Shipman begins his second school year as superintendent

Ready for another school year

By Michael Butler

Tallassee City Schools superintendent Wade Shipman continues to see the evolution of education. Tallassee is no exception.

With school starting on Aug. 10, a new batch of students will transition as technology has to iPads. Students at Southside Middle School picked up their devices last week.

"We're still looking to have a classroom set of textbooks," said Shipman, "but it's exciting technology. The one thing that we've learned is there's a point where you're just subsituting an iPad for a textbook. One of our goals is to get beyond that point. We're doing more things with that iPad than we were doing with a textbook."

At Tallassee High School, Brooke Barron has become an instructional coach.

"Her role is to help teachers use that technology in their classroom and more of an innovative way," noted Shipman.

Tallassee Elementary	Southside Middle	Tallassee High

There are about 1,900 students in the Tallassee system with iPad distribution at the middle school and high school levels.

"All of our technology staff has been through this," Shipman said of iPad use. "Some of the growing pains that we experienced at the high school, they won't experience at the middle school. They'll get the benefit of that experience."

The value of individual iPads are about $500 a piece. Each parent paid a $50 technology fee for use of the device.

"The one thing that people don't realize is the cost of the textbooks," Shipman added. "The students probably had almost as much in the cost of textbooks in their bookbags. Each one of those the textbooks are about $100. The cost is kind of a wash in terms of the system. I definitely think it teaches responsiblity."

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