Riding The Tech Learning Curve | More Central Mass. schools invest in computers for classroom instruction
New technologies have revolutionized the way businesses in various industries have been able to customize product or service offerings. In health care, for example, electronic medical records allow doctors to zero in on the individual circumstances of each patient and customize treatments. In retail, tracking shopping habits of consumers allows businesses to cater advertisements directly to them.
Jim Tracy, headmaster of Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, hopes for that same level of innovation in the education industry.
Special education teachers already cater curriculum to students, but Tracy said that could be done for each student based on the best way he or she learns. Giving teachers technology that allows for individualized instruction, Tracy said, is a significant business opportunity for tech companies.
“It’s a huge, untapped market,” Tracy said.
Schools across Central Massachusetts and beyond are interested in investing in technology, but many education officials — both from public and private institutions — seem unsure about what the best products and solutions are for their students.
Some of the faculty at Cushing have taken the issue into their own hands.
While each student and teacher has his or her own laptop and there are enough e-readers in the school’s library for each student, science teacher Grant Geske, who is also a scientist and computer engineer, felt the technology still had limitations.
When students were sitting at their desks, he would face the backs of their laptops. How did he know if students were paying attention to the lesson, or YouTubing a cartoon?
Adapting To Meet The Need
Geske reverse-engineered what the school now calls the iClass Table, a combination of various technology hardware devices, many of them Apple products, into a single touch-screen device implanted into a table. Students work in teams at the tables and Geske can coordinate and track what’s on each screen from a central system.
“We’re proud to be a cutting-edge first mover,” Tracy said. “But we’re not merely buying the latest product because of all the bells and whistles it has. We need to show there is substantive, demonstrative learning value.”
And the iClass Table, Tracy said, is so valuable that the school hopes to produce an online video that shows other schools how to make their own.
Other private schools in Central Massachusetts are also on the leading edge of adopting technology.
For example, the Bancroft School in Worcester, a private kindergarten-through-Grade 12 school, strongly recommends that each student have an iPad. By next year, it will be mandatory in the middle school grades: This year, more than 90 percent of students already have tablets, though.
“It has greatly influenced our teachers,” said Elisa Heinricher, Bancroft’s director of academic technology. “It’s really allowed us to open up and reach so many more minds more expansively.”
Other schools haven’t quite jumped on the iPad or tablet bandwagon though.
Each student and teacher at Worcester Academy, for example, has a laptop, but Jason Epstein, the school’s chief information officer, said iPads and other tablets still have limitations compared to laptops. The school is piloting some tablet devices, but Epstein said the bottom line is what device will give the school the most operability for the money.
With tablets only being slightly less expensive than comparable Apple laptops, the school has decided to provide each student with a laptop. Down the line, Epstein can envision a day when tablet computers replace laptops, but it’s not quite there yet, he said. Notably, the printing capabilities from tablets and the inability to play movies, videos and other Flash devices on a tablet is a hindrance, he said. Worcester Academy has a technology committee that pilots and tests new products.
Public Schools Try It Out
Private schools are not the only ones exploring how technologies can benefit students. Shrewsbury Public Schools, for example, launched a pilot program for 60 students at the Sherwood Middle School in which each student in the program received an iPad that he or she will use both at school and at home for the remainder of the year. Teachers will provide lessons geared specifically for the iPads and school officials will assess the results of the program before considering whether to broaden it.
At a recent school committee meeting in Shrewsbury, school officials welcomed two high school students from Maine who shared their experiences using an iPad in school. Officials mentioned at the meeting that the tablet’s less expensive price point (compared to that of a laptop) as well as its smaller size and long battery life are some of the advantages they see in the technology.
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