Year One pupils have been using iPads for just a few months but already display the ease of seasoned professionals. As they sit in small groups, each child intent on their own tablet, six-year-old Yasmine Moss chooses a background and several images on the touch screen.
Yasmine says she is good at art, yet finds mixing the images on the Toontastic app easier than starting from scratch with a pencil or crayon. You can make your own cartoon using touch screen items involving colours, backgrounds, music and cartoon characters.
'I like using games like Toontastic,' she says. 'You just have to create your own show. Today I made a story about a knife and a horse.'
Yasmine is one of many Year One students at Renaissance College in Ma On Shan who have been using the iPad after the private independent school bought 28 of the tablet computers as part of its drive to involve students in information technology as early as possible. The school, which is run by the English Schools Foundation's commercial arm, Educational Services Ltd, places a strong emphasis on technology and already provides a mix of desktop and laptop computers for all primary school classes.
It will soon get another 90 or so audio-visual tablet computers and will roll out the programme to Year Two students. The iPads will be kept on campus, used for different classes, and their cost - HK$3,000 each - will be covered by the school.
Ania Zielinska, the school's head of learning technologies, says the intuitive, touch technology of the iPad makes it an ideal learning tool for the youngest primary pupils and will help to get them accustomed to working on computers.
'The device itself is so intuitive,' she says. 'There is so little learning for the kids. It takes them seconds to work it out. The children will have grown up with their parents' iPhones, so for them touch technology is an everyday part of their lives. Many of them play [on iPads] with their parents at home.'
