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Thursday, September 16, 2010

School gives iPads to kids to boost reading

Whoops of glee filled a classroom at Alexander Dawson School in Boulder, Colorado, earlier this week as teachers handed out new iPads to each fifth-grader.

The school is one of the first in the country to give iPads to individual K-12 students. As part of a pilot project, about 90 fifth- and sixth-grade students are getting the 16G Wi-Fi iPads -- which retail for $499 -- to help with reading, studying, researching and experimentation.

"They're pretty cool," said fifth-grader Riley Herbst. "It's cool that Dawson found an educational way to use them. Most kids don't really like reading books; they like computer devices. This is a cool way to read books."

The private K-12 school is leasing the iPads to own after three years, paying $12,000 a year, Johnson said. The money is coming out of the school's Fund for Excellence, made up of revenue from such sources as tuition, facility rental, and camps. The plan to give students iPads came after months of study and discussions with Apple, Columbia University, the University of Colorado and the Educational Records Bureau, all of which are interested in studying the educational benefits of using iPads to teach, headmaster BrianJohnson said. Read more about the project in The Daily Camera
online.

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