By Mary Lide Parker
Staff Writer
A proposal to provide the iPod touch to a select group of students at Culbreth Middle School has students and Principal Susan Wells excited about the potential of a new learning tool.
Last night (Wednesday) the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education was scheduled to vote on the proposal to provide the iPod touch to the 54 students currently enrolled in the Advancement via Individual Determination (AVID) program. AVID is a year-long elective that helps prepare students for college by teaching organization skills.
There’s much more to the iPod touch than the distractions of music and the Internet, according to Wells. Installing the iPod touch in a classroom setting allows students to take notes, graph functions, look up words in a dictionary or thesaurus, study flash cards and make to-do lists — all in a personal, handheld device the size of a wallet. Hundreds of different applications are already available for students to download, many of them free.
“I think it will be easier to do work and to research things because you can just stay in your seat,†said Kholiswa Tsotetsi, an eighth-grade student at Culbreth.
Wells said one of the major keys to success in today’s world is proficiency in technology.
“They can’t plan to be professionals without learning how to use the latest technology,†she said.
Chuck Hennessee, head of the AVID program at Culbreth, believes the iPod touch’s tools will help build the students’ confidence with technology and facilitate their ability to teach each other new skills.
“Nothing makes the students shine more than having the opportunity to show what they have discovered,†he said.
Funding for the proposal will not come from the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools system; Culbreth asked for approval from the school board to partner with the North Carolina Virtual Public School, a statewide public virtual school that emphasizes learning through 21st-century technology. The cost of providing 50 students with the iPod touch will be approximately $15,000.
Wells said providing all of their students with an iPod touch is not their goal right now but is their hope for the future.
But are middle school students responsible enough to keep up with such an expensive item? Both Hennessee and Wells pointed out that the students have had no problem taking care of their high-priced graphing calculators and cell phones, and that a major component of the AVID program is learning responsibility. The students would be given the iPod touch at the beginning of the school year and would have to turn it in at the end.
Wells said that some colleges, including Stanford, have made similar initiatives. “We’re not the first school to try this,†she said. “We’re just the first middle school.â€
The North Carolina Virtual Public School is also funding Mary Scroggs Elementary School in an effort to provide virtual learning options at the elementary level.