Apple's iPads are transforming students' lives in multilingual European classrooms
Teachers across Europe are using iPads to help them work with students who are having to learn a new language as well as their regular lessons, including some who have never been in a classroom before.
Every student gets their own iPad in German's Wilhelm Ferdinand School
Apple in a press release highlighted how the use of its iPads is proving to be the solution in European schools where students are able to learn at their own pace and considerably improve their grades. Teachers are preparing written and video lessons which the students can work through both at school and at home on their iPads.
"With iPad, it's different than when they write something [down] and I come in with my red pen and say 'that's wrong,'" says Sinaan El Haq Hadjeri of the Wilhelm Ferdinand Schussler Day School in Dusseldorf, Germany. "[With iPad,] they learn for themselves."
Hadjeri alternates teaching days at the school with colleague Nick Kyriakidis, who agrees.
"Kids withdraw when they're afraid of making mistakes," he told Apple. "If we try to reduce this fear, it's much easier for them to work with us because they don't have anything to lose."
This school, and many others like it across Europe, are having to deal with more students who not only may not speak a European language, but might not have been inside a classroom before. They include immigrants and refugees who've had to leave behind their homes in the Middle East because of war. So they're having to adapt to a new country, a new school and a new language which may even use a different alphabet than they know.
Wilhelm Ferdinand Schussler Day School has around 325 students from 39 different countries and about a fifth of them are non-German speakers.
Since the school introduced a program of giving iPads to every student, the graduation rate has gone up over 20% to a perfect 100% total.
A similar program in Penarth, Wales, saw grades increase by an average of 3.8 points for the class using iPads in 2018. And at Stenkulaskolan School in Malmo, Sweden, there has been an 80% improvement in math grades despite 98% of the students there only speaking Swedish as a second language.
The Swedish teachers record instructional videos that are watched after school by students on their iPads. The College Daniel Argote in Pau, France, does a similar thing.
France is a particular focus for Apple in education as it now partners with the Malala Fund and Simpion school. The school teaches Swift coding and specifically to groups such as France's refugee population.
Every student gets their own iPad in German's Wilhelm Ferdinand School
Apple in a press release highlighted how the use of its iPads is proving to be the solution in European schools where students are able to learn at their own pace and considerably improve their grades. Teachers are preparing written and video lessons which the students can work through both at school and at home on their iPads.
"With iPad, it's different than when they write something [down] and I come in with my red pen and say 'that's wrong,'" says Sinaan El Haq Hadjeri of the Wilhelm Ferdinand Schussler Day School in Dusseldorf, Germany. "[With iPad,] they learn for themselves."
Hadjeri alternates teaching days at the school with colleague Nick Kyriakidis, who agrees.
"Kids withdraw when they're afraid of making mistakes," he told Apple. "If we try to reduce this fear, it's much easier for them to work with us because they don't have anything to lose."
This school, and many others like it across Europe, are having to deal with more students who not only may not speak a European language, but might not have been inside a classroom before. They include immigrants and refugees who've had to leave behind their homes in the Middle East because of war. So they're having to adapt to a new country, a new school and a new language which may even use a different alphabet than they know.
Wilhelm Ferdinand Schussler Day School has around 325 students from 39 different countries and about a fifth of them are non-German speakers.
Since the school introduced a program of giving iPads to every student, the graduation rate has gone up over 20% to a perfect 100% total.
A similar program in Penarth, Wales, saw grades increase by an average of 3.8 points for the class using iPads in 2018. And at Stenkulaskolan School in Malmo, Sweden, there has been an 80% improvement in math grades despite 98% of the students there only speaking Swedish as a second language.
The Swedish teachers record instructional videos that are watched after school by students on their iPads. The College Daniel Argote in Pau, France, does a similar thing.
France is a particular focus for Apple in education as it now partners with the Malala Fund and Simpion school. The school teaches Swift coding and specifically to groups such as France's refugee population.
Comments
It can provide quality education experiences to students while reducing teacher burden and costs -- that's a win-win situation.
My own experience with what is being described here happened not only before there were iPads but before there were computers (at least outside government and very large corporations) in the early 60's:
It was called "TeMac" (short for "teaching machine") and it is how I learned Algebra 1 in 7th grade. It was a loosely bound book that had 2 columns on each page. The left column contained short teachings and questions and the right column (covered by a slide) had the answers. The students worked on their own at their own pace and a teacher was available for questions. When the student completed a chapter the informed the teacher who give them the test on that chapter.
... Basically it was a computerized system without the computer.
There is a lot of great stuff on the internet not offered in English or with a less than complete English website that this could open up for many of us. I have some German speaking and reading ability, but do not consider myself highly fluent in the language and using apps like iTranslate is simply not as effective as having whole pages translated on the fly in the browser. Even though I once lived there, that was well over 30 years ago and it is not something I use frequently enough to maintain much ability with.
I also really wish Apple would have bought the former iOS app Word Lens which had the capability of live image based translation. Google snapped the company up and incorporated some of that into their apps.
The problem is when it is spoken in a multi lingual setting. There are times when even a completely English word in a purely English setting will not be picked up (strange accents etc). I wonder if Siri would understand the Steve Jobs' pronunciation of 'Jaguar'. However, when you throw in a word that is foreign to the language setting and might even be comprised of seperate foreign elements itself, things become largely useless as things like Siri really can't cut it.
Imagine if there was a street called 'Mel Gibson St' in Spain. With the language setting set to Spanish, I doubt Siri would understand the pronunciation although if it were written, there wouldn't be a problem.
I too live in a multi lingual environment and it is hard going for digital assistants and software.