TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Fraser Speirs, commenting on his school’s use of iPads:

Frank appended a “(yuk)” to the last idea of authenticity but I think there is a point to be made here. I personally believe that pupils – particularly early secondary pupils – crave relevance and authenticity in their learning. I can teach about mainframes and disk drives and everyone’s bored. When I facilitate a discussion about why Apple switched from hard drives in the iPod Classic to flash memory in the iPhone, everyone wants to talk about it.

That’s huge—one of the things I hate(d) most about school, and caused me to tune out, was the feeling that teachers or professors really didn’t know what they were talking about. This was most blatant when they were teaching something related to technology, and whenever they’d say something out of date, or the material would discuss something from five or more years ago, I’d stop paying attention, because the “education” was disconnected from reality.

Using the iPad in education is huge, because not only is it a new technology, but more importantly it’s something students are using every day in their real lives, it’s something they really enjoy using, so learning on it is going to feel much more natural and relevant. That will mean more engaged students.