Are tablets useful for students?

HGSE Adjunct Lecturers Justin Reich and Tom Daccord decided to analyze whether the use of tablets in the classroom will be beneficialor, or contrariwise, will be an obstacle to education. And whether the new technology investment will be justified step? They proposed to estimate you would spend on the organization of the laboratory,if you got the money back, which spent in the 80s and 90s?

It is absolutely obvious that it is not enough to get the equipment. To apply high technologies, it is necessary to transform the methodology and ways of learning, and to develop a clear strategy, following which new technology will enrich the quality of education.

Reich and Daccord note that since both iPad was released, there was a splash in the use of tablets in schools, but unfortunately there was no splash of new techniques that are adapted tablets to the learning objectives. The tablets are mainly used for creating notes and finding information on the Internet. But in iPad classes takes place the best work towards the creation of new types of media that enable collaboration with colleagues and communicate with a wide range of like-minded people.

School leaders need to do some things before to make investments:
Work with their areas for a clear definition of improves instructions of new technologies.

Work with teachers to explain them the methods of new technologies.
To lead the teachers and the students from the consumer use methods to use tablets for the creative.

It is the best to get the integration of new technologies in those schools that have been created around a clear pedagogical view. It is more difficult to implement it in ordinary schools, but if you focus on it aim, all can be achieved.

The authors conducted two case studies about the effectiveness of using the tablet, in one case, to encourage reflection on the obvious facts, and in another - to support collaborative learning on a global scale. In this and in another case, students who used iPad, were able to create multimedia projects that cannot be created using other technologies.