Google Donates 3,000 Tablets to School District
Devices will be used by teachers and students in grades K-4.
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Google has donated 3,000 Nexus tablets to the school district, Superintendent of Schools Jorden Schiff announced at Thursday’s school board meeting.
The devices will be given to all teachers and students in grades K-4, Schiff said. Teachers will receive them on Friday and start exploring them over the weekend.
The small devices, now retailing for more than $200, will remain the property of the school district.
The district will have to purchase charging stations for the tablets, which are similar to Amazon’s Kindle.
“This is a rare opportunity,” Schiff said. “It’s a very exciting adventure.”
Schiff did not detail how the tablets will be integrated into the curriculum, though one of the district’s goals goals is to facilitate a “culture shift” where computer technology is part of the normal school day.
In the dsitirct's One to One program, the school district aims to have a computer device in the hands of every student in grades 5-12 by the 2014-15 school year.
District students now have 300 iPads and 180 Chromebooks. The devices will use various Google aps, such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Tasks and Google Docs.
AW
11:46 pm on Thursday, March 21, 2013
I'm more interested in the apps and learning curriculum that the tablets will be used for. Having technology in itself does not enhance the education, it is how they're used. I see parents all the time brag about their kids having iPads and such when all they're using them for is playing video games and watching mindless TV shows.
dubious
8:20 am on Friday, March 22, 2013
It's a great opportunity, but you are right, AW. Let's see what the district does with them before we celebrate.
Marilyn R.
10:15 am on Friday, March 22, 2013
This is such a dumb idea unless the district will restrict the Nexus to ebook status!
The only reason why a child in K-4 would need a school-issued e-device is if they had too many textbooks to carry. This is not the case.
Let's be honest, the kids will use it to play Minecraft (and other games) and go on YouTube - that's it! How would they resist the tempation?
The high school distributed Ipads last year and they were used for "fun" more than schoolwork. The district has the information; ask them to publish a comparison of the total time spent using the Ipads for schoolwork versus the time spent on social media - it is at least 3:1, I'm sure. I know it was like that at my house.
If the school wants to use these effectively, they should remove the ability to download all non-educational apps, otherwise I will not allow my child use it.
S.G.
3:14 pm on Friday, March 22, 2013
Madge, Marilyn said the kids would use the tablets to play games, not that the teachers would play games with them.
Debra
12:10 am on Friday, March 22, 2013
Comgrats to Hillsboro Schools snd Thank You Google!
Jaime Hansen
12:46 am on Friday, March 22, 2013
Maybe they can use the tablets to spell check news articles on patch.com! Example: "In the dsitirct's One to One program"
Maria
2:11 am on Friday, March 22, 2013
Maybe they can teach HIllsborough students how to spell as well, because in my experience none of them are able to!
john nalepka
7:14 am on Friday, March 22, 2013
Congrats to the district and Mr Schiff for working with public companies to improve learning. Cheers to GOOGLE as well...
S.G.
8:54 am on Friday, March 22, 2013
K-4? So the children will never learn how to do simple arithmetic or spelling without a machine?
How will the school district handle cases where the parents do not want their children using tablets?
S.G.
9:06 am on Friday, March 22, 2013
...and what about privacy and Google?
Jude Whiten
9:16 am on Friday, March 22, 2013
They have been using calculators for years in schools, and math scores have been improving for at least the last few years , so your statement doesn't make any sense. The Nexus will not DO THE WORK for them, just like a calculator doesn't do the work for them.
Why would a parent NOT want their children using the latest technology? Immediately it saves them from carrying books around, and probably gives them access to more information than they have access to now during classroom hours.
S.G.
3:25 pm on Friday, March 22, 2013
Children should know how to do something themselves before being supplied with a machine to do it. Just getting the answer without knowing how or why is not learning.
For example, the best arithmetic/math teachers would say something like "Okay, your answer is correct. Now explain how you got it." or "That answer is not correct. Explain how you got it." That was often the "Aha" moment.
Rick
9:19 am on Friday, March 22, 2013
This should have been the path from the beginning. If the need was really to leverage tablet technology, this would have been a much more cost effective means to accomplish the goal. Why buy the most expensive units? If you ask those whose children received iPads, you will hear about how they use them for entertainment more than education. It's not too late to switch gears and use these more cost-effective and yet very capable devices district wide and scrap the waste of money on iPads. Let's see if the BoE has an ounce of sense.
