“Recently, the school board in Auburn, Maine decided to launch a pilot program which would place an iPad 2 in the hands of the district’s 300 kindergarten students,” Kelly Hodgkins reports for TUAW. “While school officials hail this program as ‘a revolution in education,’ some parents are questioning this decision.”
Spearheaded by Tracey Levesque of Auburn, the Auburn Citizens for Responsible Education are mounting an opposition to the school board’s iPad 2 program,” Hodgkins reports. “The group questions the effect of handing iPads to children who are not ready for the technology and objects to the use of taxpayer money to fund this experimental program.”
Hodgkins reports, “The group plans to argue its case against the iPad 2 at an upcoming School Committee meeting to be held Wednesday, April 27… For a different (positive) perspective on iPads in primary education, be sure to check out Mac developer & school IT director Fraser Spiers’ blog.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn W.” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: The 4, 5, and 6 year olds we’ve seen using educational apps on iPads operate the devices just fine – and that’s without a curriculum in place or teachers present.
Related article:
Maine kindergartners to get Apple iPad 2 units this fall – April 8, 2011
I think that maybe the real issue here is that perhaps the parents that are opposing this are not ‘with-it’ technologically speaking, and perhaps fear the possibility of their kids becoming more tech-advanced than they themselves. I cannot believe some of the parents of my kids friends that are so technologically regressed that they fear technology, and the result is that their kids walk all over them from a technological point of view. Some of them are aware enough to realize this, and instead of being smart about it, and learning things, they try to control and censure.
Knowledge is power…. Ignorance is bliss.
iPad 2s are not for kindergarten kids. They’re not
too young to start carrying 20/30lb backpacks of
books to build character,stamina,endurance and
strength. Too many of them are overweight.
🙂
Gosh, I didn’t know Maine offered education to anyone, let alone children…. Let them have iPads then!
Anyways most parents of America let the kids have / handle iPhones, why not an actual device then?
When I was a kid we had Commodore64’s. Games came on “cassettes”, and one unique game was Frogger, where you navigate a frog across a street full of traffic. It taught me how to J-Walk smoothly and dodge moving cars so I dont get squashed into green and red goo. Kids need these games!