Ridgewood schools superintendent: Technology education is equal at schools
TUESDAY JULY 16, 2013, 9:33 AM
BY LAURA HERZOG
STAFF WRITER
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
At least one villager recently expressed concern about possible technology education inequality in Ridgewood’s various elementary schools, but Ridgewood Schools Superintendent Daniel Fishbein believes parents need not worry.
In a letter in The Ridgewood News last month, resident Meegan Shevlin said her concern was prompted by a March story about the district’s increased emphasis on classroom technology use. The story highlighted a presentation Willard School gave the Board of Education (BOE), during which the school highlighted its classroom iPad usage.
“When can parents in the other elementary schools expect all our teachers to be supplied with iPads and our classrooms to contain a few iPads each?” Shevlin asked. “I understand from the article that the Willard HSA [Home and School Association] purchased 75 iPads. I understand there are differences in the resources at each HSA’s disposal, but this should not be allowed to affect the quality and comparability of the education of the students in the different schools. When items are critical to successful learning, then distribution of these items across all the schools must be equitable.”
If the kids are consuming technology they can use an ipad. Draw pictures and surf the web all you want.
If they are creating and being productive the laptop will still give more bang for the buck. Ipads are expensive and very limited. Just like apple computers, they are loved in elementary school. Then reality sets in and they need to use an windows/Linux computer. We do not need the latest technology that is marketed to children.
Ok this is Meegan and I did not even know about this article. Dr. Fishbein answer is not how is answered my letter and does not seem to be true.
The e-mail to be said “Dear Meegan,
Thank you for your email. I checked with Dr. Fishbein and the school district attempts to equalize the type of technology used at our schools based on principal requests using our budgeted lease purchase money. Ipads although mentioned in the Ridgewood News article were not the reason Willard won the Blue Ribbon award.
Sheila Brogan”
Note the words “attempts” and “based on principal requests”.
I know for sure that other elementary schools do not have IPads in every classroom and definately not “cartfuls” in the hallwall.
And the point is not Ipads vs. laptops, the point is inequity in technology based learning due to different budgets and the HSAs in each school.