results are going to get better?

There are a lot of answers to this question.

The evidence is out there. But, the evidence is only out there for schools that were really struggling before they got the devices, so how much if the impact is about improved attitudes, confidence and feeling that if someone has given them this deivce that they are really investing faith and time in them? What about ‘ordinary’ or even ‘good’ schools where results aren’t an issue? Do students get that same buzz? Time will tell.

But there are other ways of answering this question.

Maybe we’ll find that results don’t get better. Maybe results don’t matter as much as the fact that you’re not ‘deskilling’ them; we’re not sending them off into the world of work without the knowledge of how to work using these devices. In a few years time, certainly by the time the current generation are done with school, we/they will laugh about ‘desktop’ computers. They might well laugh at the concept of tablets too, but at least we’ll have pointed them in the right direction.

Legacy counts for a lot – we are always going to teach; the way we do it will and should change, and it’s important that the generations that pass through the hands of teachers see that they engaged them with skills and ideas that were put in place to help them. The fundamentals of science, how to spell, what happened in a certain year, the water cycle, these things will live on in ‘schools’ whatever they might be, but just because fundamental knowledge doesn’t change, doesn’t mean the way it is delivered should also remain static.

Innovation takes many forms, but nowhere do you see so many of these, than in the best primary schools. The creative curriculum is alive and kicking in primary schools, but it is in danger of being dead and buried in secondary education.

There are a lot of reasons why it might be easier for primary schools to be innovative: they’re smaller, they’re less exam-focused, they’re full of small children who are still totally immersed in a creative world, they’re full of teachers who are not subject specialists and they value creativity.

On the other hand, a secondary school has more staff, more pupils and in theory, they’re more well-resourced. But these things don’t seem to make the difference. What does, is the idea that when you get to ‘big’ school you have to act like the ‘big’ boys and girls; an idea perpetuated as much by parents as teachers. And being ‘big’ seems to mean not needing to be creative.

Hopefully the sad irony of this definition won’t escape you!

I don’t remember getting to 11 and suddenly becoming a grown up. I remember wanting to do a lot of the things I did when I was 10, only perhaps in a more sophisticated way. I certainly don’t remember thinking about working hard in French because it’s going to count towards the EBacc and if I don’t get that then I’m going to amount to nothing.

These thoughts are the sorts of things that worry parents and teachers, not children. Children want to learn; if you’re a teacher and you don’t believe that, then you probably work in a secondary school and have forgotten that this is an essential truth about your students. Children want to learn, but they want to be engaged too. They do not want to be straight-jacketed, shoe-horned, or any other such analogy, into learning in one particular way, and they don’t want to learn because there’s a test at the end of it (until they get to the point where we have taught them that actually that is the most important reason to learn anything).

There are some really great primary initiatives out there; two of my favourite ideas are the mantle of the expert and the idea of themed, cross-curricular learning. The first idea encourages independent learning and the latter is all about contextualising learning and blurring the lines between subjects.

I’m lucky enough to work in a school that encourages independent learning, but this is not the norm. It’s also true that cross-curricular activities do happen in secondary schools, but these are the sorts of things that you only do very occasionally, perhaps when exam classes have left, because they’re a real trauma to organise. These learning techniques are not easy to come by when you’re worrying about passing exams. In fact, unless you’ve been allowing this sort of learning to happen continuously, it is difficult to see how it could exist for a GCSE class worrying about saying and writing the correct answer.

I have been guilty of a terrible pedagogical crime – an ‘independent learning project’. I look back at this now and cringe. It is simply ridiculous to tell students that they are going to learn independently, but only for the next six weeks, then it’s back to normal.

Innovation in primary schools is much more deeply embedded. This is evident in terms of innovation with technology as well. Restructuring the use of IT resources in primary schools seems to be more simple and more successful. If a primary school decides to introduce a new technology, or adjust its network, it is done and it will work. In secondary schools, this can be true, but it seems that the whole process is more painful.

