As the need to stay up-to-date with technology becomes a higher priority in classrooms, the Tam District is investing in over a thousand iPads for student use.
With a program already started for more than a hundred underclassmen at Drake, the process is underway for iPads to be arriving in select classrooms at Redwood starting spring semester. The Drake program is acting as a pilot, with students being assigned personal iPads for the school year, and its success will determine whether a similar program will be implemented at Redwood in the following years.
“Our purpose this year is to collect data, work with teachers and see the viability, and if this is something that we believe the teachers and students find useful and is a good learning tool, then we’d obviously like to expand that model,” said Tara Taupier, the Senior Director of Instructional Technology for the Tam District. “The hope is that you get to a place where you’re using the technology to do things that kids wouldn’t be able to do without it.”
Teachers interested in adding iPads to their classrooms must go through a series of training sessions to be able to fully integrate the iPads into their teaching. Only the teachers involved in this Instructional Technology Teacher Collaborative will receive iPad carts that will remain in their classrooms starting in January 2014.
Currently, the main source of technology used during class time is computers. 71 percent of students said they use school computers as a part of instructional time more than once a month, according to a recent Bark survey. But once iPads are added as a source of technology in certain classrooms, students should be using these devices multiple times per week, according to Taupier.

“The technology itself is neutral,” Taupier said. “It’s what we do with it and what opportunities we create with it that will actually impact the learning and narrow any gaps that exist.”
According to Taupier, Drake teachers have been able to more fully integrate their curriculums through cross-class projects and activities involving the student iPads, and students at Drake seemed very receptive to the change. According to a recent Bark survey, on a scale of 1 to 10, students at Redwood would rate the benefits of having iPads on their learning experience as a 7.04.
As Redwood gets closer to implementing this “one-on-one learning,” meaning that for every one student there is one iPad, more equal access to technology will become readily available to students.
“We want to close any kind of electronic divide or digital divide that there may be by providing access to all students,” Taupier said. “We’re being methodical in how we approach this so that we’re addressing all of the needs of all of the students.”
As Drake’s pilot of the iPads plays out throughout the school year, the district will determine how regularly they are used and how beneficial they are to the classroom.
“For us it’s really about the learning and not the device,” Taupier said. “We’re gathering data to see what has the biggest impact on learning, and what devices are going to support that highest rate of learning.”
iPads will be arriving to approximately 34 classrooms at Redwood at the beginning of the second semester, and their usage will determine the extent to which they will be used in years to come. As teachers continue their training, they will collectively fit their curriculum to be used in conjunction with an almost daily usage of iPads in their classrooms, Taupier said.