No child left offline

Chalkboards and worksheets are so last year.

Over the summer, local school districts stocked up on tablet computers and boosted wireless Internet access to accelerate use of technology-based lessons in the classroom.

South Pasadena public schools are going digital with 160 new iPads this year — one for every teacher and a handful for student projects, said Gen Naydo, the district’s technology director.

San Marino schools have acquired iPads for science, math and English classrooms while encouraging students to bring their own handheld computers to school to benefit from expanded wireless access.

All elementary school classrooms in the district are now equipped with Apple TV devices that allow teachers to screen live content from computers.

Pasadena schools are tapping construction bond proceeds to upgrade Internet access throughout the district and have started using tablet computers in special education, dual-language immersion classes and after-school programs.

La Cañada Flintridge campuses converted to wireless Internet over the summer, and 110 new iPads are going into teachers’ hands this year. Officials are making plans to provide an iPad for every student in the district in as little as two years.

“It’s easy to get fascinated with the latest shiny toy, but it’s all about the lesson. The reason the iPad works is it has very focused apps that can hit a particular curriculum area … with customized instruction unique to every student,” said La Cañada Unified School District technology chief Enoch Kwok, who over the past two years has downloaded some 300 free educational applications for classroom use.

Kwok said teachers can use iPads in place of traditional pencil-and-paper drills to more quickly assess student progress. While students who’ve mastered a concept move ahead to more challenging content, teachers can offer help to those who are struggling.

Stephen Choi, technology director for the San Marino Unified School District, said many districts are choosing iPads over electronic textbooks because e-texts tend to be cost-prohibitive and much less interactive.

“Some of the e-textbooks I have seen are simply electronic versions of printed content,” Choi said.

La Cañada’s push for every student to have an iPad by the 2014-15 school year coincides with a California Department of Education initiative to computerize state standardized testing by that time. Schools will be able use iPads to administer the exams, and familiarity with the devices beforehand could give students an edge, Kwok said.

How to pay for it all is another question.

The La Cañada Educational Foundation covered more than half of the roughly $40,000 cost of this summer’s iPad purchase for teachers.

To cover districtwide distribution of iPads, Kwok is proposing that students pay an annual lease fee until owning the devices outright their senior year.

The South Pasadena Educational Foundation pitched in to help buy the South Pasadena Unified School District’s new iPads, Naydo said.

The Pasadena Educational Foundation has supported classroom technology efforts with annual $1,000 grants to teachers, and parents at San Rafael Elementary School recently pitched in to fund classroom iPads, said Gary Carnow, chief technology officer for the Pasadena Unified School District.

San Marino has relied on a combination of its own funds and donations from PTAs and the San Marino Schools Foundation to buy its hardware.

But as the technology evolves, districts must plan for tools that may not yet exist.

“If you had asked me three years ago [about computers in classrooms], I wouldn’t have said anything about a tablet,” Naydo said.