Apples for the teacher: iPads

The Franklin Square Union Free School District has been working over the past several years to implement state-of-the-art technology in its classrooms. Five years ago, the district didn’t even have an e-mail system; now, it is working on installing its final interactive whiteboards in general education classrooms, and its speech and hearing teachers are piloting iPads.

Penny Curry, the Franklin Square district’s director of instructional technology, said the district’s speech teachers have recently been piloting iPads, tablet computers developed by Apple Inc. in 2010, with students experiencing a wide variety of speech disorders. Teachers are piloting the devices to help promote speech development through specific applications such as Proloquo2go, a speech application that can only be used with Apple products like the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, Curry said.

Patrick Manley, Franklin Square’s superintendent, said the district is also piloting iPads for administrative functions. The devices would allow for more immediate teacher evaluations and eliminate the students’ need for hard-copy books, Manley explained.

However, at around $500 each, iPads are come at a costly price, and due to budget concerns, it is difficult to tell whether and when they would be implemented in the district, he said.

In addition to its iPad piloting efforts, Franklin Square has been working diligently to stay on top of new technology, as it has outlined in its five-year technology plan.

Manley said the Franklin Square district has spent the last few years updating its computer labs, bringing in new computers, and will be updating one more lab over its next budget cycle. Kindergarten to sixth-grade classrooms in the district’s three elementary schools rely heavily on computers and Internet access for their daily work, so having up-to-date technology is important, he added.

 Manley said each school within the district now has its own website, and within those sites, many teachers have created their own webpages, where students and teachers can blog.

“Students and teachers are interactively blogging. The teacher will post a topic of the day, and students can go in and comment,” he said.

The district also currently has 81 interactive boards, known as ActivBoards, which are modern-day blackboards with touch-controlled screens that are linked to projectors and computers.

 Joe Armocida, president of the Franklin Square Board of Education, said the district has been working for the past three years to install ActivBoards, and only needs 23 more to complete its district initiative to have a board in every general education classroom. Sen. Dean Skelos, R-Franklin Square, helped the district fully install the John Street School’s boards in the fall, and the district is hoping to complete its ActivBoard initiative by 2013, he added.

Armocida said some classrooms in the district also use an electronic voting tool, ActiVotes, to assess student learning while engaging them in an interactive lesson. This function of ActivBoards helps promote more efficient interaction between teachers and students, and allows teachers to receive immediate feedback about students’ understanding, he said.

He explained that interactive boards are connected to individual “clickers” that are given to students, who can select from multiple-choice responses on boards when answering questions about lessons. Teachers can then see which students aren’t answering correctly, without revealing who doesn’t understand, he said. Teachers can then take those students aside and devote more time to them, he added. “It is really good technology,” he said.

Curry said the boards engage students in lessons, and provide students with the ability to interact and be a part of the teaching and learning process. She also said the district has seven SMART Tables, which allow students to interactively work on a large table surface. The tables are used in classrooms for children with disabilities to promote visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning, she added. 

Jean Fichtl, president of the Sewanhaka Central High School District Board of Education, said the Sewanhaka district has also been installing interactive boards in its classrooms, bringing them in gradually when it can afford to do so.

“We have received legislative grants over the past at least five years, and we have been purchasing them slowly,” Fichtl said. “It’s a great tool, and with more and more technology out there, you have to be up with it ... they’re using these all over now.”

Richard Zwycewicz, Sewanhaka’s chief information officer, said the district is also planning to implement iPads by March 1. Sewanhaka recently ordered 10 iPads for the H. Frank Carey High School’s English as a Second Language Program, Zwycewicz said.

“That’s where we are going to start using them, and we’ll see how it works,” Zwycewicz said, explaining that state-of-the-art language-translator applications are only accessible with Apple devices like iPads.

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