Tablet Coding & IT Suites

One of the many questions I get asked whilst working with other schools is whether tablets are the future. This question is normally loaded with the thought of whether the traditional IT suite is still required. As we know from the past, future technologies are hard to forecast. There is clearly a huge shift with smart technologies becoming ever integrated into our daily lives. Tablets are replacing laptops in many people's homes, but this does not mean the untimely death of the PC or come to it, the traditional IT suite. Pupils of all ages need an environment to explore not just the software but the hardware as well. 

As you are probably aware, coding can be be done successfully on tablets with many of the command block type applications that we are all so familiar with. This does not and can not replace the need to learn text based programming languages, which lead to even higher levels of understanding. A PC is still a preferred way of learning these. If you have ever tried coding in a text based language on a tablet this experience is often left wanting and gives way to general frustration the longer you progress. Now if we replicate this on a PC the experience is better, mainly as this is the more traditional bases for many of our modern languages. 

Looking forward I suspect this will change and the experience of coding in a text based language on a tablet will become more natural and less burdensome. There is already some great steps in the right direction such as MS Touch Develop, which allows the user to shift from command blocks to text based coding with natural progression. This works well on a tablet and is a possible indication as to what direction these things are going in the corporate world. I suspect the independent sector is also clambering to fill the void with more attempts filling the android store . If these fail to ignite the creativity so often witnessed in the modern classroom, the pupils who are coming through our schools now will certainly be the ones to create these new languages. I believe that it will only be then that we can truly say the school IT suite is no longer required.