The Rowan-Salisbury School System has steadily deployed digital devices to its teachers and students since the beginning of the school year, and the work is almost done.
The district’s 20 elementary schools will finish deploying iPads by Wednesday – the final step in Rowan-Salisbury’s one-to-one digital conversion. The digital conversion provides either a laptop or iPad to each of the district’s teachers and students in third grade and above. The devices will be used in the classroom and at home.
“It’s pretty cool,” third-grade teacher Alyssa Gilmore said to some of her students.
“It’s not pretty cool – it’s awesome,” her student, Chase Graham, corrected her.
“Most of them don’t have stuff like this at home,” Gregson said.
The deployment process at the elementary schools varied greatly from the teacher, high school and middle school rollouts.
“So far they’ve done really, really well,” he said.
According to Smith, the district’s “next big goal” is to provide iPads to each of the district’s kindergarten through second-grade students as well. These devices would come from existing inventory and would only be for use in the classroom.
Smith said the hope is that “powering up” in the classroom rather than “powering down” will lead to a more engaged learning environment and help “bridge the digital divide.”
“A lot of the students don’t have an opportunity to have a device at home,” he said, adding that the devices give the students the opportunity to “learn anywhere and everywhere.”
It’s not all about the device, however.
“It’s about instructional change,” Smith said. “Teachers are no longer dictators of learning.”
Students have a vast amount of knowledge at their fingertips, and teachers must help them learn how to apply it.
Teachers are going through professional development to learn how to teach effectively with digital devices.
“They have to think about the way they instruct students differently,” Smith said.
Students will be able to keep their devices until the end of the school year.
Read full article on the Salisbury Post
