Caminos
Verified · Mar 20181 min read
● projectDiscontinued · national · 2013

O4NT / Steve JobsScholen (iPad schools)

Personalized learning school model driven by Maurice de Hond under the O4NT foundation. The first 7 Steve JobsScholen opened in August 2013: no textbooks or fixed schedules, each student with an iPad, 30-minute workshops, teachers as coaches.

Empty tiered lecture hall with a projector screenillustrative atlas image · Fabio Sasso / Unsplash
SOStichting O4NT (Onderwijs voor een Nieuwe Tijd)ngoMDMaurice de Hond
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01 The context

It reached 22 schools in 2015, far from the 100-200 announced. Half abandoned the concept due to software and training costs and pedagogical dissatisfaction; De Hond withdrew in 2017 and the foundation went bankrupt in February 2018, with DUO claiming just over 200,000 euros. The Zembla program documented the collapse.

02 How it works

method · Personalized learning with individual schedulemethod · 30-minute workshops per subject instead of fixed classesmethod · Teacher as coach of individual and group projectstool · iPad as the central learning platformtool · iDesk Learning Tracker (progress tracking)

03 What it stands on

Evidence level
Own experience
Grounded in published theory
Documented evidence elsewhere
Independently evaluated here
2 published documents support this project. No independent evaluation is in the atlas yet. Know of any? Contribute it.
The evidence 2 ›
ContextO4NT bankroet na echec iPad-scholenNetkwesties · 2018
ContextiPad-onderwijs loopt stuk op eisen Maurice de HondAG Connect · 2017

04 Lessons learned

1) Putting the tool (iPad) rather than pedagogy at the center erodes teacher support; 2) the business model (licenses and training charged to schools after launch) proved unsustainable for public school budgets; 3) dependence on a single media figure made the project fragile; 4) scaling by announcement (100-200 schools promised, 14-22 real) without evidence of results destroyed credibility; 5) without early independent evaluation, the disappointing results became known too late.