Learn 4 Life

What happens when you give a class of 8 year old children an iPod touch each?

The wonderful thing about my job is that I have a network of people I can visit who are involved with prototyping the use of new technologies in education. My latest outing was to a Junior School with a difference this week.

Peter Barrett, an old colleague of mine, had told me about the seed of this idea some months back. Knowing Peter I guessed it would be quite ambitious. We have worked on a number of innovation projects in the past and he never fails to surprise me…

As well as the school going through a massive rebuilding programme, they have also introduced a set of iPod touches into one year 4 class, for each child, to see what happens.

All the touches are networked through an Apple Airport Extreme and out onto the internet through the school’s connection. It is not every day you see this sort of thing.

So I offered to pop along and make a video of their progress after a couple of weeks. In the first week that the children have had them, they seemed to be quite at home using the applications and devices - but it’s early days…

Here is a brief video record of reflections and practice of that use…

I’d like to thank all the staff, children and parents for help in making this film.