Primary students are growing up in a world in which they will never know anything but an immersion in technology. They are using laptops and tablets in the classroom because this will seamlessly lead them on to whatever technology comes next. They’re learning through games, through apps, through independent research and through being given freedom to make connections between different subjects.

When these students take their first tentative steps into secondary education it’s crucial that it is not a backwards one. They should be walking into an environment that builds on their experiences of learning and technology. They need to be holding up-to-date equipment and learning to use it effectively. At the moment this is not a reality for many students, but eventually we will reach a point where this will no longer be an acceptable failure. Innovation in education must not end simply because there’s an exam factory that requires our students’ attention, it must go on in spite of this.

It’s likely to be embarrassing for all but the most cutting-edge of techies to start making predictions over what will be the hot property of 2013, but the most probable headlines include ongoing battles between Apple and Android, Apple and Google, Apple and Microsoft, rumours about devices that will never see the light of day, or never existed in the first place and the ongoing challenges of integrating technology into schools.

Over recent months, educators in the UK have received news of a fast-approaching deadline that is potentially as disastrous for the education system as the looming fiscal cliff is for the US economy. Michael Gove has revealed his new National Curriculum reforms and they centre upon the scrapping of GCSEs (national exams taken by all students at the age of 16), and replacing them with the EBacc (English Baccalaureate). Whilst the coming and going of national exams is nothing new in the UK, the implications of this move are significantly more terrifying than what has preceded it.

Until the summer of 2012, GCSE pass rates had gone up every year in its 24 year history, leading to complaints about falling standards and easier exams. The reaction to this in 2012 was to be more brutal with the marking than in previous years and punish this year’s cohort in order to silence the critics of an exam system in its death throes.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary has reacted to this by replacing GCSEs with a system that removes the creative arts and technology-based subjects from the equation.  Subjects like Art, Music and Design and Technology will not count under the new EBacc system. They are not rigorous enough.  There will be no coursework in English any more, but there will be lab-work in Science, because experiments are a core part of studying science (unlike essay-writing and analysis in English of course).

Artists of all varieties up and down the country have reacted badly to this decision, but little coverage has been given to the fact that technology and computing aren’t making the cut either. As far as I can see, the pay off for this decision is that ICT should be embedded across the whole curriculum. The problem with this of course is it heralds an end to the already dwindling heritage of programmers and coders learning their trade in a formal setting.

But there’s a more immediate and frustrating problem with this setup; it simply ignores the fact that we’re in the 21^st Century which is a place that is built upon smart technology. We need to be giving students at least the option to participate in learning about this stuff. We want them to leave school being literate and numerate, but digital literacy is becoming just as important.

So at ‘opposite’ ends of the spectrum, the arts and technology are being squeezed out; schools are not likely to use up funding on subjects that aren’t going to count towards their results and so students will have less options about what they learn and probably as a result, how they learn. The combination of art, music, DT and ICT teachers offer a real plethora of learning styles that will begin to disappear. And, arguably, all the creativity, in its many different guises, is being removed from the curriculum.

Looking at the bigger picture though, there is a more sinister and depressing message being sent loud and clear to teachers and students alike; exams are still the centre of the universe as far as formal education goes.

No one was surprised that Michael Gove took the approach that he did, but it is still a sad sight to behold that ‘education reform’ is nothing of the sort. There is nothing progressive here. Nothing new. Nothing exciting.

Except for one thing.

There is one small glimmer of hope that is being misapplied, but represents something potentially ground-breaking.

In the new EBacc system, Gove has outlined that it is likely less students will be (academically?) able to sit the exams. This means they could leave school at 16 with no qualifications (or at least no pieces of paper saying that they have passed exams); this is pretty much the worst thing you can imagine in terms of a sign of failure in this country. However, in this new system, instead of leaving with no qualifications, these students will leave with a detailed report of their achievements, written by the teachers that have taught them. This will then be passed on to potential employers, or higher education institutions, who may give them the chance to sit the exams at a later date.

