iPads and Exeter

On September 1, 2011, I made a statement to the faculty prior to our opening faculty workshop which was to be led by Howard Levine, then of The Urban School in San Francisco. Here is a piece of what I presented, and blogged about:

"So, how does all this relate to Exeter? I think we all agree that we have a great school… but great isn’t greater or greatest. A Harkness classroom is without equal but can Harkness-table discussions be improved with technology? Can we make an Exeter education better? What are the advantages of technologically rich classrooms? On a more individual level, what will we do with these iPads? I can envision a mathematics class where students all have an iPad with our materials downloaded in PDF-format. They do their homework on their iPad using one of the many note-taking applications, like Penultimate, and we project solutions, wirelessly, to an interactive whiteboard where we can annotate and make corrections, which can be saved and shared via an application such as Dropbox. All of this ultimately saves class time allowing for more Harkness table discussion, which is what we are all about."

So, where are we today, April 10, 2014? I'm happy to report that students at Phillips Exeter Academy will be required to have an iPad next fall. Almost. Apparently, if a student already owns a tablet other than an iPad, they can use it. If a student does not have a tablet, the need to get an iPad. While I'd like everything to be consistent, I can live with this decision.

How has this come about? In the spring of 2013, the school Curriculum Committee, chaired by mathematics teacher Laura Marshall, recommended to principal Tom Hassan that each student be required to have an iPad in the fall of 2013. The Curriculum Committee spent the entire school year 2012-13 researching iPads and their impact on the classroom. Because the recommendation came in the spring of the year and because Exeter doesn't usually make top down decisions, Mr. Hassan decided to delay any decisions until the entire faculty had a chance to debate the issue. (Exeter is considered to be a "faculty-run" school and, therefore, all curricular issues are debated and voted on by the faculty. This is, of course, unlike most schools where the administration simply makes decisions for the entire school.)

In the fall of 2013, the mathematics department took up the issue of classroom technology by forming an eight person committee that was to make a recommendation to the department at the end of the fall term. The resulting recommendation was, in alignment with the Curriculum Committee, to have every student have an iPad in the fall of 2014. This was debated by the department and voted down, narrowly. A subsequent motion was made, and passed, that would require every student to have a tablet in the fall of 2014. This was an advisory vote that then went to principal Hassan. Early this spring Mr. Hassan decided on the requirement described above. Faculty were given a chance to vent at a subsequent faculty meeting but the decision was made by Mr. Hassan. Also at this faculty meeting, many already using the iPad with their classes presented how they have used iPads and how the envision using them when each student has one. This was a bold move given how decisions are usually made at Exeter and one that I applaud. Despite being a "faculty-run" school, on issues like this someone has to step in and make a decision. The faculty have a tendency to get caught up in minutiae and many arguments presented are simply based on anecdotes. I'm glad Mr. Hassan made this decision and we can now move forward.

It should be noted that there is no requirement for any teacher to make use of an iPad in his or her classes. I'm hopeful, however, that teachers who are on the fence will be persuaded when they see what students are capable of doing with iPads in their classes. There is already a core group of faculty who are doing amazing things with this technology and, hopefully, others will come on board.