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HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — For incoming freshmen at western
Connecticut’s suburban Brookfield High School, hefting a backpack
weighed down with textbooks is about to give way to tapping out
notes and flipping electronic pages on a glossy iPad tablet
computer.
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A few hours away, every student at Burlington High School near
Boston will also start the year with new school-issued iPads, each
loaded with electronic textbooks and other online resources in
place of traditional bulky texts.
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While iPads have rocketed to popularity on many college campuses
since Apple Inc. introduced the device in spring 2010, many public
secondary schools this fall will move away from textbooks in favor
of the lightweight tablet computers.
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Apple officials say they know of more than 600 districts that have
launched what are called “one-to-one” programs, in which at least
one classroom of students is getting iPads for each student to use
throughout the school day.
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Nearly two-thirds of them have begun since July, according to
Apple.
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New programs are being announced on a regular basis, too. As
recently as Wednesday, Kentucky’s education commissioner and the
superintendent of schools in Woodford County, Ky., said that
Woodford County High will become the state’s first public high
school to give each of its 1,250 students an iPad.
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At Burlington High in suburban Boston, principal Patrick Larkin
calls the $500 iPads a better long-term investment than textbooks,
though he said the school will still use traditional texts in some
courses if suitable electronic programs aren’t yet
available.
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“I don’t want to generalize because I don’t want to insult people
who are working hard to make those resources,” Larkin said of
textbooks, “but they’re pretty much outdated the minute they’re
printed and certainly by the time they’re delivered. The bottom
line is that the iPads will give our kids a chance to use much more
relevant materials.”
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The trend has not been limited to wealthy suburban districts. New
York City, Chicago and many other urban districts also are buying
large numbers of iPads.
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The iPads generally cost districts between $500 and $600, depending
on what accessories and service plans are purchased.
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By comparison, Brookfield High in Connecticut estimates it spends
at least that much yearly on every student’s textbooks, not
including graphing calculators, dictionaries and other accessories
they can get on the iPads.
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Educators say the sleek, flat tablet computers offer a variety of
benefits.
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They include interactive programs to demonstrate problem-solving in
math, scratchpad features for note-taking and bookmarking, the
ability to immediately send quizzes and homework to teachers, and
the chance to view videos or tutorials on everything from important
historical events to learning foreign languages.
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They’re especially popular in special education services, for
children with autism spectrum disorders and learning disabilities,
and for those who learn best when something is explained with
visual images, not just through talking.
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Some advocates also say the interactive nature of learning on an
iPad comes naturally to many of today’s students, who’ve grown up
with electronic devices as part of their everyday world.
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But for all of the excitement surrounding the growth of iPads in
public secondary schools, some experts watching the trend warn that
the districts need to ensure they can support the wireless
infrastructure, repairs and other costs that accompany a switch to
such a tech-heavy approach.
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And even with the most modern device in hand, students still need
the basics of a solid curriculum and skilled teachers.
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“There’s a saying that the music is not in the piano and, in the
same way, the learning is not in the device,” said Mark Warschauer,
an education and informatics professor at the University of
California-Irvine whose specialties include research on the
intersection of technology and education.
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“I don’t want to oversell these things or present the idea that
these devices are miraculous, but they have some benefits and
that’s why so many people outside of schools are using them so
much,” he said.
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One such iPad devotee is 15-year-old Christian Woods, who starts
his sophomore year at Burlington, Mass., High School on a special
student support team to help about 1,000 other teens adjust to
their new tablets.
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“I think people will like it. I really don’t know anybody in high
school that wouldn’t want to get an iPad,” he said. “We’re always
using technology at home, then when you’re at school it’s
textbooks, so it’s a good way to put all of that
together.”
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Districts are varied in their policies on how they police students’
use.
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Many have filtering programs to keep students off websites that
have not been pre-approved, and some require the students to turn
in the iPads during vacation breaks and at the end of the school
year. Others hold the reins a little more loosely.
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“If we truly consider this a learning device, we don’t want to take
it away and say, `Leaning stops in the summertime.’ ” said Larkin,
the Burlington principal.
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And the nation’s domestic textbook publishing industry, accounting
for $5.5 billion in yearly sales to secondary schools, is taking
notice of the trend with its own shift in a competitive race toward
developing curriculum specifically for iPads.
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At Boston-based Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, for instance,
programmers scrambled to create an iPad-specific secondary school
program starting almost as soon as Apple unveiled the tablet in
spring 2010.
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The publisher’s HMH Fuse algebra program, which became available at
the start of the 2010 school year, was among the first and is a top
seller to districts. Another algebra program and a geometry
offering are coming out now.
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The HMH Fuse online app is free and gives users an idea of how it
works, and the content can be downloaded for $60. By comparison,
the publisher’s 950-page algebra text on which it was based is
almost $73 per copy, and doesn’t include the graphing calculators,
interactive videos and other features.
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For a school that would buy 300 of the textbooks for its freshman
class, for instance, the savings from using the online version
would be almost $4,000.
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Jay Diskey, executive director of the Association of American
Publishers’ schools division, said all of the major textbook
publishers are moving toward electronic offerings, but at least in
the short term, traditional bound textbooks are here to
stay.
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“I think one of the real key questions that will be answered over
the next several years is what sort of things work best in print
for students and what sort of things work best digitally,” Diskey
said. “I think we’re on the cusp of a whole new area of research
and comprehension about what digital learning means.”
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