Tablets in Angers schools : after 4 months material changes are visible, cerebral gains not yet

Credit : Notre Dame de la Misericorde

Four months after it has been implemented in most of the schools of Angers, the use of the iPads tablets is sumed up in a little survey by Tablette tactile.net a website dedicated to "the understanding and the analysis of the tactile tablets market". For its survey, Tablette tactile.net was in touch with Notre-Dame de la Miséricorde and Montessori primary schools and warns that its analysis may not reflect all the experiences of other schools having tablets in Angers.

Credit : Angers city

The use of the tablets has probably decompartmentalized the computer universe, previously confined in computer classrooms. Thanks to the tablets, the computers are present in all the school, now fitted with wifi, notices the website. While formerly, each pupil had to keep an Usb stick, now Dropbox is the standard (Dropbox is a file hosting service that offers storage of pupils'works). The fact the school boys and girls don't have anymore a pen, but a tablet, led the school to set up a new blackbord : an Apple tv screen.

The observers look a little bit dumbfounded about the way the tablets have been introduced in Angers schools : without any supplementary resources for the apprenticeship of the tablets, above all for... teachers, some of them "having some apprehension" even others " reluctance" for the computer tool and "hesitation to involve themselves in its use".

One of the field of tablet use is reading apprenticeship. The elder pupils record their voices and their reading is then displayed to the youngests (the obervers do not mention the risk these can reproduce mistakes of the olders). Others fields of use are maths where challenges between pupils are organized (but was it impossible formerly?) and history where documents may be "enriched". Till now, the tablets have introduced material changes but the cerebral benefits have still to be proved. Four months is probably a too short period.