Technology Counts - March 14, 2013 - 14

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13

loted an experiment that allowed the youngsters
to take the devices home.
The students memorized a song about proper iPad
care, and all abided by the rule that it couldn’t be
used at either before- or after-school day care or during bus rides between home and school. The first
night’s homework assignment was to to use their
iPads to make a short video of their families.
“There was no damage to the ones that went
home,” says Kelly R. McCarthy, a kindergarten
teacher at Auburn’s Fairview Elementary School.
“And they all came back to school the next day because if they didn’t bring them, they couldn’t use
them during class time.”
Sadie Grealish’s son, Jake, took part in the pilot.
At home in the evenings, the two would sit in front
of the iPad, taking pictures, working on a story-writing app, or playing a math game together.
“It’s nice for the kids to have that instant feedback,” says Grealish. Based partly on the take-home
initiative, the family bought its own iPad this past
Christmas for everyone in the family to use.
“He loves doing his assignments,” Grealish says.
“It just made it more exciting.”

PARENT TRAINING
The Riverside school district in Southern California places so much emphasis on the home-school
connection that it has even joined forces with the
city-sponsored SmartRiverside Digital Inclusion
Program to help implement a parent-training
program designed to support computer use in the
homes of low-income families.
For instance, if a family has a combined income
of less than $45,000 a year and at least one parent attends one of its training classes, Smart
Riverside will supply the parents with a refurbished desktop computer and wireless card, free
of charge. So far, 8,000 computers have gone to

Great

change

begins with

great

ideas.

Organizational leadership gives
me that M.Ed.background,
a business background and
a teaching background. I have
a lot of options.
Shaka Dickerson, M.Ed.
organizational leadership

Explore Our Difference
peabody.vanderbilt.edu
14

EDUCATION WEEK

>> MARCH 14, 2013

Photos by_Eric Grigorian for Education Week
Seniors Michael Callahan, left, Ariel
Camacho, and Hannah-Marie Valenzuela
view photos on a laptop during their lunch
break at Ramona High School.

families through the program.
The Riverside district, which serves about 43,000
students, runs a “bring your own device,” or byod,
initiative in each of its classrooms, pre-K through
12th grade. If a student cannot supply his or her own
laptop, tablet, or smartphone, the district will provide its functional equivalent.
“They check out digital devices at the beginning of the
year, and check it back in at the end,” says David E.
Haglund, the principal of the Riverside Virtual School, a
blended learning program in the district serving grades
1-12 that mixes face-to-face instruction in school with
virtual learning at home. “If it’s lost, damaged, or stolen,
they’re responsible. The system works exactly like it always has with regards to textbooks.” The district offers
parents the option of purchasing third-party insurance
to cover theft or damage to the devices.
Monica Ward teaches social science at Riverside’s
Ramona High School, which decided to move toward
1-to-1 computing about a year and a half ago. But
byod wasn’t really an option. About 80 percent of the
school’s students qualify for free or reduced-price

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13

your own device” (or byod).
Each day, more than 11,000
student-owned devices—from laptops to tablets to smartphones—
connect to the district’s wireless
network.
The byot intiative is attracting
national attention: By the end of
this school year, about 900 visitors will have cycled through the
district in hopes of replicating its
program.
According to Hobson, administrators observed that when every
student in a classroom used an
identical device, the teacher often
kept teaching the same way that
he or she had before the technology was available.
But, she says, “the exciting thing
about byot is that it’s pretty near
impossible to teach the way you
have always been teaching. It
forces conversations about differentiation and the personalization
of learning.”
Whether a district opts for a
byot approach or an initiative

that uses school-issued devices,
Damian Bebell, an assistant research professor at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education,
cautions that there’s nothing
magical about technology suddenly landing on student desks
that causes test scores to go up.

IPADS IN KINDERGARTEN
Since the late 1990s, when
school districts began spending more heavily on computers
and other technology, Bebell has
studied the outcomes of such initiatives. Through his work, he
has helped schools document the
evolution of teaching and learning
into the 21st century.
In addition to measuring impact, much of his research has
underscored the importance of
combining traditional indicators of success—teacher quality,
professional development, and
effective leadership, for example—with the use of technology.
Technology alone will not have a

http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu

Technology Counts - March 14, 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Technology Counts - March 14, 2013