Technology keeps growing more and more at North High
February 3, 2014
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,” 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.
“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.
“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.
Colt Wyatt • Feb 15, 2014 at 12:28 AM
For me perdonsonally I think it helps a lot better better because the teachers can use apps like Top notes which allows us to download the worksheets off of Echalk and open them in that app and take the notes directly on there. Also a lot of teachers use the apps Nearpod and Socrative. Nearpod allows you to open up a power point on your iPad that they control, it comes in handy especially for the people that sit all the way in the back that have bad vision because then you have the power point right there. Socrative is an app a lot of teachers use that allows your student to enter a code and they can take a short test right there on their iPad and the teacher can control the speed of the test or you cant go to the next question untill the teacher sends it to the next question. Also the iPads have the new Airdrop on them so it makes it a lot easier to turn in your work because instead of having to go send it through an email and all that all you have to do it turn on your airdrop have the teacher turn on theirs and boom they got your assignment. As for studentd that don’t have wifi at home the teacher has them download this app called Adobe Reader. Which allows you to download the assignment off of Echalk and open it in Adobe Reader then once you open it in Adobe Reader you can open it and work on it with out internet. Anywhere, anyplace. That really comes in handy if your like on the go or something. For students that dont have an iPad because they cant handle it or they cant afford to get one or something like that, the teacher has an alternative for you. Sometimes they will give you a paper copy or if were working on a project like a power point or something they will use laptops that they saved back.
brandon • Feb 12, 2014 at 7:50 AM
the i pads are good