“In thirteen years of teaching, Jay Lemons has never taught a class quite like this one,” Catwalkchatt.com reports.
“At only three weeks into the new school year, he is already bragging that this year’s classes have been his best yet. In these past three weeks, the amount of motion and noise coming from the students in the computer lab at Gilbert Elementary School [LaFayette, GA] has been unbelievably low. And that’s all because, for the first time, there are no computers in the computer lab,” Catwalkchatt.com reports. “Instead, there are iPads.”
Catwalkchatt.com reports, “In an effort to keep up with changing technology and help change the way students interact and learn, Gilbert Elementary decided to use some Title 1 funds to purchase about 75 iPads for the students to use… The entire computer lab was renovated over the summer to prepare for this year’s changes. Gone are the tables and chairs, the large computer towers and innumerous wires. In their place is a friendly circle of brightly-colored bean bags, each emblazoned with a collegiate logo and holding an iPad in its lap.”
“To complete the new look of the room, Lemons himself painted a large mural of the Apple company logo against a lime green background on the room’s far wall. The iPads and the renovations were not sponsored by Apple in any way; instead the mural represents Lemons’s appreciation of the company and it’s ever-changing technology,” Catwalkchatt.com reports. “‘It’s the way of the future. We don’t want to keep it from them and have them fall behind,’ [Lemons said.]”
Catwalkchatt.com reports, “The change, he thinks, has been absolutely worth it… Everyone, he said, has been responding positively. ‘The parents love it.’ And in Lemons’s classroom and the library, the change in the students has been nothing short of drastic. ‘I know we’ve only been in school for three weeks, but you can hear, there’s no noise. The only thing you hear is the iPad. I was telling a colleague the other day that I had just had absolutely the best class I’ve ever had in my 13 years of teaching…I can’t believe it. It really is blowing my mind.'”
Much more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Brock” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Congrats to the students of Gilbert Elementary!