Area 4 students will use iPods in classroom

How can teachers help students who struggle with motivation in the classroom? By engaging kids in their own technology terms - the iPod.

Later this year administrators will target Area 4 in Wagener and Ridge Spring, providing classroom iPod Touches for fifth and eighth grades. Sixth and ninth grades will be added in 2011. A small number of at-risk Silver Bluff High School freshmen also will participate in the project.

"I hear from teachers or parents that their kids don't care about school," Associate Superintendent Dr. Kevin O'Gorman told Aiken County School Board members Tuesday. "All they want to do is play on the computer and talk on the phone. We know what children want and need to use that to our advantage."

Area 4 was chosen for the project, he said, because it has the highest student poverty rate. Literacy and technology coaches will work with classroom teachers to infuse technology into literacy-based instruction.

Among those working on the project will be Allison Cook, a technology integration specialist.

"I started kindergarten in Aiken County schools and never left," Cook said with a smile. "The school system has afforded me many opportunities, and technology in my classroom has done great things."

Kids use iPods and similar devices all the time for entertainment. This new program will provide them a more productive kind of entertainment through the use of apps.

"Apps are inexpensive, and there are apps for everything," said Cook. "This will expand classroom walls, making otherwise unattainable resources a reality."

That could mean a virtual field trip to the Smithsonian, a university lecture through podcasts from professors at the University of South Carolina, Stanford or Yale.

"Students can have a library that never closes," Cook said. "There are endless books available to them for free. This can allow students to own their own education, to become independent learners."

The program will be funded through a variety of sources, O'Gorman said - federal Title I, state school improvement funds and the purchase of servers through the Aiken County Career and Technology Center.

For students who need them, Cook said, apps are available for remediation, reinforcement and even accelerated learning. This can help teachers reach more students. Through technology, companies like the Savannah River Site could come to the students in these rural areas.

The project will have a positive impact on her students at Ridge Spring-Monetta Elementary/Middle School, said Principal Callie Herlong.

"We're keeping up with the latest trends in technology, and that's what kids love," she said. "This will be a great motivational tool and a new way of learning and keeping students engaged."

Three years ago, Midland Valley High School received two grants that provided freshmen over two years with laptops. Teachers in a new freshman academy also got laptops and used the technology to provide greater collaboration between themselves as well as their students, in and out of the classroom.

Yet the new iPod project "could be more sustainable than the laptop program," said board member Ray Fleming. "While it lasted, it worked well, but was not sustainable. This new program can be successful over a longer period of time."

Contact Rob Novit at rnovit@aikenstandard.com.