ROCKPORT, Maine — After witnessing reading and math gains by kindergartners here, Camden-Rockport Elementary School plans to ask the school board for more iPads.
The school bought four iPads for kindergartners last year for the first time. The tablets were given to students who needed help getting their reading and math skills up to grade level. The teachers hoped that with enough customized games, the children would learn their letters and numbers.
It worked, according to Sara Burke, the Camden-Rockport Elementary technology integrator.
“The students are highly engaged and motivated when they use the iPads,” Burke said. “They use literacy- and math-based apps like games.”
This, she said, translated into gains in literacy and math skills.
The teachers can adjust the iPad applications to each student’s needs. If, for instance, a student frequently mixes the letters “b” and “d,” the teacher can adjust the application for heavy use of those two letters. The students also can play multiplayer educational games with the iPads.
When not playing games, the children use the iPads like a whiteboard. But unlike a board, the children can change the colors and texture of their letter and numbers, which keeps writing interesting, Burke said.
Aside from the four iPads used in kindergarten, Camden-Rockport Elementary also has three in its special education program, which it purchased through grant funding. The school has budgeted money to buy 10 more iPads next year for the lower grade levels.
“I’m going to suggest to the board that we can use as many iPads as we can get because they’re a great motivator. They’re a lot more engaging. You can individualize the instruction. Students feel like it’s for them,” Burke said.
Auburn gave iPads to kindergartners in September 2011. A February report s howed slightly higher education gains in nine of 10 areas in students who were given the iPads compared to their peers who went without the machines. In the final area, which measured recognizing sounds and writing letters, students with iPads saw statistically significant gains over their peers.
Any one think this article would convince my hubby to let our daughter use our Kindle Fire more? No IPad here – but I am sure I could find lots of games for that technology that will work too! :)
I believe educating our young as we know is passe. We will need less teachers and schools in the future. We are using an IPad with our children and they are motivated to learn and actually enjoy it. Let’s be real, traditional schooling is boring.
Yes. Let’s be “real.” Traditional schooling requires using all of one’s brain, not just reactive responses to stimuli. I’ll recommend a book, because I am certain nothing I could say here will dissuade you: “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” by Nicholas Carr.
Learning with any kind of depth cannot be accomplished through electronic media. I’ll give you an example that might have some meaning to you: repeatedly, I witness young people and young adults unable to perform a search on the Internet because they do not know how to make the connections, they do not have the research or educational backgrounds, that will yield the best results.
They’ll enter a search word – the first word or words to their head. The page will be revealed, and they will use the first item that appears, not even attempting to go beyond, nor to other references. Their eyes glaze over. If the answer is not there, they keep staring at the page. And that’s the end of it.
They have no idea how to use reference materials, and their brains are not making needed connections. They are only reacting to stimuli. This is not learning. Dogs have greater depth of reasoning.
And note: “…slightly higher education gains.” “Education gains” is not defined.
Rubbish.
Any tech can be bad if misused, but you obviously haven’t seen the delight and enthusiasm my 3 year displays playing numeracy and literacy “games” on our iPad compared to boring old pencil and paper and laborious pushing and repetion to learn the old way.
Please take your Luddite views away from the discussion of the future of our children.
“Technology” is too long a word for you to go to the enormous trouble of spelling fully. Four whole luscious, sensuous, brain-stimulating syllables.
One syllable words and one-byte depth of knowledge, and a one-byte memory lasting only until the next byte.
“Technology” remains in the dark ages, because to reveal all it should be in 2012 would be unprofitable.
Amoebae are responsive to stimuli, but I wouldn’t attempt to engage them in a philosophical discussion about education, nor want them teaching my child, nor want them running a business.
Yes, I deserved a serving of snark in return for my accusation of Luddism. However your attempt at pointing the finger of linguistic ineptitude is misdirected as I suffer from finding it difficult to dumb down my language to use the vernacular in forums such as this.
However, I get a little hot under the collar when blanket statements condemning technology as useless from the pedagogical perspective are cast around carelessly when there is such a wealth of evidence available to the contrary. The value of the iPad for making literacy and numeracy drill and practice fun and FAR more effective for pre-primary ages such as my 3 year old being a prime example.
Yes, there have been many examples of silver bullet thinking in terms of particular implementations of technology over the years that have failed spectacularly, but that is no reason to condemn every new advance out of hand. As usual, the technology is really just another tool that still needs a competent educational practitioner to wield it successfully.
So please excuse my accusatory tone, but I am serious about this having been experiencing the benefits firsthand with my own child. I also work in the teaching and learning space in the university environment so have seen and experienced plenty of examples of educators shooting themselves in the foot with the latest craze over the past couple of decades. However, I have to say the iPad and many of it’s apps and applications is quantitatively and qualitatively a different and potentially far more effective beast altogether.
I recommend you go see a toddler using some of these educational apps, and you may change your tune as well.
I believe that you will be sorry that your child began using an iPad at such a young age. You did not.
There is evidence of miscomprehension in your reply. You did not suffer from being unable to “dumb down” your language in your first reply to me. I did not “condemn every new advance” in technology.
I have not seen substantive evidence, nor a “wealth of evidence” that technology is so very beneficial from a pedagogical perspective. (Or a human one).
Your 3 year old is using the iPad at home. Would you want your child to have an iPad thrust at him or her in kindergarten? I wouldn’t. I want good teachers. I also wouldn’t want to expose my child to wi-fi radiation and magnetic fields at such a young age.
I wonder if you have read the Nicholas Carr book, or others on the subject of the effect of the use of electronic learning devices and the Internet on how we think, learn, and react to information.
It’s your child. You will experiment with the child one way or another as all parents do, whether intentionally or not. I look forward to reading about the long-term results.
