Schools in the Netherlands have shunned textbooks and only use Apple tablets for teaching and learning. A year in, journalist Sarah Marsh investigates how pupils and teachers are faring.
The glimmer of screens hypnotises a group of children who swipe their hands from side to side and then up and down, captivated by what’s in front of them. This isn’t a scene from a sci-fi film or a description of the electronics floor in Hamley’s toy shop, it is life inside Netherlands’ new iPad schools.
Just over a year ago, seven schools serving 1,000 four- to 12-year-olds opened their doors in cities such as Amsterdam and Almere. Because of their focus on learning through iPads, these institutions – pioneered by market researcher and entrepreneur Maurice de Hond – became known as “Steve Jobs schools”. There are now 22 of them across the Netherlands.
There are no notebooks, blackboards or even formal lesson plans: children drop into 30-minute workshops on various subjects. There are no seating plans and 45% of learning takes place on an iPad which every child is given when they join.
What workshop each pupil goes to is decided by teachers, parents and the pupils themselves as part of their six-week learning plan. De Hond says it is about children achieving specific learning goals with teachers acting as “talent coaches”. Children must attend school for a full day, but the devices let them learn at any time anywhere, taking screen grabs to indicate their progress to teachers.
Marina Donker, who teaches at The Ontplooiing Steve Jobs School in Amsterdam, explains that they use web-based learning programmes which adapt work to a child’s results. “There are no piles of school notebooks at the and of the day waiting for us. Children can work by themselves in a quiet room; this means that we can work with smaller groups during our workshops.”
While these schools offer a unique approach, the use of iPads in classrooms is not new. According to Apple, more than 10m iPads have been purchased by educational institutions worldwide, 7m in the US and 750,000 in the state of Texas alone.
De Hond has noticed children getting more self-assured in their learning over the year in his schools. There has been no formal research conducted so far, but De Hond believes iPads are helping children to concentrate for longer, having a particularly positive impact on those who suffer from attention deficit disorder (ADD).
“A lot of the time attention disorders are when someone is bored. If you spend your spare time in a stimulating environment then go to school and are stuck in an uninspiring environment, it’s no wonder children rebel,” he says.
Kim Kampman, who teaches at the main Steve Jobs school in Sneek, says that one child with behavioural difficulties who came to them from a special school is doing well although she acknowledges that for other children the iPad approach, which puts emphasis on independent learning, does not work.
“Some children need someone to tell them what to do and cannot pick things up by themselves.” Kampman, however, does say that this it the minority and the school, which started with 60 children, now has 150.
Robin Smorenberg, an Apple distinguished educator (ADE) in the Netherlands, says iPads let children show what they have learnt in ways other than just scoring highly in exams. But, he adds, teachers need a clear idea of what the learning goals are to make sure that alternative modes of testing are reliable.
The Steve Jobs schools carry out the same statuary assessments as other Dutch schools and last year Kampman’s school’s scores were “as expected”. She says that the government has been interested in their results but it is still too early to say. “We’ve only worked [with iPads] for one year so we don’t have a lot of evidence. But we see children are much more motivated and they get more work done independently.”
One of the biggest discoveries for De Hond is that iPads can help you reorganise the way a school works. “Children can do a lot of training in maths and languages with adaptive programmes that take up almost no teacher time. They can follow their own learning path, which might be faster or slower.”
This frees up teachers to give more attention to the pupils who need it, De Hond says, adding that giving children their own six-week learning plan devised by them and their parents means they are more engaged in their own education.
But Freek Leemhuis, an independent consultant and software developer in the Netherlands, worries that iPads are mainly used by children to consume information rather than be creative.
Critics also say there’s something inherently wrong with building your school around a brand. “Schools are independent and shouldn’t be linked to a product,” says ESRC future research leader, Andrew Manches, who works at the University of Edinburgh.
For Kampman the biggest challenge has been how you follow the development of a child who is learning through an iPad. “Children can practice on an app but you cannot always see how they did it. The challenge is following children in a way that you can see how they have done something.”
Manches says that there is a lot of rhetoric around technology and “personalised” learning, but he thinks that while apps are useful in telling you what you’ve got right they are not always good at explaining things to children. Children often learn a lot from understanding their mistakes.
Then there is the coordination of it, with issues around data protection, setting iPads up and replacing them with the latest model. Manches says: “If all children’s data is online then that needs to be protected. It’s important to know what infrastructure and training is needed and what works in one school won’t necessarily work elsewhere.”
In terms of the finances, Kampman says the government-funded schools provide every child with an iPad and parents pay just €16 a year for their child to attend. In the time they have been open, of the 150 iPads, five have been broken and a few needed to be replaced.
In Steve Jobs schools children are also free to use the internet on their devices. If a child finds a website that is unsuitable they tell their teacher, says Kampman. “It’s the responsibility of the teacher to make sure children know how to use the internet and what to do if they find something inappropriate.”
Schools in the UK have made some movement towards using iPads, with an estimated 500 British schools using the devices. The Stephen Perse Foundation in Cambridge has gone a step further, weaving tablets into the curriculum. De Hond says those looking to copy the Steve Jobs school model should first think about what children should learn if they are to be prepared for the future. “Use the tablet to redefine the school and not just as an extension of what you’re currently doing,” he says.
Despite his reservations, Manches is keen to see what results they have in the Netherlands. He says that education needs evangelists but also critical voices to help other schools understand how and why things are working. “What we hear nowadays is that things are great but it would be nice to have case studies of what works and how it can be replicated. We need critical debate.”
