The new iPads were getting the best of some of the Lancaster High School students.
Many struggled to log in and create passwords for the devices that will connect them to their teachers and peers inside school and beyond this year.
“It’s broken,” one student told English teacher Matt Gillispie. The Fairfield County district is spending more than $1 million over four years to provide all high-school students with the devices in part to teach students such basics of modern life.
“This is 2013, and most jobs today require some sort of technology use,” Gillispie said. “There are students who are not spelling their email correctly and they can’t verify their account. That’s something they are going to need to do over and over again in the future.”
But the devices’ greatest value will come when students use them to read electronic textbooks, create videos about reading assignments and take part in debates through instant messaging.
Students will be able to remain plugged into the school network, giving them an opportunity to learn on their own time.
“The learning experiences that will take place ... are unlike anything else,” said Gillispie, whose book, From Notepad to iPad: Using Apps and Web Tools to Engage a New Generation of Students, will be released in November.
More local districts such as Pickerington and Reynoldsburg have embraced one-to-one computing initiatives, linking each student with a take-home laptop, tablet or other device. As of 2011, 35 Ohio school districts had initiatives to give a device to every student, but numbers have likely risen.
Columbus would earmark $23.5 million from a proposed 9.01-mill levy request in November to pay for tablet computers for all students. By 2015, middle- and high-school students each would have a device, while access to technology would increase by 4-to-1 for elementary students.
Critics say some initiatives fail when educators simply hand out the devices and don’t fully integrate the technology into lesson plans.
Local efforts, however, have built the devices into their curriculum.
At Hannah Ashton Middle School in Reynoldsburg, seventh- and eighth-grade students use laptops throughout the day as they move from teachers’ lessons to applying what they’ve learned to projects.
Seventh-graders at Lakeview Junior High School in Pickerington use Chromebooks at school and at home in a new program focused on science, technology, engineering and math.
Students can store their work online and access assignments outside of school. They can remotely collaborate with their peers on projects. Teachers can observe students’ progress, and see when they complete their homework.
At Lancaster, high-school students stopped by the school last week to pick up their devices.
“It’s exciting because when we go to college, technology is becoming a big part of our life,” said sophomore Gillian Chute, 15. “If you’re the kid who never learned how to use an iPad and no one has textbooks anymore, what professor is going to hold up the lesson to explain to one person how to use it?”