It’s totally Remarkable . . . we’ve gone totally paperless!

Our A Level Physics crew love getting their hands on the latest technology (see our 3D printer story here), but whatever the new thing is, has to be a useful tool and above all, an elegant solution to a problem. No gimmicks for us.

The Remarkable is a new kind of writing and drawing tool. It’s a tablet, but unlike iPads and various other time-wasting products that distract you from learning, it only does two jobs: reading and writing. Writing on it is like writing on paper, not on a screen. The tablet doesn’t glow so it doesn’t strain your eyes. You can’t get TicTok, Friendface, or Instagram. You can’t watch videos or other such nonsense. No, with your Remarkable you make notes, draw, read, learn. That’s it.

So for us in A Level Physics it’s brilliant. I send out past papers or practice questions via email or Teams. The students load them onto their Remarkable with one click and get stuck into them. When they’re done, they send them to me, I can mark and send back. All done on Remarkable with no printing involved. Even during this half-term period of revision for mocks, and even with this small cohort, I would have printed out over two whole reams of A4 paper for them by now.

Each one of my students has re-made their class notes on Remarkable too, re-engaging with the material from last year as well as this year.

Technology can easily be a distraction from learning. Research has shown that using laptops to take notes reduces learning. Being inactive and passive during lessons reduces learning. Being distracted and multitasking when you should be concentrating on a task, reduces learning.

Our new way of working focuses on what enhances learning: re-making notes and organising your thoughts about it and being able to access every note taken, every practice question and all the textbooks easily (yes, they’re all on the tablet too).

As far as I know (from the global Remarkable users group) we’re the first teaching class to go totally Remarkable. I’m proud of that and that it’s working so well.

Ayd Instone, Head of Physics