iPads in classroom change education by Billy Baker

Photo: Billy Baker

Billy Baker writes, "It’s the third day of the new school year at Cardinal Spellman High School in Brockton and things are a little different. Sure, things are always a little different at the start of school – new clothes, new students, new inches added over the summer – but as Lyndsey Ballard’s Algebra 2 class gets under way, a student announces that she forgot to do part of her homework. She forgot to charge her iPad."

Photo: Boston Globe

Cardinal Spellman, like a growing number of schools across the country — including Archbishop Williams in Braintree and Sacred Heart School in Kingston — has brought the tablet computer into the classroom. Each Spellman student was issued an iPad this year as the school moves away from traditional textbooks and worksheets and into the multimedia age. The school leases the $500 devices from Apple; they are insured against damage and loss, and parents were charged a $150 technology fee.

“A textbook is one-dimensional,” said principal Paul Kelly. “An iPad brings the content to life through interactive elements.”
And ultimately, the school believes, it will be cheaper than traditional textbooks, which can cost well over $100 and are, according to school’s president, John McEwan, outdated the moment they’re printed.

“As someone who used to teach from old textbooks, it would be nice to show the students there were presidents after Nixon,” McEwan said. “But the big thing was we wanted kids to have more control of their education. We’re trying to move away from schools as places where kids went to watch adults work.”

Tablets in the classroom got a big boost in January when Apple began releasing interactive digital textbooks through its iBooks store. The upside is that the e-textbooks, which feature interactive photos, videos, and graphics, are considerably cheaper – around $15 each.
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Source: Boston Globe