St Agnes iPad use evaluation survey of students

St Agnes Catholic High School at Rooty Hill has surveyed their 2013 Year 8 students to gather their perceptions about the use of iPads in their learning.  St Agnes ran a similar survey of their Year 8 students in 2012.

In terms of use of the iPad in 2013 compared with 2012, there was an increase in using the ipad for active, reflective learning by creating mindmaps, ebooks and multimedia presentations.  Conversely, reduced time was spent passively drawing in information by using it to search the internet.  This was highlighted by students indicating that Apps used the least seemed to be more content specific app while apps used the most were content creation apps like Creative Book Builder, Pages, Explain Everything, iMovie, Keynote etc which could be used across curriculum. Generally though the findings from this years survey of Year 8's compared with last year were fairly similar.  See the previous post 'iPad use evaluation'

The results of the iPad survey for 2013 Year 8's at St Agnes reflect the embedding of iPad in learning since its inception last year. To the question 'I am more distracted in class because I use an iPad' - 7% more students disagreed. So it seems that less students this year feel the iPad distracts them in class. This may reflect the fact that the introduction of the iPad last year went through a novelty phase while this year students are more familiar and they are now more acknowledged as a learning tool.

The embedded use of iPads in learning at St Agnes is highlighted by the involvement of students from St Agnes at the recent iConnect conference of the Council of Catholic School Parents at the Parramatta Novotel.  They staffed a booth and spent time with parents demonstrating how iPads were being used to enrich their learning.  


Parents were impressed with what the students were able to do and commented on how articulate and reflective of their learning the students were.  You can read a post by student Lois about how she feels technology and especially iPads has enriched her learning on Greg Whitby's blog Bluyonder. Lois was a pioneer student at St Agnes with their iPad implementation and is now continuing her senior school studies at Loyola Senior High.

St Agnes have used the 2013 Year 8 survey to reflect on their integration of iPads across the KLA's, their assessment tasks and to inform workflow practices.  Emerging Technologies coordinator Damien McGuire comments:
"We have run some PD sessions with our staff focusing on 'advanced' features of Moodle. For example questionnaires, quizzes and assessment collection. The aim was to point out the interactive nature of Moodle that can be accessed via the student's iPad. There is also a plan for teams across the curriculum to create their own ebooks for next year. These ebooks will incorporate all the necessary curriculum content linked with specific Apps. We will continue to work on our Work Flow procedures to make it clear to the students what their final solution needs to look like in terms of ICT."