South Dakota classrooms look far different now than they did even a decade ago. Students still use pencils to fill out worksheets and find information in their books, but elements of learning have moved from printed sheets to computer screens. That’s been fairly common for years, but now one school district is testing technology from a new vantage point.
Current high school chemistry classes are likely a little different than chem lectures of the past. In a Lincoln High School classroom, each student has his or her own personal periodic table. It’s illuminated on an iPad screen.
"Earlier today in my fifth period class, one student said, ‘Oh my gosh. If school was like this, I would love coming to school every day,'" teacher Katie Pabst says.
Pabst cradles her iPad in one arm, fluidly moving from table to table. Students take a practice quiz on their handheld devices. They also post and respond to digital questions. Pabst says students are used to this internet-based interaction, and it’s natural for them to incorporate it into science.
"So it’s hands-on for them and they can touch it and they can play around with it and whereas in a book it’s just all flat and boring and just pictures. But here they can click on electronegativity, which is the topic we covered," Pabst says. "And they can see the actual different electronegativities of different elements. Then they can play with them, and they can say, ‘Okay, how is this one, how is fluorine different from oxygen?’"
School districts across the state dedicate specific dollars to technology, but Sioux Falls has a unique program. Innovation Grants put the task of integrating new tech methods in the classroom on teachers. Josh Smith chairs the science department at Lincoln High School. He says technology should enhance learning, not – as he puts it – provide glorified notebooks and whiteboards.
"Rather than sitting there and getting information from a teacher, the technology has allowed us to actively use it at specific times, and there’s accountability with the students that we didn’t always have before," Smith says. "It’s that formative assessment. It’s that way to really find out what the kids get really rapidly."
Smith says he sees a dual advantage to giving students access to iPads. He observes students learn more in science class because of the technology and he sees them learn more about the technology because they use it in science class.
Across town at Memorial Middle School, two eighth grade teachers have the same goal but different devices. Nikki Vander Wolde’s students are grouped at tables; a laptop or Google Chromebook rests at each middle schoolers’ finger tips.
"It was leading towards our idea of mastery learning, where students could work at their own pace and master concepts before moving on, but we needed some technology in order to meet that goal so that students could access a variety of resources we had for them," Vander Wolde says.
Vander Wolde opens the class with some instructions. Then students take charge. Many of them need to complete quizzes on their laptops. Others work on various lessons. Andrew Undt uses digital flashcards on his Chromebook to review science concepts. He says technology is simply part of his generation.
"Before, the people who are 65, they probably didn’t have this technology, and now we have all this. And it’s like, it’s normal. Because we have it here. We use it everyday," Undt says. "In science, we do everything on the Chromebooks. So it’s a different culture, pretty much. Same country, different culture."
Undt says he appreciates working independently, so it doesn’t matter if he’s ahead of his classmates.
"They’re realizing, wait a second, if I don’t put the work in during class, I’m really making more work for myself later. But you still have some kids in the class that don’t quite get used to that, and I think it’s important for them to learn that skill that not everything is going to be fed for them and that you’re going to need to go take charge of your own learning," teacher Owen Hoegh says.
Hoegh teaches earth science with the same Chromebooks. He spends part of class providing demonstrations. Today he lit a chemical on fire to determine it is flammable. The rest of the time his students spend working through lessons on their computers. Hoegh says that offers students more autonomy and individual attention.
"I think that’s kind of an exciting thing for students to do – not to just go through the motions, and learn it, and forget it, but put themselves in a position to contribute, and I think a lot of the students do want to do that," Hoegh says.
Men and women teaching all grade levels in Sioux Falls see the value of the Innovation Grants. Lowell Elementary fifth graders are rambunctious and lively. The classroom bursts with vivid colors and educational posters are tacked to every wall. Teacher Karissa Fischer leads this group of 20.
"I was reading with a student the other day, and her book was a fiction book but it was about the solar system. And she was stumbling over all the words of the planets. And I finally stopped and said, do you know what these words are? She said no. I said, well, these are the planets of the solar system," Fischer says. "So we grabbed her slider. We looked up the solar system. We found an article for kids. We read through it a little bit. We learned the names of the planets. We saw a little picture of what they were, what they look like. Then she was able to continue on reading and had a little more knowledge of what she was reading about. And I can do that with all of the kids, because they can all grab their own device at any time and find out something they need to know."
Fischer says that kind of immediate access changes a child’s education, especially at a school that has a higher number of students that learn the English language while trying to master the lessons. Fischer says collaborating with other teachers helps her provide the best learning environment for her students.
"We’ve had a lot of people in the district email us and say, ‘Hey. We’re looking at buying some devices. Can you tell us some of the pluses and minuses of the different devices that you’re using?’" Fischer says.
All of these teachers working with technology say they can focus more on the quality of education for their students because of their new devices. If that’s not what’s happening, they say the gadgets just aren’t worth it.