PHOTOS: West Junior High Students Get Ready for School

students got a taste of the upcoming school year Tuesday during the school’s “Get Your Stuff Days” event.

The annual orientation event gave students a jumpstart on the school year by allowing them to pick up their schedule, find their locker, have their school photo taken, sign up for a sport and more.

Marilyn LaFleur-Brown, the school’s communications liaison, said it was “one-stop shopping to get themselves together.”

This year, the entire seventh grade class also received iPads for the first time. The iPads are part of that will bring more than 3,000 digital devices into Hopkins schools over the next three years. As part of that plan, every seventh grade student will have an iPad starting this school year. That will expand to eighth grade in 2013-2014 and ninth grade in 2014-15.

Each of the seventh graders at the Get Your Stuff Days event learned to set up and use their iPads—and received a reminder that they’re intended for learning. Parents will know the passwords for the devices and be able to check up on what the students have on them. The iPad’s cameras won’t even be activated until teachers talk to them about appropriate ways to use them.

Sid Voss, the district’s head of technology, told the students that the new iPads will take advantage of new ways to learn beyond the traditional textbook.

“Occasionally, you may have some little fun things you do there, but your real focus is schoolwork,” Voss said.

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