Imagine that. A report, written by people that know you, outlining what you have achieved. Not, a piece of paper that was produced by people that don’t know you, but are very well equipped to gauge how much you crammed into your head and then regurgitated on a given day.

Quite the trailblazer this Mr Gove. It’s just a crying shame that he has reserved this idea for those deemed to have ‘failed’ in the system. On the other hand, it may just be the thing that saves them?

When I heard of this, I immediately thought of iTunesU, of MOOCs, of Khan Academy and of the growing number of places one can go to get an education without getting a piece of paper at the end of it. People that sign up to take these courses are doing it to better themselves. They can give a detailed report of what they have learnt without the need to sit an exam. They have been focused on learning for its own sake, not learning to an exam. Technology has enabled like-minded academics to setup this situation and like-minded people to pursue this course of action. It’s quite inspiring and potentially life-changing on a global scale. Access to the great minds of our generation, for free, anywhere, anytime. And not to gain a piece of paper, but to gain knowledge and to learn, to pursue an interest, to better yourself, to improve your career prospects. These are all noble reasons for taking this path. Far more noble than ‘there is a test at the end.’

The moral of this story is that sometimes the great ideas are buried away amidst a heap of stuff you wish had never made its way into the world.  It is highly unlikely that Gove will realise his missed opportunity, and even if he does see it, he will choose to overlook it, because ultimately we live in a society (and I mean this in the global as well as local sense) that demands quantifiable results. Pieces of paper with numbers on them will always hold more sway with policy-makers than essays and pictures that have to be interpreted and discerned.

Perhaps this will not always be true. Perhaps this global education phenomena of ‘free learning’ will transform the way we do things. But sadly, if I had to make one prediction for 2013, it would be that at least one of these massive open online courses starts awarding ‘credit’ so that students can get a piece of paper when they’re done. I entirely support the sentiment behind this – education for all. It is absolutely noble and in the current climate, the only obvious route to take. It’s just a shame that it is a noble principle built upon a bad system.

2013 is unlikely be the year when education changes forever, but maybe it is the year when you become just a little more disruptive. There are teachers willing to be different, there are learners who are willing to learn, there’s technology helping and linking all of these people together in ways that were unthinkable even 10 years ago. So now is the time to use this impetus to push the innovation and disruption to a new level. Do something you have never done before. Forget about teaching to the test, flip your classroom, let them use mobile/cell phones in your lesson or just rearrange the desks so that there not in straight lines. Do something that is unexpected. There are hundreds of people out there who have thousands of great teaching ideas that don’t involve exams, that don’t want to belittle creativity, who want learning to be the best it can be. So, let’s make 2013 the year that we don’t just join the conversation about education, but actively try to make a change.

The biggest and most oft-heard criticism of the iPad usually revolves around it not behaving like a desktop PC or laptop. The people making this complaint are simply missing the point. Apple aren’t trying to make a laptop replacement, why would they? They make a couple of extremely good ones! The iPad is a new kind of device that asks you to think and work differently.

The fact that it isn’t a laptop, to me, is its greatest attribute:

The SAMR model suggests that there are 4 degrees of sophistication for using technology in education:

As you can see from the diagram (created using Paper by Fifty Three) the most sophisticated levels involve ‘Transformation’. This means using technology to do things that weren’t possible before technology came along, rather than just modifying the existing status quo.

I believe that the iPad makes transformation far more possible, indeed likely, than a laptop. A laptop does the first two stages in the SAMR Model really well. Word processing and all of its tools for example is an outstanding innovation, but it isn’t changing anything except our efficiency and accuracy.  The iPad, its workflow and its apps, allow for real change and makes it easy. Your students will create work that not only wasn’t possible before their innovative use of the technology, but that you as their teacher had never even thought of.

2.       Creative workflow

Because the iPad doesn’t run Windows, but its own unique operating system (known as iOS) it works very differently to what many people are used to when they pick up a ‘computer-like’ device. The iPad functions through a clever combination of internet browser (Safari), email and apps.

