Can Dutch iPad Schools Revolutionize Education?
What’s the Latest Development?
Forward-thinking educators in the Netherlands are looking to open 40 revolutionary “Steve Jobs Schools” in which all teaching and learning will take place on iPads. The first Steve Jobs school, set to open in the town of Breda, will be open at 7:30 a.m. and close at 6:30 p.m. every workday. “The children will come and go as they please, as long as they are present during the core period between 10:30 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. The building will only be closed for Christmas and New Year’s. The children’s families will be able to go on vacation when they please, and no child will have to be worried about missing class as a result, since classes in the traditional sense will be nonexistent.”
What’s the Big Idea?
With the use of the new technology comes a realignment of values. Things once considered essential to an education will be considered outmoded at Steve Jobs schools: “Arithmetic, reading skills and text comprehension are the core subjects in the elementary school. Good handwriting has been downgraded to a secondary skill, nice for industrious pupils but not truly relevant. Every six weeks, teachers, children and parents decide together what is to be achieved in the next learning period. To do so, they meet at school or virtually via Skype. The era of the 10-minute parent-teacher meeting once a year is a thing of the past in the Steve Jobs schools.”
Photo credit: Shutterstock.com
