In the Land of Tech

San Marcos is on the forefront of what the state of California hopes all schools will become—an iPad in the hands of every student. Of course this is still a long way off. The AVID students have a rent to own program, where they get full access to an iPad, it is essentially theirs, but if for any reason their grades fall or they miss a payment, the school has the right to repossess that iPad. There is a rack of 30 iPads in the library, available for any teacher with the foresight to sign up for them in advance, and a fairly nice computer lab equipped with some decent desktops.

The problem for a school is updating all this technology with a budget that isn't getting any bigger. Several of the rooms have the new 60 inch widescreen monitors, and since every teacher has an in class iPad they can mirror to the screen using the AppleTV. When these screens first go in, replacing the relic boxes that gather dust and have a VCR/DVD combo, it seems extravagant. But the first time they go on and your lesson becomes huge and glorious and vibrant and you can manipulate it from the iPad in your hand, standing anywhere in the room, you've just achieved another level of mastery over your domain.

Some rooms still have the little pushcarts with the projector that projects onto the wall. These are effective, especially to have students step up and publish their work, but they seem slightly outdated. The other projectors are identical to the ones used in the Education building. They're tethered to AppleTV, so with a newer Macbook or an iPad you can put on a pretty decent show.

A horde of excited ninth graders Marking The Text.

As for students with technology, my ENG 9 class is mostly equipped with smartphones. Some flaunt them like bling, others wisely keep them hidden. We let them use them as dictionaries, but I've noticed the standard "sneakiness" of texting inside a purse, or just under the table. A few people in my AVID class have been abusing the privilege of their iPads and access to their smartphones by playing games or checking their Facebook.

Several of my students have Internet access at home, but out of the 28, there are only a handful that have signed in to EDU, even though signing in is an easy grab for points. It's confusing to watch these students who have their work, but they're either unorganized or simply don't care, and their grades plummet because one of their assignments is crumpled at the bottom of their backpack. Would a homework App help with that. Of course, but EDU takes the place of a tablet, and even though most students have access to the Internet, it's not really in their vocabulary to use the Internet as an educational tool.

I'd like to devote at least ten minutes in my ENG 9 class to discover exactly how easy it is for the students to access EDU, whether it would be from a parent's computer or from an iPad. Unfortunately this discovery would detract from the curriculum. Any deviation from the path is difficult to justify. The demographic that Kirby created is perfect, especially the student quote 

"Oh, I have a lot of stuff, I live in Montecito," with a grin on his face as he circled "yes" to all of the questions.

At San Marcos, we have students who are pretty proud of their phones, a good portion of which are hand me downs from their parents.