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Russian Department to Require Students to Purchase iPads

Translations will be just a tap away and textbooks will feature video cameras with the Russian Department’s new iPad initiative, which requires students taking Russian 100 to purchase an iPad at the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year. The iPad is a touchscreen tablet created by Apple that allows users to type on Word Processor, access the Internet, download applications to customize the product and complete a number of other unique functions. The requirement to purchase the iPad will apply exclusively to students entering the Russian 100 program. It will be the only required purchase for their entire Russian sequence. Students with prior experience in Russian at Phillips Academy will not be required to purchase the product. The iPads will not be financed by the school except for students who receive Financial Aid, who will be proportionally reimbursed for the purchase. Victor Svec, Chair of the Russian Department and pioneer of the iPad initiative, said, “If it were only substituting for a hard book, the iPad would not be that exciting.” “However, it is exciting that, for instance, when you are in your third year of language, you are probably not going to have all of your notes and your textbooks from Freshman Year. But if you have them all on one little, thin iPad, you will,” Svec continued. The iPad will offer an environmentally-friendly method for translating phrases and taking notes. One of the iPad’s features is an instantaneous language translator that allows the user to see the English meaning of a word by simply tapping on the word in Russian. “The iPad has a voice recorder so students can watch a video that they need to watch and record their questions or answers. This one piece of equipment takes care of everything,” said Svec. Other features include a note-taking program that allows students to write their notes on the textbooks using a stylus, a video camera, and a touchscreen keyboard capable of displaying the alphabet of any desired language. Svec said, “By virtue of the fact that all of the materials are digital, students will view the material digitally, interact with it digitally, send it to me digitally, I’ll correct it digitally, and it will get back to them digitally.” Though the iPads will primarily be used to enhance students learning experience, they also comply with Phillips Academy’s environmental sustainability standards. Svec said, “The sheer volume of paper that this will save is huge. Other subjects can piggyback off of this initiative too. Students can buy their biology textbook, chemistry book, most of math textbooks, and they can put them on the iPad.” “Student might end up saving 65 dollars here, 70 dollars there, and they don’t even pay anything for Russian materials. Add all of those savings up, and it is as if they got the iPad for free,” Svec continued. Due to Svec’s efforts, all of the Russian course materials are already completely online. Svec currently teaches all sections of Russian 100 and will continue to do so next year to help facilitate this technological shift. “Since every single material taught in class, including the textbooks, the readings, the homework, are all digital, it makes sense to keep them in a digital format,” said Svec. Svec’s work towards creating an entirely digitized Russian course began roughly twenty years ago. “I basically had already planned and had the groundwork done for a digital textbook twenty years ago. But I didn’t institute it because at that point not everyone had access to computers,” said Svec. Svec finalized the Russian 100 online textbook over his most recent sabbatical seven years ago. Since then, the Russian 100 required texts have been completely digitized. “It is a dream come true and a nightmare to come. The number of problems that could arise is infinitely large. People could smash the iPads; people could get them stolen. But we will deal with these problems just the way we would with any other class textbook,” said Svec. In the future, Svec hopes to continue to find new and effective ways of combining technology and academics inside and outside of the Russian Department. “My biggest hope is that we just keep exploring,” said Svec.