Five-year-olds get iPads: Hurray?

05-02-2011

Guest blog by Larry Cuban/Washington Post

The image of kindergartners touching iPad screens for letters of the alphabet makes concrete the promise of five year-olds reading soon. Another technological miracle. “It’s a revolution in education,” Auburn, Maine superintendent Tom Morrill, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. Auburn schools, he predicts, can reach its goal of 90 percent of third grade students meeting the state standard in reading by 2013 -- “and this is the time to do it,” according to the Sun Journal. Watch here the 5-year-olds with iPads and listen to the superintendent and kindergarten teacher talk about the “phenomenal” device that is “truly redefining how we’re going to teach and learn.” That a Maine district with 3,600 students (less than 300 in kindergarten) could capture national attention (on April 22, searching Google registered 77,000 results) with the $200,000 purchase of iPads for kindergartners and teachers at a time of cutting school budgets suggests something beyond the deep faith Americans have in new technologies. It points clearly to a strong belief about what should happen in kindergartens. (more...)

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