Mike McSharry

There was a tweet on Sunday from from a trainer who said his most useful app for the classroom was the camera.

Is this how schools should be getting value for money in these days of austerity?

Over the last year or so we’ve seen an explosion in the introduction of tablet devices in schools. Notice the word introduction. Not exploitation, not innovation. Yes, they are in some places.

On my company website you’ll notice iPad apps on the main menu. 6 months ago that space was taken up by PlayBook. If you’re old enough to remember the explosion of VHS there’s a fair chance that you don’t know that Betamax was a far superior product. The Ethernet network you’re using? Token ring was technically better. In my view the PlayBook is a better product than the iPad.(Build quality, camera, audio recording, HDMI recording and playback to name a few).

The iPad App Store obliterates anything BlackBerry have produced or likely will produce. This post was written entirely on the ‘Posts’ app on my iPad. (Note – I needed to use the web based editor in WordPress to tidy up a few excess extra lines).

So, back to the ‘camera’ is the top app. It begs a few questions for most primary schools.

“How are going to share those pictures?”
“How are you going to get them on your network?”
“Can those pictures easily be incorporated in to pupil portfolios?”
“How are your KS1 pupils going to easily use the large format iPads for taking pictures or movies?”

What are your views on this?