Tennessee school requires iPads of all 4th-12th grade students
Starting next year, fourth to 12th grade students attending the Webb School in Knoxville, Tennessee will be required to have an iPad for classes. Jim Manikais, technology director at the private school, said this new policy was designed to let students "use that technology whenever they need it." Currently, students have to "check out a cart, a laptop cart, or schedule lab time to take a class to a lab" which made it difficult for both teachers and students to use technology regularly in the classroom. The school has a three-year rental plan for parents who are unable to purchase an iPad. This payment plan will cost about $200 per academic year or $20 per month for the ten-month school year. School officials will block Facebook and Twitter on the school campus and English teacher, Elli Shellist, already has a plan to monitor web browser usage in class. The savvy teacher will randomly perform a flip check that requires students to flip their iPad towards the teacher so he can check what application they have opened. Of course, it won't take very long for even more savvy students to write an app that switches back to the appropriate application when the iPad is flipped forward rapidly. We won't even mention the antics that may ensue when the dual-camera iPad 2 makes its inevitable debut in the classroom.
Despite the potential for abuse, this is an excellent use of technology that will continue to expand in the future. Other academic institutions like Seton Hill and the University of Notre Dame encourage the usage of iPads in the classroom, while textbook publishers like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt are developing applications for use in academic settings.
[Via KSLA]
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Starting next year, fourth to 12th grade students attending the Webb School in Knoxville, Tennessee will be required to have an iPad for...
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St Catherine's Middle School in Racine WI
is ALREADY Using it and IS FANTASTIC!!!
would not send my kids to private school where this was required. would never let my fourth-grader keep such a pricey computer with them - damage, losing it, and theft around each corner.
but I imagine some high-schoolers could be responsible enough, and definitely a blessing for college kids.
in the Star Trek-like schools of the future, I imagine most schools becoming paperless & book-less, although there is something quite satisfying picking up a paperback book and reading, but some of those old beat-up textbooks were awful. also, the college I went to just used their own printed & stapled booklets instead of textbooks which cost next to nothing and students loved - and I imagine those are probably available on pdf these days.
on another note, visited a hospital the other day and everything was completely paperless
They better find a way to block that Playboy app...
January 22 2011 at 3:52 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI used to live in Knoxville and I know Webb. Beautiful campus with great facilities. Huge percentage of > high school< teachers have their >PhD's
January 21 2011 at 6:16 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyHoly crap, graduated from there in '97. I remember Jim Manikais, cool bearded nerd who stocked every classroom with an apple PowerMac and internet access, in 1995!
The tuition for one year there was more than I paid for two years at a public university! That was 15 years ago. Most of the kids have rich parents who buy them a BMW at 16, and a Mercedes after they wreck the BMW. They can afford the iPad, sucks for scholarship kids like me having to fork out extra money above having to buy your own books though.
misterlevitan - Agreed, but think of the college context....that would be fantastic...I remember reading my notes in college and thinking "what the hell is this?"...being able to jump back and see my notes in the context in which it was written would have been great...
January 21 2011 at 3:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyFor that matter, those backpacks will be heavier. AND often full of vastly more expensive books. Even my cheap textbooks were $50.00 or more. Generally way more. The only way to save some money was to by used but then you got someone's junk all over it. And my luck I couldn't sell back most of my books because the publisher decided to revise them or the professor changed titles and the bookstore wouldn't take back what they couldn't resell.
when e textbooks started I looked up several of my old books and there they were in ebooks for a few bucks off, often as much as I would have saved going used.
Now I will say that some of the publishers are annoying with refusing to provide updates for a small cost which would be nice. And some standalone apps aren't so great. But at least the movement has started.
When I first got my iPad, I envisioned textbooks developed this way: you have the book on the iPad and can highlight text (in the "old" days, we would take notes from the book and use our notes to study, even after we used the highlighter). Then, you touch a button that takes all the highlighted text and drops it into a Pages or other document....instant study outline (that you can add your own notes to as well). The cool part would be that when you are looking at the outline on the iPad while studying (you can print it, too), and you see a quote from the text that you don't understand because it is no longer surrounded by the text you did not highlight, you can tap the text in the outline and it will bring you back to the place in the textbook where you got it, putting into context. That would be very cool.
My kids (11 and 13) lug around HUGE backpacks that will help create a future of injured adults...the iPad makes so much more sense....
These are creative ideas, DudeDad, but I am pretty cynical on this idea. I think most kids will just find ways to dick around with the device.
And not for nothin' but I didn't really appreciate the value of SQUAT until I had to fork over my own hard-earned dough to get it. Some snot-nose kid drops his iPad on the playground or on the classroom floor - how's he going to learn the cost of that item? Yeah yeah it's a private school and all that, you say, but I went to a private school as a youth and I wasn't raised as some spoiled brat.
I just don't think high-tech distractions like this belong in the classroom.
A "flip check" wow, that will reduce abuse. And how do they think they are going to block Facebook, MySpace, etc when students will have 3G iPads?
What a lame idea...
Yay for unfunded mandates (not)!
However, since this is a private school, and the parents are already probably paying a pretty penny for admissions, this should be a non-issue.
How ironic that Webb school will be censoring it's web access :-)
Wow - what a stunningly horrifying plan - force people who possibly can't afford it to buy a $500 luxury item. Or overcharge them for it.
It's a private school! Don't like it? Don't send your kids there. Public school is free (well technically it's paid for by tax dollars), and usually keeps the student supply requirements far more reasonable. Private school is a luxury item (and a pretty bad value at that), so why is buying another luxury item for private school so shocking?
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