Madison-Plains students to get iPads

By Rob Treynor

Staff Writer

An iPad in every backpack.

Starting this fall, every seventh- and eighth-grade student at Madison-Plains Junior High will be handed an iPad which will be their library, textbook, day planner and organizer until graduation.

Jeffrey Beane, Madison-Plains Junior High principal, and Joseph Penney, technology coordinator, presented the iPad proposal (codename: “1:1 Project”) to Madison-Plains Board of Education during their June meeting, held Monday night.

“We’ve been looking at getting tablets into the hands of our students for about a year now,” Penney said to the board. “We found that Apple’s iPad is the most comprehensive device.”

“The staff is on board and willing to adjust their pedagogy style to adapt to new uses of technology and learning in the classroom,” Beane said.

“A lot of people learn from hearing or by touching; by being ‘hands-on.’ Other students learn better by viewing. The iPad allows for learning in a wide variety of ways that traditional books do not,” Bean said.

Beane listed a series of bullet points as to the benefits of iPads in the classroom, which included:

• Virtual field trips

• Virtual laboratories

• iPads help students with short attention spans to stay focused longer

• Many learning styles are adopted

• Long battery life

• No moving parts = durability

• Minimal maintenance required

• Accessible from virtually anywhere

Penney played a video for the Board, which showed how iPads have been implemented in other school districts, and the positive results that have followed.

Costs for the project would be offset by a decline in textbook and traditional computer purchases.

Superintendent Bernie Hall will host a public meeting on the iPad implementation at 6 p.m., Wednesday, June 20 at the school.