In the latest update to iOS we have seen far greater connectivity between apps, meaning that they ‘talk’ to each other far more willingly, making the workflow even more exciting.

The fact that you can take a photo using the camera, import this into a whiteboard app to annotate, import it again into a screencasting app to discuss it and then save in a cloud-storage app, simply by following the workflow of ‘open in’ means that what was once cumbersome on a desktop or laptop is now obvious. What required lots of lengthy downloads and expensive, specialist software can now be achieved by quick downloads, with easy to find and very often free or very inexpensive software.

Occasionally though you will hit a brick wall; either you personally will not know how to do something using the device, or it simply won’t be possible. In many ways this is when the device comes into its own. Whilst this can be frustrating, I think that the iPad’s strength lies in the fact that there are always multiple ways of doing things and the setup of the iOS is such as that it encourages you to think about problem-solving in a creative but also remarkably logical way. Students will invariably find their own way around this device and it is highly likely that it will prove to be a different and perhaps more effective path than the one you chose – I know I have found this time and time again!

3.       Apple ecosystem

Yes, Apple devices are more expensive than most other devices. But I think it is fair to say that you get what you pay for. If you can find a way to not just integrate iPads into a Windows ecosystem, but to actually create an Apple ecosystem then you will know what Steve Jobs was talking about when he said ‘it works’ because it really does. The simplicity of how Apple devices talk to each other and work together is a remarkable thing.

I have seen the difficulties of working in a Windows environment and how frustrating it is when teacher’s want a specific piece of software, or download and I have seen the hassle vanish in an Apple environment.

Undoubtedly this takes a financial and training commitment that few schools can afford, but seeing it in action is to discover a real meeting of efficiency and style.

If this simply isn’t possible, then it is worth knowing that Apple is making it easier for their devices to work with other types of machine.  Apple TV works irrespective of what type of desktop or projector you have and devices such as iPads will work seamlessly on a wifi network even if it is Windows based.

4.       Focus on education

Over the course of a year I receive a lot of promotional material from people running training programs for IC T development, ICT in the classroom and best practise with regards to technology in the classroom. Of this mountain of material I would say that 60-70% is specifically to do with iPads or other Apple technologies. Of the other 30%, Apple will feature as part of the package being offered in almost all cases. I don’t remember the last time I received something from a course supplier that said ‘come and try out the latest Windows-based technology that will make your classroom a better place.’ (Perhaps the introduction of the Surface will change this, but its early incarnation is not hugely promising.)

There is no doubt that Apple have invested heavily in education and they want to capitalise on this. I read recently that Bill Gates has given many millions of pounds to education funding as well, and yet over here in the UK, I have seen little evidence of this.

Apple and Google both offer programs for educators who are keen to demonstrate what their products can do and having attended conferences and meetings with such people present, it is clear that the investment in finding these representatives who are, or have been teachers, makes a real impact on you as a delegate.

It’s great to hear stories of how others have made technology work in their classroom and it makes you want to go out and achieve the same thing.

5.       Aspirational

If teachers don’t understand that Apple’s slogan doesn’t just apply to their technology, but the way we teach with technology, the battle to prepare students for the world will be lost.

It may not sound entirely convincing to say, but the truth is that Apple products are highly desirable and respected. Students want to own iPads and iPhones and anything really that starts with ‘i’. This makes a difference when introducing new technology and more importantly, new pedagogical strategies.

To do so with a device that they want to engage with makes the learning process better. In a recent questionnaire to my students, one commented that ‘materials that were learnt using the iPads are remembered better.’

It’s a simple reality that if you give someone a way to do something that they can relate to, engage with and enjoy, they will do the job you give them better.  Students are vey workman-like when I give them laptops. They know what is ‘expected’ and they get on and do it. When I give them iPads, I don’t know what they’ll produce at the end of it and often neither do they. If that scares you as a teacher then iPads are probably not the right device for you. If this excites you, then try and get hold of just one. Hook it up to an Apple TV and see what you can do with a few apps and a newly revitalised class,