Deidre Anchorstar, a social studies teacher at Pottsville Area High School, recently asked a class of seniors to briefly describe a few landmark court cases.
Bryce Hager and Chase Alisauckas turned to one of the new iPads the district leased to find details on Brown v. Board of Education and Mapp v. Ohio.
“I like it. It’s so much easier because you don’t have to go to a computer lab. You can do it right here. And you can check your grades on them. I can look up my assignments in case I forget them. Everything is there right in your hands,” Hager said.
“They’re fun to use,” Kiera Bolkovich, a fifth-grade student at D.H.H. Lengel Middle School, said. She enjoys when teachers can give her complements with texts, like “Great job!”
In March, the Pottsville Area school board decided to spend more than $1.6 million to equip every student in the district with an Apple iPad Air 2 for the 2016-17 school year. Pottsville Area became the first school district in Schuylkill County to put an iPad into the hands of each of its students.
So far it’s working out, according to school principals, teachers and students.
“For the beginning of the third week, it’s running very smoothly. I look forward to see where we’re at at the end of the school year,” Pottsville Area Superintendent Jeffrey S. Zwiebel said.
“I’m big on technology, so when I found out about the new iPad initiative I was really excited. And I actually think the iPads are working very well,” Tayah Moore, a senior, said.
They allow teachers and students to have more immediate interaction.
For example, on Sept. 12, middle school teacher Robert Sheaffer started the day by asking a fifth-grade class a question via the iPads:
“You can make the world more awesome! Tell us about the changes you think would help make the world better.”
Dominic Alvarez, a student in the class, wrote: “I think that if a kid knows how to drive then he should be able to drive. At any age if someone knows how to drive then they should be able to drive.”
“The students are responding very well to the changes. I think that they are feeling validated knowing that a technology that they are very comfortable with finally has a place in the classroom. Already, in the first three weeks of school, I have seen student work that rivals anything I have seen in the last four years that I have been with the district. Most of the kids seem genuinely excited to come into the classroom when they know they are going to be using the iPads,” Sheaffer said.
“I have noticed an increase in completion of homework,” Anchorstar said.
Sometimes, the devices can take the place of textbooks.
“I can take pictures of the pages I need to work on and I can take the iPad home instead of taking home the entire textbook, which saves my back a lot,” Rachel Rubright, a senior, said Monday.
Each iPad weighs one pound, 10 ounces.
Set-up
In previous years, the district provided a limited number of iPads for the students to use. They were shared and kept at school. With this year’s one-to-one initiative, every student is able to have their own iPad that they could take home.
Earlier this year, Dianne Dougherty, technology director at Pottsville Area School District, said the district’s four-year lease with Apple included iPad Air 2 tablets for each student in grades kindergarten through 12 and all teachers and administrators.
In March, the district bought 2,900 iPads, and 201 were distributed to faculty and 2,699 were available for students. In August, the district bought an additional 40 iPads, collecting a total of 2,739 available for students.
“This leaves 31 spares/loaners to distribute to new students enrolling and/or students that may need a loaner throughout the year,” Dougherty said.
As of Wednesday morning, 2,333 students in the district had iPads.
There are 2,708 students in the district. A total of 342 iPads will be distributed to kindergarten and first-grade students. There are 20 vocational technical students who haven’t picked up their iPads yet, but they won’t need them until the second semester. There are 13 students who still haven’t returned their device agreements yet, Dougherty said.
To use the iPads at school, the district administrators had to download free apps including Schoology, a learning management system teachers and students use.
“The two big apps we use are Schoology and Nearpod,” Moore said.
“We use those apps in just about every class anymore, which is really nice,” Rubright said.
Some popular websites like Facebook have been blocked, and the district filters websites with questionable content.
“And even when they take them home and they get on their own Wi-Fi, they’re still filtered through the school,” Dougherty said.
During the first week of school, while some students were intrigued by how the devices were used in class, others were curious about their amenities, like the built-in cameras.
“I have noticed a lot of kids getting distracted with them. The kids who are into school and want to do stuff, they use these to the best of their ability. The kids who would normally sit there doodling go onto ifunny and websites like that,” Rubright said.
“And I’m sure somebody on the faculty can see all that stuff,” Moore said.
Dougherty said teachers and administrators can easily see what students are doing on their iPads at any given time.
“We can remotely stop it,” Tiffany Reedy, the high school principal, said.
“And the teachers control what you see, so you don’t get distracted as much,” Rubright said.
Performance
The district is trying to figure out how the initiative will be evaluated.
“This year is a foundational year for us, so we’re just trying to get everybody comfortable with where we want the teachers to be and where we want the students to be. So we’re going to work with Apple, and we do have the professional development people coming in. So we’re going to work with Apple to determine what the best way of evaluating the whole system is,” Stephanie R. Ziegmont, director of curriculum and instruction at Pottsville Area, said.
Until that method is determined, district officials will only have stories from school administrators, teachers and students.
“I think the biggest area to work on is really for us. The trainings that we have been provided with along with the ones that we have coming up will really help to transform our classes and allow us to do things we were never able to do before,” Sheaffer said.
“Most of the kids here already know a lot about the iPads and what all they can do on them. I think that we as teachers are trying to catch up to what the students already know,” Sheaffer said.
“One of the biggest concerns is assuring each student is on or using the resource I am discussing and not on another site or app. I walk around the classroom or ask questions to help keep students on task, but I realize some students can be jumping ahead or looking elsewhere,” Anchorstar said.
“I feel the main challenge will be deciphering which of the myriad applications and websites will be best to use on a regular basis. Each week I am getting a little more proficient at this and finding things I really like to use with my classes,” William Rhoads, a math teacher in the high school, said.
“Sometimes the iPad isn’t the most useful tool. To me, I prefer a notebook or something like that because if the internet goes down, the iPads go down. And let’s say you have your notes and you don’t know how to save them. You’ll lose your notes forever,” Erik Ogden, a freshman said.
“Occasionally we have had a couple times when it’s gone down. Overall, it’s pretty good,” Rubright said.
But it never stays down for long, Moore said.
“I don’t know why that stuff happens,” Moore said.
“We contract with the IU for internet services,” Zwiebel said.
Pottsville Area School District buys its internet services from the Regional Wide Area Network consortium through Schuylkill Intermediate Unit 29.
Dougherty said her department serves as the IT (Information Technology) specialist for Pottsville Area. She mentioned one case in which the district experienced an interruption. That was on Sept. 9. It lasted 10 minutes.
So far this school year, none of the iPads have been damaged or lost, Dougherty said.
“Based on the last three years of students using iPads, we have had only three accidental breakages,” Dougherty said.
She isn’t worried about the devices being stolen.
“The iPads are a paper weight to anyone outside the district. The devices are directly tied to Apple Inc. by their serial number. This means that only Pottsville Area School District employees and students can manage and use the device. They are unable to be restored to factory settings by anyone with the exception of a district employee with administrative security access,” Dougherty said.