The Cape Girardeau public school board unanimously approved the purchase of 1,300 tablet computers at Tuesday night’s meeting. That’s enough tablets for every student and teacher in the high school, along with a few spares.
The tablets should be in students’ hands at the beginning of the spring semester.
The school board chose to buy a brand new model of Asus tablets with an attachable keyboard that runs the Windows 8 operating system. The model is so new it still hasn’t hit store shelves.
Brian Hall is the district’s technology coordinator. He said this new technology will remove the lag time between being taught something, and practicing it.
“It just opens up an entire world of possibilities,” Hall said. “Now instead of pen and paper, you can do anything. Any software that you can think of, any internet research that you can think of, any videos. The teachers can push out documents to the students, have them fill them out, and instantly return them in the classroom.”
Each tablet will cost nearly $400. Hall said it’s difficult to say how much the entire program will cost because one has to take into account software, manpower, repair, ebooks, and other considerations.
“Our original estimate was about $1.2 million for everything. And I think we’re actually going to be less than that because the devices came in cheaper [than anticipated],” Hall said.
The district plans to expand the program into lower grades in the coming years.
