While K-12 schools around the country search for funding to provide iPads to every student, an education researcher in North Carolina has found that even a single iPad can make a huge difference in the classroom.

The results of her experience with student teachers at Wake Forest University appear in the December/January issue of Learning & Leading With Technology, the magazine of the International Society for Technology in Education.

“Because they’re truly part of the digital generation, our pre-service teachers and the K-12 students they teach have a natural aptitude for tablet devices,” said Kristin Redington Bennett, an Assistant Professor of Education at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.

Though iPads can cost more than $500 with 3G access and a budget for apps, Bennett said, “Don’t discount the device because of its price. We found that just one iPad allowed teachers to design creative lesson plans tailored to individual learners.”

One of her pre-service teachers even used the iPad to solve a problem with a disruptive student who made trouble in the reading center every morning. When the teacher showed the student how to download books on the iPad, he read with focus for 20 minutes each morning – a goal he had not achieved until then.

“Anything new and different is engaging for kids,” said Nancy Davidson, a senior elementary education major at Wake Forest who used an iPad in her student teaching last semester. “Tracking student growth through apps, pictures, and videos became more efficient for me and more interesting for the children. Using the iPad in class started as a luxury, but quickly became a normal part of their learning process.”

Bennett’s pre-service teachers used the iPads in three ways:

*Comparing students’ progress on identical tasks using the iPads, interactive whiteboards, and desktops to see if the less-expensive iPad would work as well.

*In groups of two or three, working out a problem together. This approach required a set of rules (only one set of fingers on the iPad) and specific tasks for each team member. The group would capture an image of their work and store it in the iPad’s photo album for teacher review.

*For the teacher only, taking the place of other digital displays. One teacher took photos around the school and flipped through as she explained geometric shapes occurring in the school and in nature.

“What often happens in schools is that they purchase this new technology and expect teachers to use it with little training in how to design successful instruction with it,” Bennett said. “My goal is to train our elementary education candidates to graduate from our program with the skills and fluency in the use of mobile technology to support teaching and learning. This has allowed many of our graduates to be leaders in their schools even as a first-year teacher.”

Based on her experience, Bennett recommends these top 10 apps for use with elementary-school students:

1. Google Earth: (all ages) Take a virtual field trip to anywhere through this app that uses global satellite and aerial imagery with a swipe of a finger.

2. DoodleBuddy: (all ages) Students and teachers can use this across all content areas as a whiteboard equivalent to paint, draw, sketch, and write.

3. Story Buddy: (K-2nd) This app allows kids to create, read, and share stories that they create with the iPad.

4. Stack the States: (2nd-6th) An animated, game-based way to learn state locations, capitals, shapes, abbreviations, and nicknames.

5. Geocaching: (3rd-6th) In this global treasure hunting game, participants hide and seek containers, called geocaches, outdoors, then share their adventures online.

6. Numberland HD: (PK-1st) Twin heroes teach numbers using the Montessori Method.

7. Corkulous: (2nd – 6th) This app allows students to collect, organize, and share ideas through notes, labels, and photos.

8. iThoughtsHD: (3rd-6th) This mind-mapping tool can be used to sequence ideas, write mind-maps, organize thinking, and assess interrelatedness.

9. Coin Math: (K-3rd) Students learn both sides of a coin, how to add them, and how to pay for something with the correct coins.

10. StarFall ABC’s: (PK-1st) Students learn to recognize letters and develop skills as they begin to learn to read.

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A study published Thursday December 15 by the American Journal of Public Health provides some of the strongest evidence yet that tobacco prevention and cessation programs not only reduce smoking and save lives, but also save money by reducing tobacco-related health care costs.

The study found that from 2000 to 2009, Washington state’s tobacco prevention and cessation program saved more than $5 for every $1 spent by reducing hospitalizations for heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease and cancer caused by tobacco use.  Over the 10-year period, the program prevented nearly 36,000 hospitalizations, saving $1.5 billion compared to $260 million spent on the program.  These are real savings in tobacco-related hospitalization costs from 2000 to 2009, not projected savings in future health care costs.

According to the study’s authors, the total savings are even greater when other tobacco-related health and productivity costs are included, in addition to the hospitalization costs. The study further found that Washington’s smoke-free workplace law and the state’s multiple cigarette tax increases also contributed to smoking declines and health care savings.

This study sends a powerful message to the nation’s elected officials that disease prevention initiatives, including programs that prevent kids from smoking and help smokers quit, are essential to improving health and reducing health care costs in the United States. It comes at a critical time as funding for such programs is under attack at both the federal and state levels.

The study shows why Congress should protect the Prevention and Public Health Fund created by the health care reform law rather than slash funding by as much as 68 percent, as some lawmakers have proposed. The prevention fund is a vital source of support for tobacco prevention and cessation efforts, including state and community grants, telephone quitlines to help smokers quit, and media campaigns to discourage kids from smoking and encourage smokers to quit.

The new Washington study provides concrete evidence that investing in prevention can pay tremendous dividends by reducing the very diseases that cost the most to treat. Cutting the prevention fund would be a fiscally irresponsible step backward that would increase health care costs.

This study also underscores how penny-wise and pound-foolish the states have been in shortchanging tobacco prevention and cessation programs. In the current budget year (Fiscal Year 2012), the states will collect $25.6 billion in revenue from the 1998 state tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes, but will spend only 1.8 percent of it – $456.7 million – on programs to prevent kids from smoking and help smokers quit, according to a recent report by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and other public health organizations.

Despite the growing evidence that these programs save lives and save money, states have cut tobacco prevention funding by 36 percent over the past four years and now provide just 12 percent of the funding recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  It is incomprehensible given Washington’s success that the state has virtually eliminated funding for its tobacco prevention and cessation program this year.

Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, killing more than 400,000 people and costing the nation $193 billion a year in health care bills and lost productivity. The new Washington study confirms that tobacco prevention works to save lives and money.  It makes no sense for elected officials to shortchange programs that are proven to reduce health care costs and save money for taxpayers.

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