S.G.
3:30 pm on Friday, March 22, 2013
Someone referred to "not looking a gift horse in the mouth". This refers to "An apparent gift, that has substantial associated costs" - a horse that, when checking its teeth, is older than thought and more expensive to keep.
Maybe we should also check into Trojan horses...
watchful one
4:59 pm on Friday, March 22, 2013
the saying about "gift horses" refers to the recipient appearing to be unappreciative of the gift by rudely attempting to ascertain its value.
Rick
10:42 am on Saturday, March 23, 2013
The eventual plan is to get iPads for everyone. So the administrative costs of one tablet vs another vs laptops vs Chromebooks/Netbooks will all be relatively equal. Given that both Apple and Google have announced programs for education, where apps and books will be made available, the infrastructure will be there. So the budget differences would seem to be the districts buying expensive iPads for everyone (a few kids at a time) or the district receiving a sizable number of tablets for free and buying the remainder at a list price of nearly 1/3 of the iPads. I appreciate the gift and agree with M.Chu that this would be best served going oldest to youngest, as it best prepares our students for the use of mobility applications in the real-world and can significantly help reduce the cost of text books and the large number of literary books required at the older grades (again, referring to the educational programs started by the tablet vendors). At the students get older, the backpacks get heavier and the lifespan of the text books gets shorter.
Eric Kohlenstein
9:25 am on Saturday, March 23, 2013
In all honesty, you don't need technology to learn. People have been learning fine (some say learning even better) withOUT technology for years. What we do need is more training for teachers or more enthusiastic teachers. The greater a teacher's understanding of a curriculum, the more that knowledge will rub off on the students, and the more enthusiastic the teacher is, the more enthusiastic the child will be to learn. Its common sense. But of course begging for Google to donate tablets is easier and lazier for the school district, so naturally, that's the way they go. They need to think about what's best for the children, not what's "cutting edge". Because what's "cutting edge" is not what helps children learn.
Rick
10:50 am on Saturday, March 23, 2013
I would agree when you are talking bottom-up. The foundational education should not be reliant on electronics at the younger grades. But at the older grades consider where industries have moved. Periodicals in paper form are quickly dying. (Even the long-time industry publications to which I have subscribed for years have abandoned paper format.) Paper maps are almost obsolete in the general public. Many of the science arenas have moved to CAD, 3D Experiences, Virtual Models and Simulation. That holds true for everything from automotive to electronics to chemistry to even fashion. (You can design a dress in CAD applications and then even simulate how it will react to wear, washing and even how it looks when you twirl around.) Astronomy has been in the news with the data coming from the satellites leaving the solar system. Creative writing is done online and homework is now submitted via Google Drive or other cloud applications. Electronics at the older grades is a valuable tool and not necessarily a toy.
Curt Carnes
12:20 pm on Saturday, March 23, 2013
Tablets and other personal computerized aids are most certainly the wave of the future. I would venture to say in 12 short years the kindergarten child we hand this tablet to today, will be out looking for colleges or interviewing colleges with their tablet in hand. When we free the human mind of the needs to remember mathematical formulas, spelling rules, sentence structure, and other mechanical demands, we open it to much more reasoning and thinking. Is it really important to remember what Pi is to the 7th decimal, when my tablet (or smart phone) remembers it to 100,000 digits?
Ps. In 10 years our cars will be driving themselves, or very close to it, and thankfully for that we will see an enormous reduction in highways deaths and injuries. Many of our larger airplanes are capable of flying themselves as we speak. Our children cannot be “afraid” of computers or not know how to use them, because like it or not, they are the wave of the future.
Thank you Google for giving our children this advantage, and thanks to the BoE, for being proactive in this matter.
BillBalls
10:32 pm on Saturday, March 23, 2013
M Chu, a fairness text. If all of Hillsborough’s public school students (K-12) had received tablets, but your neighbor’s children didn’t because they go to a private school or are home schooled. Would you make your children return their tablets because Google didn’t bring enough for everyone, and you wanted to teach them about "fairness?" Would you even spend your time here writing how unfair it was on behalf of your neighbor, whose children didn’t get them?
Here is a lesson you can teach your children. Life isn't fair, but if you work real hard, get a good education, good grades, and then a good job, where you work even harder and make a lot of money, you can make life a whole lot fairer.