Cape Central Junior High integrated the digital world into the school life of its 7th and 8th graders this August. Now the students are equipped with Asus Transformer tablets, just like the high school students.
About 600 tablets were distributed to the students and Ron Farrow, instructional technology specialist at Cape Central, said it aims at improving instruction in the classroom.
He added that since the program started, teachers have adapted to the use of the tablets in a lot of ways.
“Teachers are really learning to integrate this and they are going through a lot of training and a lot of professional development in order to get better at integrating the device successfully,” Farrow said.
He added that junior high teachers had the opportunity to see how the tablets were integrated in high school and said powerful strategies are already in use at the junior high and believes it will continue to improve.
The program is an ongoing process. As it evolves, it’s policies change, too.
“As we see things come up or things that we learn, lessons that we learn throughout the process, we’ll continue to modify those to help keep the students safe and help reach our goal of helping the students learn how to use this as a responsible tool, to be responsible digital citizens and to help them learn,” Farrow added.
The rules and expectations from students regarding their use of the tablets are the same as the ones already in place in high school. In addition, junior high students are expected to bring the tablet fully charged every day and to transport it in its case when moving around with it.
“It’s really the same classroom strategy as you would use in any instructional environment, you just have an added tool to the classroom,” Farrow said.
Farrow said the experience has been successful so far and middle school is on the schedule to receive tablets for the 2016-2017 school year.
