HOOVER, Alabama -- Hoover school officials this fall plan to expand a pilot technology program that, if successful, could put an iPad or Nook in the hands of every student in grades 3-12 for the 2013-14 school year.
The Engaged Learning Initiative should launch in September of this year with the distribution of Nooks to every student in 50 elementary and three middle school classrooms and iPads to each 12th-grader at Hoover and Spain Park high schools, said Ron Dodson, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction.
The project is an enhancement of a current pilot program in which two classrooms at Green Valley and Gwin elementary schools have been using Nooks in their daily work for a year, Dodson said.
"We've already set the stage, and the Nook project couldn't be going any better, but we made the decision over the last couple of months to become more aggressive in providing devices to our students," Dodson said. "We also know there's a segment of our community without access to such devices, and we're working to find a middle ground to meet everyone's needs."
Dodson said he and other school officials made a recent trip to Austin, Texas, and visited Westlake High School, similar in size to Hoover High and where all 11th-graders and 12th-graders have iPads to use.
The Hoover group talked to administrators, faculty members and some of the students who use the devices and corresponding apps for various tasks such as reading, taking notes and creating flashcards. The iPads are used in nearly every course from anatomy to statistics to language arts, Dodson said.
"What was so powerful to me was it was so individualized, and all the kids in the room were not doing the same thing at the same time," Dodson said. "If you're working on chemistry, you don't have to send everyone to the same website, but rather kids can go find their own way to solve a problem, use a different way that may be better and more interesting to him or her to get to the same solution. The richness lies in the variety of perspectives this allows."
School officials have been studying maintenance issues related to the electronic devices and the additional burden on support staff, trying to anticipate problems and figure out how to resolve them quickly, Dodson said.
"In time, we'll do surveys, monitor students, get feedback from the kids and teachers and take that information and pull it together as a whole," he said.
If all goes well, in January, the Nooks will be distributed to students in 50 more elementary classrooms and three more middle school classrooms, and iPads will be available for the entire 11th grade at both high schools, Dodson said.
"Can we do this? We're pretty confident we can," he said. "And while we don't have all the details and plans worked out, if things do work well, we're hoping students grade three through 12 will have electronic devices for the next school year."
Dodson said while "hard numbers" on the cost of this year's expanded pilot project won't be available for a few weeks, it will be funded within the current budget.
"There are parts of this which we are still investigating, comparing and working through a variety of potential scenarios," Dodson said. "And it's this pilot that will help enable us to come up with estimates for the following school year."
The school system will maintain ownership of the electronic devices and assign them to students, much like school officials do with textbooks.
Hoover school board President Earl Cooper said the Engaged Learning Initiative "takes a quantum leap in establishing this school system and this community in a way that's never been done before.
"Instruction for our wide spectrum of kids must be differentiated, and it will become student-centered instead of teacher-centered," Cooper said. "Instead of answering the teacher's questions, kids will be able to answer all their own questions because they have the resources in the palm of their hand and can take learning everywhere they go."
Sarah Mitchell, a Hoover High School senior, said she is excited about being part of the pilot program and believes it will benefit all her classmates.
"Some people don't have access to things like that, and when we have projects, like science with slideshows, it will really help learning and increase participation," the 17-year-old Mitchell said. "Plus, I feel all the students will be more interested in their work, having that cool technology to use."
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