Delaware Valley High School has announced that it plans to outfit each of its students with iPads in September. Teachers, too, will get the nifty little devices, that look a bit like a notebook computer, but cooler.
The $600,000-plus effort is the first in Hunterdon for a high school, although tiny Franklin Township elementary school was the first to embark on the all-iPad mission.
Opinions on arming students with tablet computers are mixed. Some complain about the cost, the potential distraction of the versatile devices or — from the uninitiated — a complaint that students shouldn’t need a toy in the classroom.
For sure, an iPad has a certain “play value.” There’s no escaping its unique design that invites a user to keep exploring, to read deeper, to study, to calculate. As with any tool, its usefulness depends on the user; it will be the job of the school’s teachers, and parents, to promote its responsible use.
Setting aside the classic Apple vs. Windows argument of whether an iPad is a more suitable computer than a Windows-based machine, it seems obvious that equipping students with such a device can only enhance their education.
That doesn’t mean that computers are essential teaching implements because, of course, they are not. Experts we’ve spoken with say the greatest variables in the learning experience rest with the quality of individual teachers and parental support of their children’s education.
No technology can offset a substantial deficit in either area.
And what tools do the most gifted teachers really need? Back in the age of the filmstrip and Ditto machine, there were teachers who needed no more than a chalkboard to inspire students. The same is true now.
No matter. Technology evolves, and it evolves rapidly. If students are expected to use technology as a tool for learning and in the workplace, it must be incorporated into their daily lives.
For the same reason that typing classes are now introduced in elementary school where once they were the province of a high school secretarial program, it makes sense to offer students the most useful learning tools and, in the early years of the third millennium, a mobile computer is one of them.
Besides, lugging a backpack will be much easier with textbooks that are virtual.