What is the best device to purchase?

As we began the second half of our school year, we found our teachers and students becoming experts at using technology at school. All of our students PK3 through eighth grade have enjoying using their tablets as part of classroom activities, using apps and websites their teachers are finding to enrich their classroom lessons. In addition, many of our 4th through middle school students are finding their tablets to be a useful new tool for taking notes, writing essays, doing research for homework and classwork assignments, and for creating projects. They have all picked up easily on using google drive for cloud storage and for sharing their work with their teachers. As these students begin working on their research papers and projects during the second semester, they will no doubt enjoy the many conveniences that google drive allows. For example, Mr. Rudolph's 7A/8th grade students are recently completed a research project that includes group presentations. In the past, students would have had to get together after school to collaborate on their presentation. Now, with google drive, the students were easily able to share their work and collaborate "in the cloud" without having to meet in person. They stored their presentation in google drive and "shared" it with the members of the group. Then when any individual member wanted to work on his or her part, he or she simply logged into the file and did their work. Amazing!

After seeing so much success during this year, our "pilot year" of tablets in the classrooms, many parents have asked for advice in purchasing a tablet for their child. At the present time, we have found that we are able to accommodate nearly every device that students have brought onto campus. However, the tablet that we purchased, following considerable research and consultation with our technology experts, is the iPad Air. We have found that students with most relatively recent versions of iPad (iPad 2 or later) are able to do most everything that the iPad Air is able to do.

Regarding non-iPad devices, the main issue with these devices seems to be that not all apps are available on those devices. Further, since our teachers have been trained to use iPads, when a student has technical difficulty, our teachers are not always able to assist if the device is unfamiliar.

Therefore, at this point we recommend that if you are considering purchasing a device for your child that you consider choosing iPad. However, if your child already has a device that is not an iPad and it works well for him or her, that is fine as well.

TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOMS:

Mrs. Whitt, MS Language Arts

Earlier this year, Middle School Language Arts Students did a reading project using the Sock Puppets app on the iPads. Students worked in teams to create News Casts to summarize the important events in their quarterly novels. Each team created a current event, this day in history, celebrity gossip, and a weather report that reflected the culture, setting, characters, and plot in the book, but more excitingly all news casts were performed by animated sock puppets. This activity allowed the students to show their comprehension of the novel aspects by having students use critical thinking skills to expand upon their learning. The students really enjoyed working on the projects  and sharing their videos with the class.