The tablet in kindergarten: summary of an experiment in France

In 2012-2013, the Académie Orléans-Tours studied educational projects carried out in its schools incorporating tablets. Its report, “Teaching with a Tablet in Elementary School,” reports experiences and findings and can be viewed online. There are several interesting observations there.

Among the positive effects retained, we note that the tablet is a tool that helps preschool teachers (kindergarten - small, medium and large section) to publicize their teaching. Indeed, it constitutes at the same time “an image bank, a camera, a language laboratory”. In addition, all the experiments have shown that "the pupil can register, listen to himself, correct himself" thanks to the tool. The ease of taking photos and creating videos gives it the title of "memory box" by many. In addition, it is stated that "the tablet and its applications remove technical obstacles to the production of a finished product that students are proud to show their parents". Note that both the iPad and the Android tablet were used.

Contrary to the approach advocated in Quebec, this report states that "it is essential that the teacher be able to find the" application "that will best meet his needs". To do this, we cite the existence of several directories of applications from which to choose.

We have noticed that, to compensate for the lack of "content" applications in French, many teachers have become authors by using applications for creating activities such as classification, association, sorting, quiz, exercises, etc.

Among the challenges, there is the time necessary for the creation of content and activities in this perspective, but we add that everything will be ideally reusable from year to year. Also, we indicate the need to pool efforts between teachers.

An important advantage of the tablet is the possibility of projecting its content via a projector in order to provide feedback on activities in a large group. “The students really felt involved in showing their work to their classmates. "

To view the full report, it's this way.