Free iPhones for schoolkids
Free iPhones are being doled out to the lucky pupils at the Gumley House Convent School in West London. It’s not an early Christmas present, but a classroom trial to test their effectiveness as learning aids.
Instead of fighting the often losing battle of trying to ban the use of mobile phones in school, Gumley House is taking the opposite approach – well, when it comes to a privileged group of 30 pupils, anyway.
That’s how many kids will be taking part in the iPhone trial, which will last until the end of the academic year. The pupils will only have to fork out for any calls they make on their iPhone 3GS, with the rest of the tab being picked up by Brentford City Learning Centre.
Pupils will be actively encouraged to interact with their phones during lessons, although it isn’t clear whether they will be given free reign to play Super Monkey Ball or if access will be restricted to specific education-related apps.
The group involved in the trial will meet on a regular basis to share ideas and discuss how using the phone is impacting on their learning. However, critics have questioned the wisdom of the scheme. Speaking to the BBC, Katie Ivens from the Campaign for Real Education argued that “mobile phones have quite rightly been banned from many classrooms as they prove to be a distraction. The case for learning by computer has not been proved at all”.
Perhaps the pupils should swot up on our How to Stream TV on your iPhone feature for more lesson-busting tips.
December 9th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
My sister school is currently trialling this too, and have installed a dev kit to produce educational in house apps to use in the classroom.
December 10th, 2009 at 9:10 am
I went to quite a techy school, but the closest we got to this was barcodes on our ID cards to pay for printing and photocopying. Nobody ever anticipated that kids might, y’know, photocopy each other’s ID cards and nick their credit using the barcode… Makes me wonder how ingenious these kids are, and what they’ve cooked up on the iPhone!
December 22nd, 2009 at 11:31 pm
“mobile phones have quite rightly been banned from many classrooms as they prove to be a distraction. The case for learning by computer has not been proved at all”
Well, a book ain’t anyting else. At first I want to mention that I never heard of a real study or analysis comparing the education level of books and phones. If a men decides to use a fork to cut some meat he knows that it actually won’t work. And with books and phones it is the same issue. You can deside by your self to do the wrong or the right.
I want to add that of course a software will never be filled with THAT right or true content. But books today aren’t either. Of course not all of the books but many of them because in todays fast switching progress of handy dealings with problems are changing in the same way in solving these problems. They have to adapt to the world. Now and not 30 years later when the author thinks that this time has come now. But a e-book for exapmle is easy to hold up to date. You can update the content with little clicks and everybody could now download the new version. This is better as buy the whole book in a new edition.
As well as you can use weapons for “bad actings” you can also use them in the same way for the good and rigth as a policeman does. But here is the questeion. Can we let “technology” be a part of our education system – at this point I want to say that I am from Germany and we got a different educationsystem in some divisions.
And I say yes. Because a phone or a computer is not so expensive in production as a book (you need more books in a year for each pupil as computers for many years for a couple of pupils). And also the way you handle the software of a phone or computer could be tailord especially on schools or universitys or any education based institution.
In the world of business the computer is trivial. You need it everywere and everytime and the people learnd to use it. So why couldn’t the pupils do?
But that was just one side of viwe. Of couse a phone can be misused for playing games in the lessons or something like this. One sort of dealing with this problem is state by me above. Using a program just for the school. But the technology knows different ways for nowadays solutions of network delaings. You can for example restrict the acessibiltiy of the network in schools just for teaching issues and many more. There are many admanistrative programs to controle the actions of the students.
So this argument is for me just am compilation of words with sense but wihout evidence.
P.S.: Sorry for the bad English…but I’m tired (it’s now half past one^^). And I appologize for my arguments if they are not reasoned on some parts (I will try to expand them if it’s not enough). I’m open for arguments and critics:)