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Director of Technology Eric LaCroix Pens Article on iPad Pilot Program

10/27/2010

Will McCulloch

Director of Technology Eric LaCroix wrote an interesting article about the iPad Pilot Program in the most recent issue of "Connections," a publication from the New Hampshire Society of Technology Education (nhste.org).

Director of Technology Eric LaCroix Pens Article

iPad Pilot Program for Freshmen

By Eric LaCroix

Apple's iPad has received much attention since it was announced in January. At New Hampton School, we were among the enthusiastic masses who began holding the "magical and revolutionary product" in their hands in April. Apple had done the easy part: creating the iPad. Next it was up to educators to determine if this latest technology could be useful in the classroom.

Within a very short time our alumni Class of 1960 became aware of our desire to find relevant ways to integrate the iPad into a New Hampton School education. The seed gift of iPads provided by the Class was the catalyst that brought us together as administrators and educators to consider the iPad Pilot Program for freshmen at NHS. Before we made the commitment, we asked ourselves questions such as, "Should we provide iPads just for one academic course, for one grade level, or for the entire school?" "Do we hold a lottery and provide iPads to a random selection of students within our community?" There's no denying the appeal of a new technological device. Were we "just getting caught up in the craze?" "Will the students just use it to go on Facebook, watch movies, and play games?" "What will the faculty think? Are they going to support the program?" You can imagine that some of our meetings were very animated.

To be sure we were making a sound decision, during our iPad discussions we frequently referred to our mission statement, vision statement and core values. We looked closely at our curriculum to determine if we had an obvious entry point for a pilot program. Based on our Foundations of Learning (http://www.newhampton.org/fol) and other factors, we unanimously decided to pilot the use of iPads with our freshman class. We know that the iPad alone will not transform the educational experience for the freshmen. It is our charge to change the way we teach in order to meet the future needs of this generation.

Over the summer we had meetings at least every two weeks with our newly created and affectionately named iPad Task Force. The group discussed the courses in which the iPads would be used, goals and measures of success for the program, core tasks we would perform using the iPad, deployment logistics throughout the summer and fall, and more. We continue to document our progress on an internal wiki, and for our freshmen and teachers we provide tutorials and training information on an external wiki (http://newhampton.wikispaces.com/iPad). We offered iPad Training sessions over the summer and also during the faculty orientation week. Thanks in large part to Hans Mundahl, responsible for coordinating technology integration at New Hampton, our iPad teachers were up and running and eager to begin the year by the time our students were registered.

At Registration, we asked the parents of freshmen to sign an iPad Agreement outlining their responsibility for the iPad and certain expenses associated with the pilot program. Then during our all-school orientation day, we met with the freshmen to get their ideas about the program and how they imagined iPads will benefit them over the coming year. I was nervous before the orientation session but after seeing the bright faces of the freshmen and hearing their enthusiasm about our iPad Pilot Program, I knew we had made the right choice to work with this class.

During the first two weeks of school we're using our Foundations of Learning class with the freshmen to be sure they understand how to perform certain core tasks with the iPads. We have used the Volume iTunes Store program from Apple to purchase some apps at a significant discount, and we have deployed those apps relatively easily to the whole class. We have worked with students who have Mac laptops, Windows laptops, and no laptops (for those students, we used school desktop computers); and we have helped students at a variety of levels of expertise to get their iPads to the same point in just a few class periods.

We have plans to meet with students in small groups regularly throughout the year to interview them to determine how well we're meeting our goals, to hear how the freshmen are benefiting from the program, and to learn how we can do this even better next year.

Those of us who are parents and teachers live and work for the moments when we see excitement and learning intersect for our children. In just a few short days working with our freshmen, I have seen many of those moments as the students realize what lies in store for them, not only this year with the iPad Pilot Program at New Hampton School, but also in the future and in the world for which we're preparing them.

If you would like to learn more about the iPad Pilot Program for Freshmen at New Hampton School please contact Eric LaCroix, Director of Technology, at elacroix@newhampton.org.

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