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Should students bring their iPads?

Havre students may soon use own devices at school

The idea of allowing Havre students to bring their own devices from home to school next year was discussed at Tuesday’s Havre Public Schools Board of Trustees meeting.

“We live in a day and age where students are bringing their own devices,” school Superintendent Andy Carlson said. “We have to move away from trying to control devices to learning how to manage them.”

Two instructional technologists, Jackie Rygg and Dan Wirtzberger, gave a presentation on some of the key points of this possible change at the meeting.

Making this move was looked at a year ago, Rygg said, and the idea has not changed much.

If a parent or guardian wants their child to bring a device to school, they must register the device with the school before it is approved for use.

Students will not be able to use the devices for personal uses, such as games, texting and social media, and will only be able to use them to communicate in designated areas of the school.

“When we put them on our network, they have to play by our rules,” Rygg said.

If this policy is put into effect for the next school year, students would be allowed to bring and use their tablets, phones and laptops for educational purposes. This allows them to take their work and materials home rather than leaving it at the school on the school’s devices.

There will be no technical support offered to students for their devices and each student must be self-acquainted with their devices. Rygg said to provide this assistance would be a monumental task. She added that 3G or 4G access will not be permitted.

The school would reserve the right to inspect the device if there is suspicion the student is not using it correctly.

Wirtzberger said some of the pros of allowing students to bring their own devices is that it is a big cost-saver for the district; the students will know their device instead of possibly being forced to become acquainted with a new one the school provides, and it will ready them for college.

The cons, he said, were already solved. The issue of security when students use Wi-Fi is being addressed. Another con is low socioeconomic students will not be able to participate, he said. In this case, the school would provide a device to the student.

“Viruses are an issue we have to look at,” Rygg said. Data that is sent to the school’s cloud in which students turn in assignments is not necessarily an issue because the cloud secures everything. It is flash drives and USB ports that bring in most viruses, Carlson said, and many of the devices the students will be bringing will not have them.

A survey done by Wirtzberger and Rygg showed that more than 90 percent of students would bring their own devices if this policy change was made.

Also at the school meeting, extending the agreement between Chinook and Havre that allows Chinook students to swim with Havre teams was unanimously accepted. One student from Chinook is participating in Havre swimming.

Mike Arnold also spoke at the school board meeting about the current count of students at the schools. Three counts are made during the school year, Arnold said — in October, December and February. February’s count shows that since October, the number of students at the high school has dropped off by 15. There has also been a slight drop in the elementary schools, but Havre Middle School saw an increase in enrollment by one student.

The drop in numbers are from kids who actually exited the high school and not from early graduations, and may be from their families moving them to different schools.

 

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