iPads Add Excitement to Classrooms in Novi's Elementary Schools

This year decided to bring more technology to the classroom by giving every elementary school 60 iPads to share.

Each elementary building has two carts of 30 iPads that can be checked out by a teacher to use.

The iPads have the same Internet safety features as the school’s computers and were purchased with money from the 2007 technology bond.

Novi Community Schools Director of Technology Jim Fry said that the iPads are a way for teachers to explore different methods for teaching lessons to students.

“We’re just trying to experiment and come up with a variety of activities that can fit well into the curriculum,” Fry said.

So far, the district has only used free apps for the iPads, such as everyday math games, reading, and drawing tools. For example, the IXL Math app correlates to a website the students already use, and the Accelerated Reader app allows students to read a book and then take a test on it instantly.

Dawn Wagner, a fourth-grade teacher at , said she uses the iPads in her classroom every couple of weeks and thinks it helps enhance students’ learning.

“It’s fun for the kids, they get very excited to use them,” she said.

Her class recently used them to do online research on Michigan and habitats. She said she prefers having students do research on the iPads rather than in the computer lab because of their ease of use and speed. Students don’t have to log on or wait for the iPad to boot up like they would with a computer.

Fry said that he has heard a lot of positive feedback from teachers, and that the students love the iPads, too.

“It’s the kind of technology the kids use on their own nowadays at home and in other places,” he said. “These kids are not paper, pencil, markers, crayons kinds of kids as certainly I was … they’re into these electronic tools and being creative with them.”

iPad pilot progarm

Fry said the idea of adding iPads to the classroom came after some teachers were bringing in their personal iPads to use for teaching and saw how excited the students were. At the same time, the district wanted to give iPads to its administrators to help them move forward in the technology age and act as leaders in technology.

With all the positive reaction the iPads were getting, the district decided to start a pilot program in the spring of this year with a handful of teachers who volunteered to start using them with students. 

These teachers also brought an iPad home with them over the summer to explore possible applications and practice with them. This fall, the iPads were put in all of the elementary schools for use by any of the teachers.

When a teacher checks out a cart, he or she must log in a book about what he or she used the iPads for, so the pilot leaders can keep track of different ways teachers are using them.

Learning possibilities

Wagner said the teachers are just getting started with learning how to use the iPads and that they could be used in many different ways in the future.

She said if cost-effective, it would be nice to do more reading on the iPads.

“We buy books all the time, it would be nice to put them on these,” she said.

She also hopes the iPads will allow the students to interact with each other more while learning.

On Thursday, Wagner brought her fourth grade class to teach some kindergarteners using the iPads. She hopes the experience will develop into some type of tutoring program.

The teachers will continue to talk more with each other and their students about uses for the iPads, and some of the teachers will be taking an iPad home over winter break to practice with it.  

Both Wagner and Fry agree that the iPads are full of great possibilities for learning, and that this is only the beginning.

“In the long-term we’re looking at a one-to-one kind of thing where every student has some kind of computing device with them in school all the time cause it can really extend learning in school beyond the school day,” Fry said.

For now, though, the teachers will share the carts among themselves. Except for Wagner, who loves using the iPads so much that she asked for one of her own this Christmas.