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iSMART - Grade 12 Didsbury High School students Will Hadway, Nolan McInnis, Curtis Smith and Sydney Davey work with class iPods. Photo by Carla Victor/Didsbury Review.

Didsbury High students thumbing through iPod applications last week weren’t breaking any rules.

They were following a lesson plan.

Terry Ann Robertson had her biology class search through apps Wednesday afternoon as part of a pilot project aimed at boosting student learning.

"It was definitely a surprise … I mean iPods are usually something we hide under the desk when we are in class," said Kat Graves, 15. "I never thought we’d be using it to learn."

Robertson purchased a class set – or 20 – iPods for the school with a $7,000 allowance from the Alberta Initiative for School Innovation, a program that encourages new forms of learning.

Students throughout the school could be using the technology for their studies as early as this week – if teachers allow.

It’s the first time apps have been used school-wide in the district, said Shawn Russell, assistant superintendent for Chinook’s Edge School Division.

"I have heard of a few teachers dabbling with it … by allowing a student to use his own iPod if he has it with him. This is new," he said.

The idea is to get students to use iPods in classrooms to complement traditional education.

They will be able to pull out the hand-held device to listen to a French video on YouTube, check grammar during an English class, or calculate math equations.

"I am having students create a top 50 list of apps we can use – both free and ones we will invest in," Robertson said.

"This is about making education part of students’ real world … this is what they are into right now and we are showing them it can be used for things beyond music and games."

There are only enough iPods for classes to take turns using the technology, but the hope is once this catches on, each set of students will have their own. Further funding from the Alberta government could also mean the purchase of iPads, a similar technology with an oversized screen that will allow students to download books and school texts.

The technology could mean savings for DHS, which wouldn’t have to spend updating its text or purchasing laptop computers.

Students too could save on equipment like graph and scientific calculators, which are required for senior level studies – since a lot of school supplies are applications on iPods.

"This is really, really exciting," said Miranda Brazzale, 14, a student in Robertson’s class. "It’s a connection with students and what we’re interested in … it definitely seems like something you’d see more in a private school."

Her classmate, Shyanne Reimer, 14, agrees the technology is thrilling but wonders how quickly teachers will catch on.

Teachers seem to hate the new technology students are playing around with, it’s hard to imagine them allowing it at all, she said.

But Robertson said students could be surprised.

Seventeen teachers turned out to a daylong seminar on teaching with iPods last Friday, including math and physics teacher, Iain Paton.

He is the first to admit to being technologically challenged – and he rejects things like checking e-mail, preferring the more traditional in-person chats.

"There is just so much technology, I can’t keep up. But I am willing to play around with this," he said.

He can see the benefit of having a class set of iPods, after having a dose of apps last week.

He was preparing to call up the P.E. Department for a Physics 20 experiment, 15 minutes before the class ended.

"I needed stop watches and thought, OK, this is going to take awhile. I have to go down and talk with the P.E. guys, get some stopwatches, check to see if they work and start the exercise," he said.

"Then a student said he had this stopwatch app on his iPod and I asked others if they had one and five or six more pulled one out of their pocket. It saved us a lot of time."

But Paton is also concerned he, and other teachers, aren’t being given enough time to learn on the hand-held devices and create lesson plans.

"I mean we have a half day to learn it and then we are expected to teach with it (this) week," Paton said.

"That isn’t enough time and probably means we will have to spend a lot of our own time figuring this out."

Ian Bates, physical education teacher, said he isn’t as concerned. He’s already planning on how he can use the device to make students take fitness more seriously.

There are apps for meals and exercise plans, preparing to run a marathon and creating daily logs that will fit right into the P.E. curriculum, he said.

"I think this is going to be slow to take off but eventually it’ll be in all the classrooms," he said.

"It’s kind of like Proxima machines. At first teachers said it was too complicated and they didn’t want to try it and now they can’t do without it."