This week, Government Technology posted the article, “Should Kindergarteners Use iPads in the Classroom?”

It looked like the article had found year-old news of our starting our iPad initiative, thinking it was current, and raised the question if this were appropriate.

I was fine up to the point that readers started posting “black and white”/”all or nothing” comments…

I have submitted this comment:

I’m with Auburn Schools, and it was actually last April that we decided to move ahead with a literacy and math initiative that included 1to1 iPads in Kindergarten. We’re a year into the program and are finding that student engagement is up, teachers find that they are getting to reading groups earlier in the year than in the past, and that it is easier to customize learning for students. We even did a randomized control trial on the pilot which found a statistically significant improvement in the iPad classrooms.

But it is all about the right tool at the right time. We still teach handwriting with pencil and paper, students still play and pretend and read books and work with teachers (all things that some people thought we had plans of stopping once students had iPads – for what reason, I can’t even imagine).

But now that we have actually done it, we entusiastically say yes, iPads do belong in kindergarten.

We’re on track to add 1st Grade iPads for this coming year.