Are iPads at Costa worth the large investment?

ipadprojectPro: By Alex White
Executive Opinion Editor

The iPad pilot program is a beneficial asset for the district and Mira Costa. Technological changes taking place in the Manhattan Beach Unified School District will enable a more productive learning environment for students and faculty.

At a high achieving school like Costa, it is important to stay ahead of the curve in any way possible, and the iPad Pilot Program, introduced last year to the district, does just that. It gives teachers a chance to integrate technology in a way that the vast majority of other schools don’t, and if used correctly, the program will allow students to learn effectively and become more technologically adept.

A major proponent of the iPad pilot program is Mira Costa Principal Dr. Ben Dale, who joined the school administration a year before iPads were introduced to the district and has been an ardent supporter of updated technology since the beginning of his employment. He believes that while greater technology use may not have a direct link to higher test scores, the intangible benefits for students and teachers alike are surely well worth the investment. He is right.

One of Dale’s key points is that the program has the ability to get students that otherwise wouldn’t be engaged and participating in learning. Use of the iPads will monitor and track the proficiency of students that are generally overlooked in the classroom, as well as give more interactive means of learning material.

Currently, the system at Costa is set up with five iPad carts on campus for use with different departments. This use of iPads has been effective but has not yet reached its full potential. Students attending Manhattan Beach Middle School have all received iPads on a one-to-one basis and are able to take the devices home. MBMS is a pioneer in this scale of implementation and is among the first public schools in the nation to do this.

This kind of cutting-edge technology that will soon reach Costa’s campus in full makes students more capable for the future. However, it will only do so if the devices are implemented in the correct way, and that starts with the teachers. There are higher iPad approval rates at MBMS as opposed to Costa because of the way the devices were implemented at the middle school. There, students used the iPads in smaller groups and were given more time to use them, often making projects from start to finish on the devices.

The key to the success of the iPad pilot program lies with their accessibility and usefulness, both of which will be reliant on teachers. Various training sessions and experts have already been made available to the Costa teaching staff, and Dale believes that the versatility and adaptability of the Costa teachers will allow the iPads to be used to full fruition. Dale’s goal is to have every Costa student using an iPad in class in the next few years, taking notes and using the interactive textbooks.

The future only holds more with the iPad program. With more time comes a wider variety of applications available for use.
In the end, the power is with the teachers. If they choose to use iPads simply as a different means of handing out a worksheet, the program will surely fail. However, if the teaching staff chooses to use this adaptable tool to make the learning environment efficient, the program will succeed.

Additionally, the choice of using the iPad tablet computer models is among the best choices for the school learning environment. Nearly all students have access to a standard computer at home, and iPads can last for years running at high speeds, compared to similarly priced laptops that would be susceptible to a wide variety of viruses and malware.

Because of the success thus far and the potential for a more effective education for students, the iPad program is absolutely worth the money and time.

Con:By Danny Kelleher
Editor-in-Chief

Although technological advancements will clearly be a main component in determining the success of schools and school districts in the future, the Manhattan Beach Unified School District’s iPad pilot program is poorly planned and executed.

The pilot program, which began in June 2011 as a main piece of the district’s long-term technology plan, lacks clear strategic objectives for the implementation and use of the iPads. It is funded by a combination of grants, general district funding and private purchases. Although it is an excellent sign for the future that various parts of our community are contributing toward the prospect of progressive education, their efforts are in vain due to the ineffective implementation of the current program.

It was misguided and impulsive to spend money on iPads, rather than other forms of technology, for the district. With iPads priced online at a minimum of $500, the cost of the program ran in the hundreds of thousands of dollars despite educator discounts and the fact that families paid for around 70% of them.

For the same price, the district could have purchased fully functioning PC laptop computers, on which students could adequately take notes, one of the supposed main purposes of the iPads, on full keyboards. There is no clear feature that makes iPads better than laptops; laptops would have a larger hard drive and a more diverse range of capabilities.

But the iPads themselves are only part of the problem. The main issue with the new iPad pilot, and the district technology push in general, lies in the ambiguity regarding how or why these technological advances are being used. Costa needs to develop a productive student and staff purpose for the introduction of this new technology, rather than just continue to push to upgrade the school’s electronics.

Schools in Northern California that have begun to utilize new technology have adopted a program where they “flip” the learning environment, having students watch lectures on subjects at home then use class time to practice with what would normally be considered “homework.” Reviewing the subject material from the previous night and receiving one-on-one instruction from teachers in class would make the iPads purchase more effective.

Dale says he is in favor of implementing a program similar to this at the school in the future, but the general lack of commitment from all Costa teachers to attempt to integrate the iPads in the future only accentuates the large possibility that the district and its parents could, with time, come to look with regret upon the gigantic monetary investment.
In addition, the current state of affairs that school Wi-Fi is in weakens the case for iPad use in the classroom. Phase two of the wireless internet connection began long ago, but frequent problems make using iPads less effective and the program as a whole less convincing.

The final problem with iPads in their current state of use is the distraction they pose to the learning environment. Dale maintains that a distracted student will remain so regardless, but in reality, the potential future freedom of students to download meaningless applications and have them at their disposal during class could cause a problem. Dale’s statement that iPads are engaging is true, but sometimes for the worse.
In the end, advancing technology is a good, reasonable goal for the district and Costa to strive for. However, in investing such large quantities of money and effort into a program, the district and Costa administration should have ensured more cohesion and feasibility prior to implementation. The iPads are currently being under-utilized and poorly managed.