Android tablets in education/classroom

[dchawk82]

A little background first: I'm an elementary school teacher (small private K-8 school) and also president of our school technology program. The program is made of myself, our principal, and a few others that mainly work in IT for outside businesses. We're in charge of upgrading classroom computers and purchasing other technology based needs (projectors, doc. cameras, smartboards, etc.).

We definitely don't turn a blind eye towards technology, as you can see, we actually embrace and welcome it. But our newest obstacle has us a bit hesitant. Many school districts are starting to replace their textbooks with tablets and we're in the midst of researching this same thing. Right now, it looks like Ipads are by far the favorites with other districts. As a matter of fact, it's proven difficult to find very much information on schools that are using Android tablets. As a GNex and Nexus 7 user, I would hate for us to jump on the Apple bandwagon just because we can't find support for using Android. Have any users here had experience with Android tablets in a school setting? I would assume the normal things would apply, Android would be cheaper but Apple would have more apps. Resources and support would be of major importance to us since we don't technically have an IT staff in our school building. If any of you have any tips, links, or suggestions, please throw them my way.

Thanks!

 

[DarrelT]

There is a fairly detailed report of one school's experiences on this site: learning untethered

 

[dchawk82]

Awesome, that's exactly what I needed, Darrel. They seemed very down on Android (but Android has changed so much since they released this, I'm not sure their concerns are still valid). If anyone is able to find any other reports/stories/articles like this one, please pass it along!