Wood County Schools iPad initiative to be completed in fall

PARKERSBURG -- A plan to equip all Wood County Schools K-8 students with iPads may be completed as early as this fall.

In October, the Wood County Board of Education in October approved an iPad lease program at a cost of $211,709 to provide tablets for all third- through fifth-grade students. The lease operates on a four-year cycle, at the end of which the iPads can be sold back to the company. The per-student cost is about $310 for each iPad and case.

Superintendent Will Hosaflook said Wednesday the plan was to expand the program over three years, but officials recently discovered they could significantly expedite that timeline.

The initiative uses Step 7B funding, which is state dollars allocated for technology improvements. At a school board meeting last month, Hosaflook said the school system has received sufficient funding to go ahead and purchase iPads for kindergarten through second-grade classrooms.

"At the start of next school year, every single child in k-8 will have an iPad available for them to use," he said.

Hosaflook said he would bring leasing contracts to the school board for consideration and approval later this month.

Currently only a handful of schools are considered one-to-one, with each student at that school having a tablet for a student to use. Franklin Elementary Center was the first, Hosaflook said, with Jefferson Elementary Center and Waverly Elementary School achieving the one-to-one ratio this year.

Hosaflook said he expects Worthington Elementary School to reach that ratio this school year.

Hosaflook said the school system also is investing about $145,000 this year to upgrade routers at district schools to accommodate the increased need for wireless Internet access, and officials are purchasing keyboards for the iPads, which will increase their usefulness in the classroom.

The annual statewide student assessment is now entirely online, and schools would spend more than a week rotating students through computer labs to complete different parts of the test.

"Logistically it was just very difficult," he said. "Greenmont (Elementary School), for example, instead of spending seven days testing, they'll be able to finish everything in 2-3 days with the iPads."

Hosaflook said currently the iPads are used in-class only, but he expects officials to look into the possibility of middle-school students being given the opportunity to use the tablets at home as well.

"We're not ready now, but we'll explore the possibility of them taking them home," he said. "That is definitely worth having the conversation."

Hosaflook also said officials will begin looking at a tablet program for the district's high schools, but said students already have access to more computers and laptops at those schools.

"All of the high school teachers now have their Macbook Airs," he said. "You have laptop carts and computer labs and classroom computers. You just have a lot more room (in the high schools) for those types of technology."

A planned Apple training session for teachers and administrators on use of the new iPads was canceled last month due to the two-day, statewide school employees strike. Hosaflook said that training session will be rescheduled for May.