HILAND PARK — Augmenting the learning experience with the right mix of electronic devices has been a challenge for schools striving to offer students the latest technology.
But the media center at Hiland Park Elementary seems to have struck a harmonious chord with Apple’s popular tablet, the iPad.
“Last year when we got the iPads, the kids had to do a paperless research paper,” said Gary Buynak, a media specialist, which is essentially the modern-day librarian.
The school used $5,000 earned from three book fairs to purchase 10 new iPads and protective covers for use in the library. Buynak said his students now use iPads to search the library’s card catalog, for research projects and for Aurasma “augmented reality”learning.
Completing a paperless research paper was a social learning experience for students. Buynak said in paper reports, students can tell what they learned and not much more. Giving a presentation on the iPad is very different.
“It shows me a demonstration of their knowledge,” he said. “The children present to a group and get feedback from their peers and have to be able to tell where they got information from.”
With a given topic, students had to collaborate on dividing the workload and come up with a game plan for presenting a finished product to classmates.
“We’d have a partner and we’d go on websites and get pictures and put together a slideshow and put it on the iPad,” said 10-year-old fifth-grader Cyrus Kelly. “Then we hooked it up to the media center’s smartboard for the presentation.”
Buynak made sure students knew which pictures were copyrighted and showed them how to properly credit sources for their research.
“At the end of our slideshow, we had one page with all our websites on it. It’s a works cited page,” said 10-year-old Chloe Buckner.
With the iPad at the center of the learning experience, students conceptualized a project from the very beginning, shared information though the Gmail account each student has and saved their work on the Google drive.
“The kids can take control of their learning with the iPad,” Buynak said.
In addition to being a vehicle for cooperative learning, Buynak said the iPad is used to guide students around the media center through use of the Aurasma application.
Fifth-graders were tasked last year with producing short video tutorials on what can be found in each section of the library so that younger students can now walk around the library with the iPad and use the Aurasma app to scan images recognized by the iPad’s camera. The scan then prompts the corresponding video to begin.
“It’s a higher way of learning in which the kids have to use their creativity and understand the technology,” he said.
And while technology is the trend, the library at Hiland Park Elementary still checks out roughly 300 books a day. Looking into the future, Buynak doesn’t think books will disappear in our lifetime.
“Kids still love to pick up a book,” he said.