Year in and year out, geography students would draw the water cycle on their copybooks – from evaporation to rain.

But the mundane cycle became more interesting in the science lab at the Mater Boni Consilii – St Joseph School in Paola.

Students now look up information about the cycle on their tablet as they experiment with water and precipitation.

They then illustrate it with photos snapped with their device.The school is one of three Church schools that took part in the government’s six-month tablet-per-child pilot project last year.

In October 2014, tablets were distributed to 350 pupils in Years 3, 4 and 5 as part of this project, prior to the full 2016 roll-out.

At the St Joseph School, 26 tablets were used in a Year 3 classroom, however, these were retrieved by the supplier, in this case Microsoft Malta, once the pilot project was over.

We never said that the tablet should replace the book or the pencil... in fact we still use textbooks that have not been digitised

So the school asked the supplier to lend it the same tablets for this scholastic year, so that they could be used by all 218 students, including Form 1 and 2 pupils.

“We saw the tablet as an added educational tool to complement what was already going on in the classroom. At the same time, the school wanted to maintain continuity and allow all its students the opportunity to use a tablet, because not everyone has these devices at home,” headmaster Kenneth Vella told this newspaper.

Microsoft Malta accepted the request, serviced and updated the tablets and trained one of the school’s teachers, Cristina Mifsud, who gives lessons in IT, Italian and geography.

Initially, Ms Mifsud said she was wary of the children’s approach to tablets as an educational tool, rather than an entertainment device. However, they showed great interest in using the device in a different manner, she noted.

The tablets could be used to engage students in subjects which sound quite dull – such as mathematical coding. In one particular class she used an app that adapted the popular videogame Minecraft to teach the students mathematical coding.

Meanwhile, she is planning on holding what is known as a Skypathon – where a class will communicate over Skype with another class in Italy. The students will have to guess where the pupils at the other end are calling from, through clues such as geographical information.

Learning Support Assistants at the school have, in the meantime, also started using the tablets with children with learning difficulties. The tablets allowed these students to follow the lessons held within the classroom at their own pace.

However, just like the interactive whiteboard, the tablet will remain a supplementary tool in the classroom.

“We never said that the tablet should replace the book or the pencil… in fact we still use textbooks that have not been digitised, while the tablets are equipped with a stylus pen,” Dr Vella noted.

The headmaster was asked about concern over pictures taken with tablets, which had surfaced following the an-nouncement of the national roll-out.

He explained that the teachers had software which allowed them to monitor what each and every student had on their screen during the lesson.

This was one of the new challenges that needed to be tackled, Dr Vella noted, adding that as a headmaster, the main challenge was the need for live, direct, technical support.

This should ideally be in-house and not outsourced, so that technicians would be able to immediately help if, for example, a tablet suddenly stopped working during a lesson, he noted.