“It was like Christmas” at the Sewanhaka school district’s five high schools last week as about 1,300 seventh-graders received their first iPads to use in class, said Cheryl Champ, the district’s assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.
The district distributed the devices on Sept. 7 after training teachers to use them over the summer, kicking off the “one-to-one” technology initiative aimed at better preparing students for a digital world.
“They know how to use it for entertainment, they know how to use it for informal communication, and we feel that it’s now our responsibility to teach them how to use it formally as a professional tool,” Champ said.
The district will give every student an Apple tablet over the next three years under a $3.2 million plan funded by the state’s SMART Schools Bond Act.
Eighth-graders will receive iPads at the start of the spring semester, Champ said.
Sewanhaka schools brought parents in with their kids last week to show them how students will use iPads in class and the rules for using them, Champ said.
Each device is assigned to a particular student and has a barcode so the district can track them in its inventory, she said.
Seventh-grade teachers are encouraging students to take notes and manage their calendars on the iPads, and some are having them do research or create projects using apps, Champ said.
The district held two iPad training sessions for teachers in June and teachers attended free workshops at local Apple stores throughout the summer, Champ said.
In the future students will use the devices to collaborate on documents and group projects and to do activities that are not currently possible without them, Champ said.
“One of the realities of this device is that [it] is part of a spectrum of learning opportunities for our students to make them future ready,” Sewanhaka High School principal Christopher Salinas said in a district news release.
The iPad rollout was coupled with an upgrade of the district’s technology infrastructure over the summer that tripled its internet bandwidth and greatly increased the number of wireless internet access points, Champ said.
The district has also redone about two-thirds of its classrooms to be more multimedia-friendly, replacing projectors and touch-screen white boards with large flatscreen TVs that connect more easily with iPads, she said.
Some parents have been skeptical of the shift toward more technology use, Champ said, but administrators are working to strike an “instructional balance” between their responsibility to teach digital literacy and students’ individual learning styles. Teachers have been told to let students hand-write their notes if they prefer it after trying the iPad, she said.
“Kids are never going to 100 percent use their iPad for everything,” Champ said. “We’re not steering our teachers in that directioon.”
