School between notebook and tablet

Plan work in the Hofmatt school building in Arth: tablets and smartphones lie on the desks of the Year 5 class. Many of the mostly 12-year-old pupils are wearing headphones. Some are lounging around on the windowsill. Just like Rico. He is watching a YouTube video on his personal tablet in which hockey players can be seen skating across the ice. Is someone secretly surfing the internet during class? «No,» he says indignantly and points to the assignment sheet.

And it actually says: «Scan the ice hockey QR code. Watch the video and answer the questions.» It's not just about watching the film, because the questions about the video are quite challenging: in addition to comprehension questions, the students are asked to reflect on what makes a good referee and whether they could imagine becoming a referee. At the end of the lesson, they will discuss this as a class with their teacher Christof Tschudi. But they are still bent over their equipment. After all, the ice hockey task is just one of many this morning.

Exercise books lie next to the device on some tables. Kumaran listens to a text in French that the teacher has stored for the class in the virtual Dropbox. At the same time, he reads it in his workbook and stops to look up the words he doesn't know in a vocabulary app. He then writes these down in the exercise book with a pencil.

My parents are always amazed at how it all works. What programmes there are for arithmetic and writing, and that I can set my level of difficulty. They sometimes watch me do it.

Gerardina, 12, from Arth

At another desk, pupils listen to a dictation on the tablet with headphones and write along by hand. They can then check for themselves whether everything is correct - the file is also in the Dropbox. Doesn't that tempt them to cheat right away? «Yes,» says Veranda. «But we'd be cheating ourselves.» And her learning partner Salome adds: «We have to be able to do it for the next test anyway, so we'd rather learn it properly right away.» At the next table, a student is drawing angles - still in the traditional way with a protractor and pencil. «The haptic aspect definitely makes sense here,» says Beat Döbeli, professor and project supervisor at the Schwyz University of Teacher Education, who has come to see how the «Bring your own device» project is going with the classes. Mostly well. The classes he visits work quietly - even when the teacher is not in the room.

The primary school in Goldau has been a project school for many years, and the primary school in Arth soon joined the project. Teachers here have been using digital media in lessons since 2004, initially in individual classes. In 2007, the current head teacher Christian Neff wrote an enthusiastic blog entry about his first iPhone and the possibilities it would open up for lessons if all pupils could use these devices. At the time, it still seemed like a utopian dream to him, but today it is reality: children work with smartphones and tablets in class as a matter of course.

I can look something up much faster with the device than in the dictionary. We also save a lot of paper because we don't constantly print things out but throw them on the TV on the wall so that everyone can see them.

Kumaran, 13, from Oberarth

It has been a long and multi-stage journey to get here. In 2009, a school class was equipped with school iPhones, today the motto is: «Bring your own device.» «It makes ecological, economic and emotional sense for pupils to work on their own devices,» Döbeli and headteacher Neff are convinced. Following a survey, they started the project in the age group in which most kids already have a mobile, internet-enabled device at home anyway: Year 5 and 6. Initially, only tech-savvy teachers in Arth-Goldau took part, but then the project was expanded further and further - next year, all classes at these levels in the Arth and Goldau primary schools are to be involved.

Parents, especially those who have concerns, are involved in the project. So far, no one has completely rejected the development. The headteacher also regularly receives visits from teachers and headteachers from other schools who also want to incorporate mobile devices into their lessons. It is important that the initiative, the desire for technology, comes from the teachers themselves and is not imposed from above, says headteacher Neff. «I recommend every school to start small.»

I think it's great when we're allowed to search for things on the internet at school. At home, I only use my device for homework - my hobby is football, so I'd rather be outside.

Tanja, 12, from Oberarth

Christof Tschudi is one of the teachers who wanted to be part of the project right from the start. Today, he uses the internet, cameras, sound output and recording, correction programmes and learning apps as a matter of course - as a supplement to the usual lessons. At the end of the lesson, the learning groups present the results of their history lessons. They have independently researched the legend of the Devil's Bridge on the Gotthard on the Internet and then packaged it into a media report. The images for the report are projected from their iPhones via WLAN onto the large television hanging above the blackboard. The screen saver of the private mobile phone is also shown briefly, of course. «I speak fluent I dont give a shit» is written on it. Another group connects their smartphone to the loudspeaker - they have conducted a fictitious interview with the farmer who sent the billy goat over the Devil's Bridge. «Yes, why didn't they send a human over the bridge? - Well, so that another one wouldn't die,» the voices of the two schoolgirls sound from the speaker as they stand in front of it, giggling. Is it all just high-tech? Not at all, as a glance at the blackboard shows, where the presentations of the other pupils are already hanging: One group has lovingly crafted and coloured the local daily newspaper and written the accompanying report by hand.

I much prefer writing on the tablet than in the notebook because mistakes are corrected straight away. And if I have questions about Ufzgis, I can ask them in our class chat on WhatsApp - that's really handy.

Rico, 12, from Arth