iPads invade an Idaho elementary school, replace all textbooks

By Mariella Moon March 13, 2013

idaho-school-ipad — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Tablets sure are continuing to invade classrooms, with the iPad looking more and more like the favorite among educational institutions. A U.K. school has previously eliminated the need for pen and paper by supplying students with iPads, and a Maine school spent $200,000 in 2011 to buy iPads for its kindergarteners. Idaho’s Paul Elementary School recently joined their ranks when iSchool Campus launched a pilot program that supplied Apple’s tablets to its students.

Students and teachers at Paul Elementary have been using iPads provided by the iSchool program, which has also provided the school iMacs to be used inside the classroom, for the past two and a half months. Johnson believes that iPads have the potential to replace textbooks in the long run and has revealed that the school has saved on 20,000 paper copies (used for worksheets and note-taking, among other things) since the program was launched.

In the promotional video below, you can watch the school’s educators talk about how much of an impact the iPads have made. “With this deployment, with technology, students are excited about learning,” says school principal, Colleen Johnson. “They’re not sitting in the classroom where students are raising their hand and answering one at a time – they are actively participating in every single part of the lesson. They’re excited, they like it, and that’s reaffirming for the teacher and the student.”

While the teachers and the school’s principal are obviously impressed with the changes brought about by the tablets, we want to know what you think. Do you think putting tablets in classrooms is beneficial to your children’s learning, or would you rather they stick to pen and paper so they don’t become tech-depending at such an early age?

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