Technology keeps growing more and more at North High

Colt Wyatt

North High school is one of the largest one-to-one schools in the state of Iowa. That means that every student, freshman through seniors, receives an iPad at the beginning of the school year. This is the first year that North has handed out iPads; last year and the previous year North gave every student Apple Mac laptops. They decided to upgrade this year because insurance for the computer raised over four times as much.

North has roughly around 1,250 students that they handed iPads out to the student body. Mike Lucht has been the building technology specialist for seven years and Amanda Dvorak has been for two years. According to them, we have spent well over $1,000,000 from federal grant in technology between the laptops and iPads.

I think the iPads are working a lot better because I feel like the iPads use the internet and apps that are designed for school better than the computers.

— Mike Lucht

“I think the iPads are working a lot better because I feel like the iPads use the internet and apps that are designed for school better than the computers,” Lucht said. But when we got the iPads we didn’t just get rid of them. We sold 1,000 back to Apple and kept around 200 of them to use in classrooms for programs that the iPads couldn’t support.

You may wonder, well why wouldn’t they just get the iPads in the first place instead of the laptops. Well according to Lucht, “Four years ago the technology was different and security was a problem so we didn’t feel comfortable with the iPads at that time.”

More and more schools are making the change over from the old text books to the new technology like iPads and laptops. Not only do they make it nicer for the students but it also helps a lot for the teachers because they can have everything they need within one app on the iPad.

Mike Lucht, tech specialist, works in the NHS tech office.
Mike Lucht, tech specialist, works in the NHS tech office.

“If I had to give advice to other schools looking to make the change to a one-to-one school my advice would be to make sure they should do many visits to many different schools because there is many different approaches at it. You have to be very organized with everything. I would also suggest they go with a well known management system,” Lucht said.

Ipads
Stacks of the new iPads in the tech office at North High.

“If I had to choose between the MacBooks and the iPads I would choose the iPads because they are more convenient for the students and they are much more portable and weigh a lot less,” sophomore Eli Dalton said. All in all, after talking to the student body the iPads are favored more than when we had the MacBooks.