Tablets, Technology, and the Classroom.

0:00:10.4
Glenn Simpson
ELA 10 and then W slash 10 slash 20. I have the old chalkboard and all my kids are with iPads in the classroom. They come in. There's a lovely line in Harry Potter book six, I think, where- where the terrible teacher, Professor Umbridge says, "Wands away." And that means the kids are not gonna be doing any magic that period. And so I really kinda get a satisfaction out of saying, "iPads out," because

0:00:41.7
that means you're gonna be doing the magic. Now they could do the magic with pen and paper, but for their generation, that iPad is a wand.

0:00:51.6
Male Student
The teachers normally uh.. give us a- an assignment in class and what we have to do is, like they'll say, "Okay, well here's your subject. Uh.. you can use the internet to research whatever like you want, but you have to put down the website," so like they can check to see if you just either copied and pasted or something, you know. They wanna know if you put in your own words and put in your own effort.

0:01:15.7
Glenn Simpson
We're on what I — what I call the bleeding edge of technology right now. We're- we're out there learning from our students and from ourselves and the mistakes we make and the things that work out as well. You know, one of the biggest challenges in terms of media consumption is the pattern of- of passive media consumption. We- we go on, we play the game, we- we do — something is actually more done to us than- than that we encase [ph?] —

0:01:42.4
Female Student 1
Personally I think that a lot of the students here just get distracted by the apps on it during class and stuff, which is kind of uh.. upsetting.
Female Student 2
I uh.. like books personally, just 'cause I love the way they look on like my bookshelf. And uh.. I- I like books. They never run out of batteries too.

0:02:03.4
Glenn Simpson
The day is coming when a text will be a multimedia text, interactive, fully online, fully accessible. You hit things, it takes you elsewhere. At the same time, that also in some ways, particularly in uh.. language arts, can undercut the student's imagination. I want them to be creating the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet in their mind before- before it's created for them visually. Uhm.. and, you know,

0:02:36.4
because our next generation of creative people will come from this generations of media consumers. So I un — uh.. again, like so many things, there's- there's an upside, because we will s — we will be able to take kids deeper and broader and then the downside, uhm.. some of the kids are gonna find that that is like tying their feet together and they never move beyond it.