The partnership, named TalkTechTeach, aims to provide a complete consultancy, purchase, training and support service to customers who are buying new mobile hardware, particularly tablets.
The partnership aims to help education providers avoid ‘naïve purchasing’ of unsuitable hardware, where devices are chosen for their ubiquity or form factor. The partnership will perform a complete audit of the capabilities each device needs to be able to support students to succeed at their given subject, and help customers choose hardware accordingly.
Tablet Academy provides specialist consultancy and training for schools and colleges that are looking to embed mobile technologies into teaching. It focuses on empowering staff with knowledge and skills that enable them to use tablets to enhance the learning experience.
TalkTechTeach will see initial free consultancy sessions held between Tablet Academy, Stone and school senior leadership teams. Both organisations will then supply appropriate types and numbers of devices to customers, and work with them on migration, integration and any network requirements.
Professor Steve Molyneux, CEO at Tablet Academy, commented: “The TalkTechTeach partnership has been formed to provide an end to end service for new and existing customers of both parties. We’re leveraging the expertise on both sides, with the aim of encouraging head teachers to put tablet devices in their technology estate for informed and workable reasons.
“Stone and Tablet Academy want to turn the purchasing process of tablets for schools around, so that they are thinking of the impact that the devices will have on their teaching programmes, rather than just the ‘tick box’ approach of supplying on demand.”
The TalkTechTeach partnership will be reaching out to Stone’s 2,500 school and college customers in the next 12 months using Tablet Academy’s network of 30 training centres in England.