Creative use of Tablets in Schools

Before we look at some individual cases, let's briefly explore what research tells us about the use of tablets in schools. This should be helpful for you to reflect about your own reasons why you want to use tablets in your teaching and learning. And if you are already an experienced user of tablets in your classroom, does your experience correspond with the views presented in the video below?

Below the video you will find an overview report about tablet use in schools done by the University of Minho as part of the Creative Classroom Lab project. Research on this topic has only recently emerged and there is still a lot more work to be done in this field. But if you, colleagues or your school leadership would like to get an introduction to research on this topic the below report is a good place to start. You can also download the report as a pdf using the link at the bottom of the page. Here you will also find a link to a literature review on research looking at tablets in schools done as part of the CCL project.

You can find further research related materials in the Additional Resources section of this module.

For comments and questions about this section please proceed to the Padlet in the next section(1.2) where we can summarize our ideas after having explored some views of teachers on this topic.

After looking at some answers from research, we now want to get some answers from the teachers and students who have been working with tablets on a daily basis in the classroom. Take a look at what the teachers and students of the Creative Classroom Lab project say on what the added value to learning and teaching is and why they want to continue using tablets after the project finishes.

The students presenting their views on tablets in the video are from 2 schools that participated in the CCL project. The primary school students are 5-6 year old 1st Grade students from the Colégio Monte Flor in Lisbon, Portugal. Together with their teacher Rui Lima they used tablets during the CCL project to flip the classroom and to personalize their learning in order to learn more independently. The secondary school students from the school ITT Buonarroti in Trento, Italy worked together with their teacher Daniela Gruber on the topic “collaboration & assessment”.

After watching the videos think about your own situation and how you would explain to a parent or school leader why you are using or want to use tablets in your classroom. It is fundamental to reflect about this and develop some form of vision of what you want to achieve with the tablets so that you can explore as a next step all the factors that require addressing in order to achieve this.

Share your answers to these questions in the Padlet below and also include them in your Learning Diary (just copy and paste them).

1. Strategy & Planning
2. Bringing Tablets into Lessons
3. Professional Development

In each module we would like to introduce you to at least one interesting app, website or tool that you can use when teaching with tablets.

Most of these video introductions were done by teachers in their free time during the Creative Classroom Lab project so a big thanks to them for putting in this extra work. 

As Diana mentions in her videos, it is essential to think about a consistent form of how students and teachers share and communicate with the tablets which is why it is important to have the right kind of virtual learning environment in place at an early stage. 

Therefore, this week's video comes from Craig Bull, Assistant Vice Principal at the Skinners' Kent Academy in the UK and provides you with an introduction to Edmodo, a free virtual learning environment that's excellent for communicating and sharing resources with students and supporting collaboration in across the school. 

Are you using Edmodo in your classroom? How is it working for you? What advice can you give to other teachers? If you are coming across Edmodo for the first time, based on Craig's introduction how could you use it in your classroom? Share any thoughts, ideas and resources on the Padlet below.

Resources for getting started with tablets:

• Appsakee is the specific subsite of a Belgian-Dutch educational portal dedicated to the use of tablets and apps: www.appsakee.be (Dutch)
• • Tablet Use in Belgium Flanders:https://youtu.be/ZktKcG6KdrI (in Dutch, with English subtitles)
  • Inspiratiegids Tablets in het lager onderwijs, EPUB Format (Dutch)
  • Inspiratiegids Tablets in het secundair onderwijs, EPUB Format (Dutch)
• Information on CCL project in Lithuanian: http://ccl.emokymasis.com/klaip279dos-simono-dacho-progimnazija/ccl_2-projekto-kas-atsitinka-cukrui-arbatos-stiklineje-ataskaita
  • Interviews with Policy Makers: https://youtu.be/cTrgMIOG2j0
  • Tablet Use in Belgium Wallonia: https://youtu.be/hnay6b0Xh4A + https://youtu.be/6zUDwoZUBWg (in French, with English subtitels)
  • Tablet Use in Austria: https://vimeo.com/89384509 (in German)

Research and newspaper articles on tablet use:

• Making Learning mobile- Stone Middle School: Project evaluation results - 2012/13 school year
• Pearson Student Mobile Device Survey 2013
• BBC News: Tablet computers in 70% of schools
• Geo magazine: Lernen mit neuen Medien (German)
• NMC: Horizon report on school education
• L'impact de l'iPad sur l'apprentissage des élèves  (French)
• “Using nearpod in elementary guided reading groups”
• Tablet vs. Paper: The Effect on Learners' Reading Performance
• Naace: the iPad as a tool for edcuation - a case study
• Tablets for Schools: Updated report on the use of tablets in Education
• White paper on Tablets and apps in school
• Introducing Tablets in Schools - The Acer-European Schoolnet Tablet Pilot

Each module activity focuses on collecting key ideas and resources on your learning diary. In this first module you have 3 tasks:

• Creating your Learning Diary
• Answering the 3 main questions of the module on your diary
• Adding other resources, comments, ideas you have come across in the module to your diary

1. Creating your Learning Diary

In the course introduction this task was already outlined but if you haven't done so yet, now is the time to create your learning diary. We highly recommend you use Padlet for this but any online environment where you can collect digital artifacts and which you can easily share using a link is possible. 

In this first week, start out by introducing yourself, your classroom and school so that anybody reading your diary will understand better the context of your work on the course. Remember, these diaries have to be submitted in the final module and will be reviewed by other course participants.

You can find an example and a video on how to setup your Padlet in the course introduction.

2. Answering the module questions on your diary

In Module 1 there were three main questions. Each question should make you REFLECT ON YOUR SITUATION and the use of tablets:

1. What is your main reason for using or wanting to use tablets in your classroom?
2. What whole-school challenges do I already face or do I anticipate facing when using tablets?
3. What classroom challenges do I already face or do I anticipate facing when using tablets?

You have probably answered these questions already as you went through the module. So all you need to do now is copy your answers to your learning diary.

3. Adding other resources, comments, ideas to your diary

There are a lot of resources on this course and there will be even more material to look at as soon as everybody starts posting to the Padlets, on social media and in the Forum. It is important to filter all of this so that it becomes relevant for you. This is your final task for this week. Go back through the module and select a couple of resources, comments or ideas shared on the course by other participants or by the instructors which you feel are important to come back to at a later stage and post these to your diary.

AND FINALLY, why not post a link to your diary in the Tricider below so that others can take a look and provide you some feedback. Please note that you will have to post your link again in the final module. Just posting it on the Tricider below does not count as formal submission of your diary which is required in the final module.