Posted on 04/08/2011 10:51:03 PM PDT by Swordmaker
AUBURN, Maine — Moments after her daughter worked on writing and pronouncing letters on an iPad 2 Thursday, Natasha Landry said she was happy the Auburn School Committee voted to give kindergartners the tablet computers in the fall.
“It makes it easier for teachers to teach a larger group of kids, one on one, without having more teachers,” Landry said in the hall of Washburn Elementary School.
The $200,000 cost for the iPad 2 tablets will be less than hiring more teachers, she said. “It probably would take four teachers to do what the computers can do with one teacher.”
Landry was also fine with a 5 percent hike in the school budget, even though it would mean her property taxes would go up, if the budget is approved in a May 10 referendum.
“If we don’t try to keep up, our kids are going to fall behind,” she said.
But parent Nicole Fortin said she didn’t understand the idea of giving iPads to young students.
“It’s crazy,” Fortin said. “I look at all of the budgetary restraints we have. Our school system loses money every year to certain things. This is a lot to put in the hands of a 5-year-old.”
That great divide in opinion was common in Auburn on Thursday as news about iPad 2s for all Auburn kindergartners spread throughout Maine, New England and beyond.
Washburn Elementary School Principal Holly Couturier was “ecstatic” about the vote.
“I’ve seen myself the few students who have used iPads with [teacher] Mauri Dufour, and the gains they’ve made,” she said. “If they can make those gains in a relatively short amount of time, I can’t imagine where the kindergarten students are going to be at this time next year.”
Superintendent Tom Morrill said he would work diligently to pay for the iPads privately through grants or donations. Only if that fails will money in the budget be used, he said. By being first in Maine, and gaining the endorsement of former Gov. Angus King, Auburn has positioned itself well for grant money, Morrill said. The iPads will cost $479 each, he said.
Another way of paying for them could be through the newly formed Auburn Educational Fund, a private, nonprofit organization to support educational initiatives, Morrill said.
Some people questioned giving iPad 2s to 5-year-olds. They said the youngsters would drop and break the tablets. But children take care of things that are important to them, Morrill said. Also, the iPads are lighter and smaller than laptop computers, have no moving parts and will be in protective cases.
After students, teachers and parents go through iPad orientations, students will be allowed to take the computers home, Morrill said.
Two people representing Auburn taxpayer groups said Thursday they were unhappy with the school committee’s decision to approve the iPads.
Leroy Walker, a co-owner of Andy’s Beans in New Auburn and leader of the United New Auburn Association, said the iPads “are not needed in the kindergarten age.” He called the tablet “a toy.” Kindergartners “are a little young to be starting off with iPads. They’re too expensive,” he said.
However, he said, “educated people like teachers may be right. I may be wrong. We’ll see.”
He was less forgiving of the 5 percent budget increase, which he said is far too much.
“The whole state is in deep financial trouble,” he said. “Taxpayers are strapped with all these fuel problems and wars going on. It’s not the time to be asking for this kind of income.”
Ron Potvin of the Auburn Small Property Taxpayers Association agreed, calling the increase “beyond common sense.” To go from no increase to 5 percent when people are struggling “is not a doable figure,” he said. “All the things they’re asking for do not have to be done this year. They can be phased in.”
Both said a 2.1 percent increase would be more realistic.
Potvin was receptive to iPads “if the money’s there.” Young people seem to instantly understand technology, he said. “You look at kids today, they do stuff I never did. There would be value in it.”
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A better idea might be to give the parents vouchers to get them. Funny how Jr. is less likely to LOSE or BREAK something Daddy bought for them.
OOpps I used the V-word again LOL!!1
Also how difficult is it to teach 5 year olds? Are the complexities of letters, numbers, shapes, and colors just to much for one person? What ever happened to flash cards, puzzles, finger paints, cut and paste activities, stickers etc?
““If we don’t try to keep up, our kids are going to fall behind,” she said.”
I could read when I was 3.
My mother taught me...with paper and a pencil because iPads didn’t exist in 1964 but *somehow* we managed.
In the 4th grade, the PTA made a video of me reading college level text books to “pimp” the school’s ‘academic record’ to sponsors and donors.
Ha.
Everybody else in my class was reading “Ralph The Motorcycle Mouse”.
[which, while amusing enough, lacked secondary character development]
HOORAAAAYYY!!!!!!!!! A SQUARE FRISBEE!!!!!!!!!
But seriously, I wonder what it will do to those little eyes to read a backlit screen from age 5?
4 things that will end up breaking this nation are Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and Public Education, they don't work and we can no longer afford them
...In fact both of my children knew their names, shapes, colors and numbers BEFORE going to kindergarten...In fact they learned to read before public school
But I guess that would mean parents would have to actually give a DAYUM and work with their kids...
Don't think I am beating up on teachers because I used to teach in my local school system, but the instructional quality that passes for education today is so weak that just about anyone home schooling their child could to better!
They could get laptops for half the price, that do more.
I don’t think even swordmaker would say that $500 on computers should go to an ipad. Why does a kindergardener really need the fastest processing power? Are 5 year olds going to be doing video editing? Perhaps the Auburn school district might want to try to save $400 out of that $500 by buying a not as good version. Because these are 5 year olds.
