Students at École Innisfail Middle School can now tap into the digital education world. The school recently purchased three iPads for student use making the middle school the third in the district to offer the device, said vice principal. Carey Collin.
“There's lots of different uses for them and right now we're just scratching the surface,” he said of approximately 30,000 education applications available on the iPad. Applications, more commonly known as apps, are programs that are downloaded on electronic devices.
During lunch hour March 28 three students got together to demonstrate what they've been using the iPads for to teachers and four community sponsors —Jackson's Pharmasave, Kevin Spiller Contracting, Shell Canada and Metcalf Funeral Chapel— who covered the cost of the gadgets.
“It's really simple to use,” said Alex Gray, a Grade 7 student who quickly opened up a few different apps to demonstrate.
“With this one you spell out a word, then you click on this and it reads the word back to you,” he said while typing in the word “ball.”
Some of the other programs focused on literacy and word identification, math and telling the time and community safety.
“We have a ratio of 2:1 for kids to computers so they're not lacking in opportunity. The benefit of the iPads is the apps because there are so many,” Collin explained.
His office has become the sign-out central, and education assistants are getting trained to use them as well so they can work one on one with students' needs.
“We want to introduce it to a few kids first. It's not in the classrooms yet,” he said of signing out the iPads.
He said with 30,000 education apps, finding the best ones to offer becomes the focus. He said other people in the industry have created lists citing the best apps for different subjects that the staff can refer to.
“We can sync the iPads together so if we download one app it can be used on all of them. We want to have as many apps available as possible for the students.”
Collin and principal Jay Steeves said the technology wouldn't have been introduced this year if the sponsorship wasn't there.
“We couldn't come up with the funding so we asked if they'd be interested,” said Collin, who approached sponsors who typically offer support in an extrinsic reward system where students are given something when they meet certain requirements.
“This will have more of an impact in the learning environment,” said Steeves of having the iPads stay within the school.
“This is something that stays with us and creates a bit of a legacy. These are tools that are hands on and won't sit on an office shelf. And there's always something new to offer,” said Collin.
