CANBERRA Grammar School is leading the charge towards the digital world of education.

Next year, teachers and students in Year 9 will take part in a mobile device trial that will see about200 iPads, used every day in the classroom.

“We are issuing them to staff this year to ensure they feel comfortable with the way they operate and to develop an approach to using them more successfully in the classroom,” head of drama Patti Kennedy-Hine said.

“But at the same time we are encouraging other students, in other years, to bring in mobile devices that work best for them.”

Currently, students who own tablets are encouraged to bring them into the classroom, to take notes, work on group assignments or use applications that help them with everyday class work and projects.

Year 11 student Nick Perillo uses his iPad everyday to take notes in class.

“I can do handwriting on this,” he says. “It’s good, you can use the internet now the school is set up on the wireless network.

“You can conveniently get information to back up your notes.”

Head of design, arts and technology Lucy Atkinson said some text books are now digital.

“They have hot links to them, so if you need to know more about it, you click on to that and it opens you up into Google,” she said.

“Students can also highlight information.”

Ms Kennedy-Hine said she had developed ebooks for the classroom, where she incorporated multimedia and notes that students could access and add to.

Year 9 student, Joshua Fridgant said his French teacher shared applications with students to help revise for tests and for French translation.

“It’s reciprocal in that teacher and students can both contribute to the learning,” Josh said.

The school said it was not just about access to information, but about students being enabled to start learning as soon as they entered the classroom.

Year 10 student Bright Lai said using a tablet opposed to a note book had made a world of difference to his efficiency.

“We had visual arts diaries, and had to write our scripts, time management and shot list,” he said.

“But then we moved on to this tablet and we typed everything out in five to 10 minutes.”

The trial will be completed at the end of next year with both students and teachers taking part in surveys throughout the year.

The compiled surveys will make up an exit survey that will help the school decide how they want to take the use of mobile devices into the future.

Ms Kennedy-Hine said she hopes by the end of the trial students will take some ownership of their learning.

“We hope our school wireless network becomes really robust and we know what it can handle, so that we can open it up to whatever technology is working for the student,” she said.

The school also hopes that the skills developed in the classroom by using mobile devices can be transferred on to life after school.

“We hope kids that leave us are more adaptable when they hit the marketplace,” Ms Kennedy-Hine said.

“That they’ve got a real sense of ownership over how they function with a device like this.

“And they should be able to work with much more intuitive response to integrated technology.”