About the Program

In September 2014, Hackley School embarked on a new and exciting learning initiative, one which included requiring grade 9 students to carry an Apple iPad to class with them each day. Our plan also included issuing iPads to grade 9 students each of the three subsequent years, until all upper school students had this powerful tool to support their learning.

In our view, the iPad provides the flexibility to both support and enhance learning, while maintaining the student-teacher relationship that is central to Hackley’s identity and our academic excellence.  We believe that having this powerful tool readily available and easily accessible to students will have a positive impact on student learning and engagement.

Through years of focused professional development and extensive classroom use, faculty have identified the iPad and several educational apps as unique and helpful learning tools. As reported to us by our students through two comprehensive student technology surveys, iPads also support what Upper School students identified as their most important learning needs and objectives (accessing learning materials, note taking, writing, academic research, annotating e-texts, and creating presentations). Our school website, commonly referred to as Hackley Online, has an excellent interface with iPads. In addition, the iPad is highly portable, has a negligible start up time, possess built in cameras, and has a longer battery life than most laptops.

Electronic texts have been incorporated across our curriculum. These digital texts not only provide learning tools not available with a regular, “analog” text, but should also reduce backpack weight.  With the wealth of apps available, we are continually exploring new instructional tools that will support the learning most important for our students.

We invite you to take some time and look through this website.  We have included an extensive iPad FAQs section which should address most of the common questions about our program, our approach, student requirements, and other enhancements greeting students in the classroom.  We will also post solutions to common tech challenges on our Tech Tips page.

Please do not hesitate to contact any one of us if additional questions should arise:

Erich Tusch, Director of Instructional Technology,

Jed Dioguardi, Director of Technology,

Andy King, US Director.