School makes electronic kit compulsory

Year 9 students at a Nelson college will be required to bring their own electronic devices to school from next year, in a move the school says will "revolutionise" education.

Garin college is making the devices mandatory for students and has suggested four options with price estimates: netbooks at $300 to 500; laptops at $500 to $2000; MacBooks at $1500 to $2500; and iPads at $500 to $800.

Principal John Boyce said Garin had been researching the move for about three years, had consulted year-eight parents and was ready to take the plunge.

"I believe that if everyone has a computer, the way teachers teach and the way students will learn will be revolutionised."

Lessons and exercises for about 100 year nines would be delivered via a learning management system called Moodle, enabled by fast internet delivered by the Nelson Loop fibre-optic computer network system used by schools in the region.

"Our teachers have had laptops for 10 years. We use them all the time. The Government just updated all our wiring. The whole school is wireless. It just seems logical," Boyce said.

He said the move would lead to a "flipped curriculum", where students would have a lot more control over their independent learning. They would read material put on Moodle by their teachers at night and come to school the next day with questions relating to what they had learned.


"Students will have all the information they need at their fingertips, so over the next few years there will be a real change in mindset. Education will no longer be about facts - it will be about students using facts, thinking, creativity and design.

"Even next year, I expect to see students deepening their understanding of what they learnt [the night before], rather than whole classes marching through material together."

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