• Twitter
  • Facebook
News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

Hard tablet to swallow

Is this a good idea?

GREENTOWN - A school in north-central Indiana is hoping to increase literacy by issuing iPads to kindergarten students.

The Kokomo Tribune reports that Eastern Elementary School in Greentown, 10 miles east of Kokomo, plans to buy about 100 tablets to be given to students in August.

I'm old-fashioned enough to think that the way to increase literacy is by instilling a love of reading, which is done chiefly by having students read. And there's an obvious danger that letting students use tablets extensively will merely increase their already intense affection for amusing distractions. But I also know  that stubbornly resisting new methods of teaching is a sure sign of impending fuddy-duddyism and that I should accept the possibility that the kind of interactivity and indiviualized instruction available through digital instruction might actually help in the effort to make reading fun.

Comments

Eric Beebe
Wed, 02/22/2012 - 3:06pm

Be not the first by whom the new are tried,

Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

 

-Alexander Pope

Tim Zank
Wed, 02/22/2012 - 4:12pm

Gee, if only the schools had more money..... 

Quantcast