LRSD Getting iPads for Middle School Students

Cloverdale math teacher Chris Ishmon uses his iPad "quite a bit."

But did he ever think he'd use it in class?

"Never in my wildest dreams did I think that," Ishman said. "I aspired to maybe use a laptop during my teaching, but never a tablet. That was foreign to me."

But it's the reality for middle school students in the Little Rock School District, where more than one thousand iPads will be used to teach English and Math, starting in September.

Every student. Every school. Every day.

Student Maria Maldonado is excited to use an iPad class.

"One thing I like about it, is we won't having to be writing with pencils a lot, probably," Maldonado said.

Ashleigh Davis' job to get classrooms up to speed on iPads. The district's technology integration specialist, Davis says state benchmark testing will be computer-based by 2015, so it's important that kids are familiar with the technology.

"We're really preparing these students for their future," Davis said. "We want to make sure they how to create; make sure they know how to analyze all this information that's coming at them."

Ishmon says it's likely the teachers will have a tougher time with the transition than the students.

"I think they'll learn even faster that I did, because they're technologically inclined. It seems they're born ready to interact with technology," Ishmon said.