Every now and then I see on the news that another UK school has issued its pupils with an iPad (interestingly, it’s always an iPad, never one of the cheaper Android-based tablets, even though they would give the school control over the operating system…Apple educational discount deals at work?). There was another one today, about a primary school in London that is going to look at how technology can boost learning. A quick scan of the BBC News website threw up a selection of other recent-ish stories (links – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5), including one that highlights the potential drawbacks of having all this expensive kit laying about the place.
All of which adds to a growing sense that technology is becoming more and more integrated at school level in the UK, that more and more school leavers are likely to be pretty tech savvy and, perhaps more worryingly, that all these students are going to have certain expectations about what a 21st century education involves. The student perception that they’re paying £9k a year for their degree and want something tangible to show for it (aside from that oh so valuable time with our good selves) is also something we can’t ignore.
I’ve been discussing similar issues with colleagues for a while now, mainly around the problems we may face when all of these students start applying for our degrees – should we be issuing our bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (not to mention incredibly young looking) first years with their own shiny bit of kit during welcome week? We briefly toyed with the idea of applying for some Higher Education Academy funding to try to run a new module built around tablet computers, although we never got it off the ground in time to apply for that round. The story in the news today reminded me of all this, so I thought I’d have a little dig round to see if any UK university had taken the step of issuing its incoming students with an iPad (or similar).
The first thing I found (and something that I hadn’t previously considered) was a laptop and iPad loan scheme at the University of Nottingham. Perhaps enough students are coming to university with their own tablet that they we don’t actually need to issue everyone with one, but instead ensure that no one is disadvantaged when teaching and learning is dependent upon the technology? I’d worry though that those students without their own iPad might feel a bit like second class students, and that wouldn’t do them any good as they start their academic careers (nor would it do us any good later on when they fill in the National Student Survey).
A link on the University of Manchester website to pay a £100 fee to replace a lost or damaged iPad suggested that MA Social Work students at least were being allocated a tablet (although a £100 fee to replace a >£300 bit of kit is an interesting bit of economics). Students on the MA Documentary Practice programme at Brunel were loaned a tablet for the duration of their course and the University of Leicester seems to be taking advantage of iPads in a distance learning MSc. My brief search wasn’t able to find any evidence of iPads being issued to incoming undergraduates en masse in the UK, but it looks as though this is happening at the University of Western Sydney – I just hope they got a hell of a discount on their 11,000 iPads.
Personally, I think it’s only a matter of time until this happens here in the UK (my guess would be at a Russell Group University in the first instance, probably of the light or dark blue variety, although I’m not discounting a particularly enterprising and ambitious former polytechnic taking the leap first) and I for one would welcome it. The opportunity to move out of our dark underground rooms and deliver lectures almost anywhere, to record images and videos on field trips and in practical classes and to produce interactive handouts and other teaching resources, with embedded hyperlinks or video files would possibly help to drag some of our teaching practices into the 20th (if not actually the 21st) century.
PS if anyone actually knows of a UK university that is issuing its undergrads with iPads (or similar), please let me know. I’d be interested to know what they’re doing with them, and whether they’re actually an integrated part of the course or a bit of a gimmick at the moment…
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