http://www.postbulletin.com/news/local/digital-wave-hits-rochester-schools/article_1f98f165-d044-521f-9fa9-42b50b08e5a0.html
Principal Jim Sonju hands out iPads Monday to Lincoln at Mann students Makenna Studer, left, and Kyleigh Anderson. The high technology devices will be distributed to 7,000 students in the Rochester School District.
Digital wave hits 7 Rochester schools
MATTHEW STOLLE, mstolle@postbulletin.com | Posted: Tuesday, January 27, 2015 8:04 am
Lincoln K-8 Choice School student Tommy Welch was handed a new iPad, an episode that was repeated thousands of times across the district Monday and today, as Rochester Public Schools, after a series of fits and starts, officially jumped into the digital learning era with both feet. "I definitely think this is the next step in education, getting our education linked up to technology," said Welch, an exuberant Lincoln eighth-grader, soon after being handed an iPad Air along with 30 other students in his class. "I feel that it will (impact my learning), but I don't even know how yet because it's just so new, so many options. I can't even think of all of them."
Seven schools are going fully one-to-one with the tablets this week, making it the largest digital wave in Rochester Public Schools since Longfellow Elementary School started out as a tablet pilot site three years ago. The distribution will take place over two days, with middle schools receiving them Monday and elementary schools today.
In addition to Lincoln, Pinewood, Riverside Central and Gage elementary schools, Willow Creek and Friedell middle schools and the Alternative Learning Center high school will be going fully one-to-one as Rochester students start second semester. More tablets also will be heading to Rochester's other high schools. Altogether, nearly 3,500 iPads will be added to the district's inventory of tablets as part of what district officials are calling a Phase 1 expansion, said the district's Director of Communications Heather Nessler. The move brings the total number of the district's iPads to 7,000. That equates to about 41 percent of the district's more than 17,000 students. The district paid about $1.3 million for the new devices.
But what all of this means for education in Rochester classrooms isn't crystal clear. Whether this was a transformative moment or an evolutionary one for Rochester schools — or a little bit of both — depends on who you talk to. But there was a sense of change taking place within classrooms — that there would be a learning curve to using the devices.
Linnea Archer, a Lincoln language arts middle school teacher, called it both an exciting moment and an anxious one. "I've got to step up my game," Archer said when asked how the devices would change her classroom. "I've got to change the way I do things, which is both exciting and terrifying. And if I'm a good teacher, it's more exciting than terrifying." But Archer said she didn't intend for her classroom to drown in technology and anticipated the first couple of days would be used to explore the devices. Students often are referred to as "digital natives" because of their adeptness at using such tablets. But Archer thought the learning would be two-way. "Most kids know how to use it for games, but they don't know how to use it as a tool," Archer said.
Lincoln students had their own views about how the devices would change their school's culture. Sometimes students forget their textbooks or leave them in their lockers, but that won't happen anymore, now that students will be able to access them on their iPads, said eighth-grader Ashley Stortz. Stortz also thought the iPad expansion would help bridge the digital divide in Rochester, between the haves and have-nots when it comes to technology. "Some people don't have computers at their homes or they don't have a very good working Internet, and now, they can take this home and use this," Stortz said.
Yet, several students and teachers resisted the notion that this new infusion of technology would somehow represent the end of books. It wouldn't, they said. "I love books because, even with technology, if you're constantly looking at it all the time, it's not good for your eyes, and you start getting headaches," said eighth-grader Christine Lawrence.
There was also a sense of excitement about a device's potential to change education and make it more engaging for students. Lincoln teacher Andy Roth talked about a new application he planned to use in his algebra class. It would allow him to check his students' work in near real time as students worked on their tablets and offer immediate feedback in the classroom. "A lot of times, I don't get to see (their work) until it's turned in," Roth said. "If the kids are making the same error over and over, I can hopefully correct it at the time they are making it."
District officials say the goal is to have complete one-to-one coverage across the district by the 2016-17 school year. But they say a date for rolling out a second wave of iPads has not been determined yet. "We are currently focused on Phase 1, which is the second semester of this school year," Nessler said in an email. "We believe that Phase 1 will continue through the beginning of next school year. We anticipate a second phase, but what that looks like at this time is not clearly defined."
