A Parent and Teacher gives us his views
Over the last weekend a teacher I know, David, has loaned my PlayBook to try out with his own family. David and his wife are both primary school teachers and are both very enthusiastic on the use of ICT in school
His children cover the primary age groups quite nicely. It would be easy to print his review and put … in the bits that weren’t favourable.
But, as Oliver Cromwell said, ‘Paint the portrait -warts and all’
“My thoughts on the play book are positive.
If you are looking to be a web based tools school and with the bonus of flash player then the playbook wins hands down! It’s speed is faster than the iPad2 that I tested it with, and the ability to see websites as they were intended is great. I would though compare it more to the iPod touch with what it could do and it’s portability is similar.
The iPad 2 and 3 for me are the better device because of the choice of apps currently available, this leads to more opportunities for impact in the classroom. Provided of course it is in the hands of a teacher that understands its potential, who does not download apps because they look nice and their lessons resemble babysitting looking at iPad apps instead of teaching.
The ideal for a school setup could be a combination of both as my eldest really likes the playbook although my youngest struggled as it’s not as intuitive as the iPad, to which swish and button does what? The apps on blackberry are awful and more expensive so savings for a school in terms of licence/app buying means the iPad wins.
Overall I think the potential for the playbook is great but only compared with a netbook or iPod touch. We may buy as a family the playbook for our eldest as with dyslexia the larger screen when using the kindle app really helped him read his current book.
Thanks for letting us play with it. “
There are a few of David’s comments which I could highlight and discuss here, but I’d love to hear other people’s comments on this.
So far, there are three apps I’ve used a lot: is a replacement for the stdanard Notes application that integrated with , so that any notes you take on your iPad are automatically saved to DropBox. Then you can access them from anywhere. Keep in mind, DropBox has their own issues, so don’t put anything sensitive on the service, especially passwords, unless well encrypted.The second is , which allows you to save web pages for later reading. It caches the pages on the device, so if you see an interesting article on Twitter or surfing at work, you can save it to the device to read on your way home on the train. This is especially handy if, like me, you have an iPad with WiFi only; when you don’t have a connection, you can still read what you’ve saved.
Which apps are those?
We used the Playbook recently as a bridge between an iMac and my PC. Effectively a wireless file server.
Interesting read. We are a web based tools school and the Playbook is definitely the choice I would make again. I would agree that there are certain Apps for the IPad that allow for pedagogy shifts, which is the most exciting part, however the vast majority seem to do a very slightly nicer version of a website but cost money to buy the App (obviously there are exceptions).
From a school leadership perspective, if you are in a school that is anything other than Outstanding, with teachers that are more than happy to spend time learning how to make the most impact from IPad Apps (and quite possibly their own money), then to make a consistent, whole school change that will impact on learning (that children could then continue at home through access to the same websites) I would recommend the Playbook over the IPad.
With regards to the user interface, this is pretty much null and void as children around IPads/Phones will be more familiar with the home button etc. It’s the learning that is key. We have quite a few Playbooks in our school and the children are very quickly learning how to use the interface. Indeed I would actually say the more different interfaces a child is familiar with, the more their skills will be transferable.
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I would certainly buy it over the iPad since it looks far more eengalt and I do not have to wait for features the Playbook already has as well for features that will never come. What, am I supposed to wait for Flash, a camera and a USB port and then foolishly line up in front of the Apple store? And why would I want to deal with iTunes again in order to operate it? I find iTunes sickening!
Anyway, if I am able to connect it to my computer or insert a USB flash drive and drag and drop files in both directions at my will, this will eventually be the most appealing feature to me.
But of course, having a camera and true multitasking is neat because whatever you want to do, it seems that it will do it for you. To me, the iPad is just a big iPod touch that centers on time wasting and did not impress me in any way because I already have an iPod touch. I also hated the fact that I needed iTunes to operate it and if I have to anything similar for the Playbook, I will not purchase it.
So the iPad may have more applications. Big deal. The system on the Playbook seems to be clean and makes the iPad look like an infant’s toy. It also seems that the Playbook can do fundamental tasks that the iPad does not which, at the end of the day, render all other features OBSOLETE.