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-gs/400241027-free-shipping-high-quality-touch-screen-tablet-PC-android-2-2-wholesalers.html
This is an Android 2.2 tablet for $86. Does pretty much the same stuff as an ipad. Does flash, the ipad? No doubt the ipad is better. But this one is $86. Maybe swordmaker can explain why kindergardeners can’t use the $86 generic android tablet, but must have the $500 ipad.
Gee, how did teachers manage to teach 35 kids in a room with no teacher aides and fancy smancy tech toys? Oh, I know! We were taught to mind the teacher and not disrupt the class or we'd get a spanking from the board of education and meet the same fate when we got home and we seemed to have turned out fine.
Why is it that my 70 year old father could learn and understand calculus with nothing more than a blank piece of paper and a slide ruler, but our kids need calculators to learn basic math?
Geez.
I honestly think we’d be further ahead if we could ban computers until a person graduates from university.
Seriously!
A computer is a tool, and if you use it you may learn something ... but a computer can't answer a child's question. At best it can say something like "SYNTAX ERROR LINE 23 COL 35 COMMA EXPECTED." Good luck figuring out why that comma is expected there, it's sometimes a challenge even for professional programmers.
I would expect that children play with those tablets for a few days and then become bored. The amount of information (in bits) coming from a tablet is so low it can't even compare to a live teacher. A child will need an iron will to stay with the tablet and try to learn something. Very few have that at the age of five :-)
They can’t use the older iPads, preferably donated ones?
They don't. For example:
A train traveled half of the distance from A to B with speed of 30 mph, and the rest of the way with the speed of 60 mph. What is the average speed of the train?
I don't even know how you can use a calculator here. The answer is 40, but the calculator will give you 45, which is wrong.
Verification of the answer: let the first half take 2 hours, and the second half 1 hour. Total time traveled is 3 hours, and the distance covered is (30*2)+(60*1) = 120 miles. The average speed is 120/(2+1) = 40 mph and it doesn't depend on any specific time of travel; if solved symbolically, Vavg = 2*V1/1.5.
A calculator here would be worse than useless - it *will* be used just because it's there and the students are trained like Pavlov's dogs to use it when any math question arises. But a calculator doesn't help in thinking.
You’re answer is correct.
However, algebra isn’t basic. BEDMAS is basic and kids can’t do that.
Actually video games is a perfect medium to teach. Kids will play video games for days on end, if we let them.
However, what needs to be done is for the games to be designed to teaach kids something.
Heck, they could have used film strips in earlier years for the entire six hour day...why did they not think of that? It was cutting-edge technology after all...think of the savings!
These teachers simply have no idea how to actually teach anything, apparently.
I would have preferred to learn Government via "Schoolhouse Rock." Mr. N. was a crew-cut-sporting former WWII officer...."all eyes on me; feet flat on the floor; no elbows on the desk....ARE YOU CHEWING GUM?!?!"
He was one of my favorite teachers...LOL!
Yes, video games and kids is a good match. However video games are popular in part because they don't require too much learning. When such learning is necessary it results in a flood of complaints. One such case is GTA Vice City - there you need to fly an RC helicopter through some building. This is amazingly hard, and you need to learn controls intuitively, to the extent of becoming a professional, just to get through the episode and continue with the game. Similar complaints exist about the boat races in that game, and about the pilot training in GTA San Andreas. And those are just examples of training that a kid would normally love to do. Rockstar just asked too much there; a boat race takes about 5 minutes and you arrive with only one or two seconds to spare; if you are too late you fail and must try again.
So a game can be fun, or it can be educational, but when you mix the two it becomes somewhat debatable. How much learning can you load into a game? There are games with puzzles, but those puzzles usually aren't too complicated. I saw one game with a puzzle so hard that the walkthrough spent a whole page on the necessary moves.
Another area of concern is how the student obtains the answer. If he just wants to complete the course and go play outside then the easiest way is to ask someone else who has already completed it. Since the teacher is barely involved, this will be a popular option. Another method would be to just try all possible answers (if they are multiple choice) - if there is no penalty then why not?
They really shouldn’t have $500 ipods. 7 inch androids are $50 in quantity. And even there, the kindergardeners don’t need the features. I’d guess that a special purpose device would cost $25 - $40. Wouldn’t need wifi, wouldn’t need a camera, wouldn’t need much of what’s included. A touchscreen device to run a specific number of programs.
What schools might want to do is just give every kid a new one of these things every year, with all of their textbooks for the year loaded on it. The hardware would cost under $50.
There’s actually a new business somewhere in there.
Giving an iPad to Kindergardeners is a ridiculous idea. Giving a touchscreen device to Kindergardeners that runs educational programs and costs 1/10th of an ipad is not a bad idea.
The new business is some company that talks to school districts and gives them what they really want. They call up the school district and say “I hear you’re thinking about giving ipads to kindergardeners. Are you sure you want 5 year olds surfing the internet? I know what you really want and it’ll cost 1/5 to 1/10th the price of the ipad.
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