I believe you are wrong. Already I am very thankful for the accelerated numeracy and literacy skills my little one is already demonstrating courtesy of her early access to these apps and the iPad that runs them.
Let me quote from your original comment “Learning with any kind of depth cannot be accomplished through electronic media”. Sounds to me like you are indeed condemning every new advance in technology as having little value in the learning process.
Surely you would agree that gross generalizations such as this have no place in an open and inquiring evaluation of potentially useful new teaching and learning scenarios. It smacks of the worst kind of absolutism and stuck in the mud ideology.
Now I am not saying I disagree that many uses of technology are less than useful – the dumbing down of language encouraged by SMS text messages and accelerated by chat, email and other Internet technologies is indeed a disquieting development.
However, I refuse to throw out the baby with the bath water and condemn all technologies out of hand the way you are doing. Just as I state that not all uses of technology are good in terms of educational outcomes, please have the decency to admit that not all are bad.
Also, have I ever stated I didn’t want good teachers as well? No, I stated quite clearly that technology is but a tool that still needs a good teacher to wield it effectively.
As far as concerns over wifi – I am more concerned at the far more dangerous radiation my child suffers going outside on a sunny day. However, I do not give her carte blanche access to these technologies. Any sensible parent or teacher makes use of all teaching tools including pencil and paper and outdoor play etc etc.
(new comment as I can’t post a new reply to the comment below)
A close relative is currently dying of skin cancer of the face. Trust me, it is far more dangerous for my little one to go outside and play than to use our iPad for an hour or so a day – particularly so here in Australia. (we do of course let her play outside, but with protection and in moderation – just as we ration use of the iPad).
I fail to see why brain to hand to paper (or blackboard) could be more educationally compelling than brain to multiple fingers to multi-touch interactive screen. Note she does of course still use blackboard and paper – just not exclusively.
However, feel free to stick with your horse and buggy, stone tablets and chisel, wood fired oven, quill pen, cave etc. Just don’t expect others to agree that is the best way to live or educate their children.
Sunlight is health-giving. We are not exposed to “dangerous radiation” by sunlight with a caveat about degree of exposure. Nor does sunlight, unless we are on the desert with no water, cause a hyper-alert, consuming focusing that has physiological effects that are imbalanced.
Consideration must also be given to the effects of utilization of electronics in very close contact to the body. Even with early home pcs there were warnings to position the body 3 feet away. While adjustments have been made in this area, profit motives easily overwhelm truth.
Regarding depth of learning, I would hypothesize that even with mathematics, brain to hand to paper or blackboard yields greater depth of reasoning and the possibility of finding solutions. Would the folks who invented computers have done so without utilizing all their senses?
But enough.
Does this mean we’ll be rid of the teacher’s unions too?!?! Ho0raayyyyyy!!!
That wouldn’t hurt my feelings any. We need more good teachers that are rewarded for doing a good job rather than being rewarded for time served in the union. It is no wonder we are dumbing down as a nation.
“The tablets were given to students who needed help getting their reading and math skills up to grade level. ” So are these so-called games being done in class or at home? Where does the teacher come into this if they have students who are behind in these skills? Isn’t it their job and the ed-tech’s job to work with these children and get them to where they need to be? Or are we sending children home wth an i-pad? Where is the “teaching”? And to hear from the teaching population that they may cease teaching cursive handwriting because it’s not used anymore – a lost art, if you will. So sad.
Cursive writing is not just an art. The formation of the words and the thought processes that occur in the brain, and from the brain to hand, and then to paper, involves significantly higher biologic processes than typing onto a computer screen. (Perhaps best evidenced by the type of comments that appear). Cursive writing is also an art. One that many wish I had mastered.
We still need to sign our names on legal documents. There is still a need.
They also took out teaching grammar 30 years ago. I think that needs to be put back in too. I met a teacher who couldn’t answer a gramerical question on a test praxis exam correctly. It sort of bothered me that they were teaching my child how to write, and they are the one with a job right now.
Sad, isn’t it. Reminds me of an old joke.
A salesman walks up to a house and knocks on the door. A child answers and the salesman asks, “Son, are your parents at home?”
The boy replies, “They ain’t here.”
The salesman then asks, “Son, where’s your grammar?”
The little boy answers, “She ain’t here neither.”
Good points – it seems children only need to know how to hold the mouse and which button to click to complete school these days. Give a child a ream of paper and a pencil, and they look at you like you have three heads.
I was watching a friend’s child afterschool and she had 6 pages of homework and a small 10 page book to read that night – she is five years old. But it was all done with a pencil and such – no computer there. However, it was up to me to decypher the directions – almost messed it up for her. We had a good laugh at my expense.
In a few more years we won’t be writing at all, we’ll be typing everything. I have some old letters at home from the 1800’s and the old scroll handwriting from that time period is amazing. In those days they really took their time to write. Today we’ll pop off an e-mail and not even check our spelling -or use spellcheck because we’re losing that art also. It won’t be too many more years when we’ll think of sending an e-mail as being old-school. The times, they are a changing. Not for the better in my opinion.
Up to grade level? These kids are in kindergarten. I would have to see more evidence based research to buy into this whole concept. You should be working on language skills in kindergarten. These kids need to be read to and talked with. We are emphasizing the wrong skills in kindergarten today. Many long time kindergarten teachers have given up in despair as the curriculum has changed to rote learning of letters and sounds that used to be taught in first grade when the most children are ready. This is a shame. All those important socializing skills normally taught in kindergarten are put on the back burner.
Hey, they learned all that stuff in Headstart.
First we are forced to pay for laptops for all school children. Now we are going to be forced to purchase i-Pads for kindergartners too? What ever happened to parents taking a few minutes out of each day to help teach their children to learn simple skills?