Marysville middle school goes all iPad

Parents at one Marysville school won’t have to fight with their kids to put down their iPads and hit the books. Those iPads are the books.

English teacher James DeLazzari at 10th Street Middle School says everyone was frustrated with the 30 old laptops they were using in the computer lab.

“You lose about 20 minutes of instructional time in an hour just…because of the amount of time it takes to log-on, log-off, connect and find all of the cords,” he said.

But should they replace them or try something different? Teachers wondered if they could teach using only mobile devices. They started testing some systems and then decided to go for it.

In two weeks, 10th Street is going all iPad.

Textbooks, lesson plans, homework, and tests will all use the device.

Brian Churchill has been teaching for 33 years. He admits this transition is going to be challenging.

“This is scary,” he said. “I have a lot of years of un-doing things, of setting my learnings and my habits aside. It’s new. That’s also exciting. It’s refreshing. We have to question every practice that we’ve had in the past about how we interact with students.”

In his math class for example, kids will be able to pull up videos showing how to solve equations if they don’t quite get it. They can watch a dissection in science class to help them with the knife and that frog.

Homework will be emailed to teachers. All tests will essentially be open-book because they will be taken on a device that has the web right there.

Nathan Sackman, the music teacher, sees great possibilities for his students.

“We can instantly switch from production mode to creation mode,” he said. “Students will be able to play their music that is in front of them. They’ll be able to learn music theory interactively using applications and websites, and then they’ll be able to compose music.”

There are 180 kids at 10th Street, and each one will need an iPad. That’s at least $500 for each family. Not an easy sell for parents.

“That’s the first thing that hit parents,” booster club co-president Karen Davis said. “It’s like ‘You’re asking us to just come up with this money all of a sudden.'”

Parents and the boosters have been staging fundraisers so the school could buy enough iPads to cover the families that can’t afford their own. They’ll be loaned out to families who need them. They’re expecting to provide about 100 of them for this school year.

But the school says they will pay for themselves, considering it won’t be buying as much paper, toner, staplers and other supplies. Parents’ school supplies list will also be a lot smaller.

10th Street is one of the first schools in the state to go all iPad for instruction, and teacher Churchill knows a lot of people are watching.

“Fears and emotions come out,” he said. “Our professional tails are kind of on the line here, but we own it. We own the decision so guess what? We’re here a week and a half ahead of time working for free to make it be OK.”

I asked the school how they’ll keep students from playing “Angry Birds” or “Minecraft” in class when they should be doing their work. Teachers are confident they’ll be able to keep that under control. One joked that students have always found a way to goof off and that won’t change. But they’re hopeful the iPad will give them many more academic options to keep them occupied.

Some teachers even think students will look ahead to future lesson plans, and with this interactive instruction, teachers will be spending more time going desk to desk.

Teachers will meet with parents next week to go over a list of apps the kids will need.