Back to school madness is in full swing in our house. That means early alarms going off, rushing around in the morning and cranky kids. However, there is something new this year at least in our household. There aren’t books all over the dining room table like last year. That’s because our son’s High School is now putting everything on iPads. That’s right all books, all notes and all assignments are all on one device.
Long gone are the days of heavy backpacks or lockers packed full of books. No more highlighters to mark books or making book covers to make sure the books last longer. The school has a one-iPad-per-student model and believes it will expand student access to engaging tools and resources.
Engaging is the word I would like to focus on here. One of my son’s teachers goes as far as posting assignments and directions on her own YouTube channel. What better way to connect with kids than to do it on a medium they love to use. So I watched one of the sessions and it was great. Long, yes, but still good and gave students step-by-step instructions.
Simultaneously as this is happening at home, at work our team has just launched a new monthly magazine. Our topic this month is education. The magazine has tons of content about how technology is changing the way we learn. One of the stories even focuses on the one laptop per child program and our contributing writer talks to Nicholas Negroponte who founded the program.
That said I now know some people don’t agree with the one-iPad-per-student model, but this is a digital world we are living in now. What better way to have our kids adapt than by having them do all of their work on one device and also engage with their instructors online during the process. I have to admit, sometimes it does freak me out that my son barely knows how to write in cursive, but he can probably type faster and find something online way quicker than I can. The best part is I know he is getting a good education and learning about the importance of this increasingly digital world at the same time.
I am really amazed to the development in the education sector, specially everything going so much tech savy. Indeed its great that teachers and students both are making full use of the tech in the right direction.
However that said, I believe this use of tech is still limited to countries like USA. Students in India (I believe all the schools) are still dependent on Books and don’t use such high tech methods of study.
I am surely going to atleast ask the teachers I know to follow such teaching methods.
Thanks for your comment. It really is amazing and I think you are right in saying technology is not used the same in other countries. However I do know there are programs in emerging countries that Cisco does sponsor as well. Take a look at this link http://csr.cisco.com/casestudy/teach-for-america
What an amazing story. It’s really great to see schools and organizations who embrace change and are not afraid of it.
I absolutely love that the teacher has their own YouTube channel and uses it for homework. Really awesome.
I’m currently enrolled in the Cisco Networking Academy and am using an iPad for all my books. I was not sure at first how this would work out but the advantages are becoming very clear.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Jesse, I am glad you found this interesting. I do agree that there are advantages to the books being on the iPad and then you are also able to take notes on the same device. I am sure it does take some getting used to as well. Thanks for your comment.
The development of such education in the United States will someday occur also in developing countries. Right now, my son is in elementary school are already being given the task to search for specific topics on the Internet. This is a good first step in introducing children to the world of online / digital.
Certainly not as sophisticated as in the U.S., but for developing countries like Indonesia, it is a progress compared to when I first school.