James Milliken, Teacher on Special Assignment at Welches Elementary and
Middle Schools, has seen first hand how technology can impact students’ lives.
As a teacher at Firwood Elementary School last year, each of his students had
access to laptops.

“Interest was better, discipline was better, kids stayed in from recess to do
work,” Milliken said.

Now, he’s seeing the tech influence in Welches.

A doc-u-camera and a smart board, a technological leap from old rolling
projectors, should be installed in each classroom by the end of spring break
this year. The devices allow teachers to perform real time work examples
while students watch on a larger screen, show movies and more.
“Teachers can create fun media packed lessons that can visually keep the
attention of students while providing material (and) skills they need to have,”
Milliken said.

Meanwhile, the schools have also purchased six iPads for the English
Language Development program. The students in the program can read a
book out loud while the iPad records it, then listen to how they sound to help
their fluency and create an awareness of where they are as a reader.

Milliken offered a perfect example of how technology makes a difference with
the story of how a middle school student heard himself reading and thought it
sounded like a first grader.

“Every time he read the same book back, it was faster, it was more fluent
with a better voice,” he said. “Kids need to hear themselves.”

Milliken expects the school to add docking stations for the iPads in order to
offer a keyboard experience for students. While he sees touch devices, such
as an iPad, as the future, he also sees great value in students learning on the
keyboards.

The students appreciate how much quicker the technology has allowed them
to grow.

“I like how we can work and look at our Web sites to learn more about
English, because we don’t know that much about it,” said Cesar Olmos, 11, a
fifth grader who has worked with an iPad. “I’ve barely known how to speak
English and now I’m better at it.”

And if Milliken has his way, there will only be more technology arriving in
Welches in the future.

“These kids, they have all these iTouches and hand-held technologies, it’s kind
of like their world outside of school,” he said. “At the school, it’s paper and
pencil; they’ve got two different worlds, so lets blend that in, and make that
part of the school.”