Apple’s iPad and its competitors are changing how children and adults of all abilities play and learn. Paul F Cockburn considers some of the possibilties…
There’s little doubt that when Apple introduced its original iPad – believe it or not, as recently as April 2010 – it proved to be a genuine ‘game-changer’. Almost overnight it established the previously much-talked about ‘third category device’, halfway between a laptop computer and a smartphone. Yet the changes it has introduced are perhaps most noticeable in terms of how it’s enabled disabled children and adults to learn and play.
“iPad has elicited a phenomenal response amongst children and adults with various disabilities,” says Robert Saunders, Apple’s Head of Communications for Europe, the Middle East, India and Asia. “We’ve seen countless stories and heard from many parents and teachers about how they use iPad to boost engagement, stimulate communication, and teach children in incredible new ways.”
Further proof of this can be seen in the numerous accessibility prizes awarded to Apple by the likes of the Federal Communications Commission in America and the Royal National Institute of the Blind in the UK.
Darryl Bedford, who teaches art and media BTEC at Oak Lodge School for Deaf Children, in Wandsworth, recognised the iPad’s potential from the start. “As soon as the iPad came out, I could see the value of it as a teaching tool,” he tells Access magazine. “I just thought it’s so portable, very visual; this was definitely something I was looking for.” Bedford, who has since become a recognised Apple Distinguished Educator, is the key driver for technology use at the school and also heads up its special projects and outreach programmes
Understandably, Apple make a great play about their products’ accessibility, from their general light design to software features such as VoiceOver (a reader that describes aloud what appears on the screen) and AssistiveTouch (enabling those with limited physical motor capabilities to simplify gestures). These days we all now have a new way of interfacing with a computer: we’re no longer restricted to using a keyboard and mouse — now we can point, pinch and swipe with our fingers. Or simply speak, even if the likes of “intelligent personal assistant” Siri still have their failings. The App Store even has a Special Education Collection which highlight those apps which have been popular with special needs educators around the world.
But it’s not just how we ‘communicate’ with an iPad which has changed computing; Bedford recognises how using such devices in the classroom has already helped change the ways he teaches. “Some apps will transform what you’re doing in the classroom, and you will end with a final learning activity that looks different from anything that you’ve ever done before,” he says. “I think that’s where the value of the iPad comes from; if you can start to transform how you teach, you really are teaching for the 21st century and you really are catering for students that have grown up as ‘technology natives’.”
Given that children today are likely, at the very least, to have ‘iPad’ in their vocabulary (if not their hands) from quite an early age, this simply makes sense to Bedford. However, it’s important not to be distracted by the many thousands of apps now available. “Sometimes people ask first: ‘Is there an app for that?’ What I try to encourage is to look at the iPad as a tool rather than focusing on the apps. What we need to do is think about what the task is, to break that task down and then find something that’s appropriate for that. Just using the camera and audio (recorder) can transform what you can do in the classroom.”
For example, Bedford recently worked with a group of deaf students on the question: ‘Can you see sound?’ “I used particular apps to visualise sounds; there’s a whole range of them,” he says, “but the point was I was looking for apps that matched the learning outcomes that we wanted.”
Richard Hirstwood, founder of Hirstwood Training, seems to agree: in the past he has pointed out that the “key to a great iPad in education is an iPad which doesn’t have too many apps. Too much clutter on an iPad will mean that you will not be able to find things when you really need them. You will be much better off with a small number of apps that you really know how to use.”
Used appropriately, Bedford welcomes how tablet computers have transformed what he and others are doing in the classroom, even if the final learning activity looks utterly different from anything that’s been done before. “I think that’s where the value of the iPad comes from,” he insists. “If you can start to transform how you teach, you really are teaching for the 21st century and you really are catering for students that have grown up as technology natives.
“Teachers being able to incorporate iPads into the classroom is a wonderful thing. But the students will come with their own apps and their own ideas,” he adds. “One thing teachers need to do is to harness and help students to use the iPad as a learning device rather than just a gaming device.”
Essentially working on the teaching front line, Bedford believes the technological revolution initiated by Apple is helping change even the theories of teaching, what he refers to as ‘teaching pedagogy’. “Modern forms of teaching pedagogy are really hand in hand – and need to develop – with the use of the iPad,” he says. “If iPad – or any mobile learning device – is applied to old teaching methods, then we’re not going to have transformative learning environments. There’s a lot of new teaching theory that goes on at the time, and that really does relate working in teams, working independently, challenge-based learning. Once someone has really understood the pedagogy , that’s when the iPad becomes really valuable.”
The Enquiring Minds curriculum, launched originally in 2005 by Futurelab with the support of (ironically enough) Microsoft, continues to explore ways of preparing children “for a future characterised by rapid social, technological and cultural change”. It’s a curriculum very much embraced by Oak Lodge School, encouraging its students to look at things more holistically. One day a week, Years 7 and 8 come together, combining anything from Maths to English, or Design Technology to Food Technology, to work on ‘real world’ projects. Not only does this encourage students to work in teams, but also to develop their concepts, eventually working towards independent enquiry; iPads and other similar devices not only enable the pupils to work more creatively, but also to document and to display the results of their work.
But is it making a real difference? “One indicator of our success at Oak Lodge School is the British Wired Award called Value Added that we have now achieved for the last five years in a row,” Bedford says. “That means that, compared with when they come into the school, when the students exit their marks are the largest for any other special needs school in the country. So that’s a really good indicator of the programmes we run with our students and also how our technology programme is really making an impact on their lives.”
MORE:
www.apple.com/accessibility/ios/
http://oaklodge.wandsworth.sch.uk
First published in Access Magazine #18, September 2014.
