A Catholic school in Orchard Park has added iPads to the list of school supplies for middle schoolers this year.
But unlike pencils, paper and calculators, students don't need to buy them.
The school is providing iPads for all sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders this year, after money was raised last school year.
"The teachers are very excited, probably as excited as the kids," said Ruth Frost, principal of Nativity of Our Lord School, adding it will be a great way to do research at home and in school.
Forget about research. Seventh-graders just think it's cool. Make that "really cool," according to Sidney Schlee.
"We won't have to carry our books in our backpack," she said as she and Alison Wilkowski were working on an iPad in Michael Kerwin's class Thursday afternoon.
"I think it will make us more organized," Alison said.
"It's going to be a lot different, but easier," added Madison Wild.
Nativity is one of a growing number of schools providing the iPad technology for students.
Most local Catholic elementary schools are implementing the technology to varying degrees, but Nativity is the first one to offer it to all its middle school students, according to Kevin Keenan, a spokesman for the Buffalo Catholic Diocese. Canisius High School is requiring freshman, sophomores and juniors to buy them, and Elmwood Franklin has iPads for all students in the classroom.
That's quite an explosion in the use of iPads in the classroom since the portable tablet computer debuted in 2010.
Seventh-graders were working in pairs Thursday afternoon to write a six- to eight-sentence paragraph on their first day of school after being welcomed back by Bishop Richard J. Malone.
Students used the iPads to take more than 300 photographs and videos of the bishop.
When they finished their paragraphs in Kerwin's class, they found Google Earth.
"Hey, there's my house!" one boy exclaimed.
Teachers, who received their iPads in July, had two training sessions over the summer.
"There's a learning curve," Kerwin said. "It's a work in progress for teachers and students."
But the possibilities are nearly endless. His social studies unit on political cartoons will give children access to political cartoons throughout the world, he said, as well as stories on the real-world situations that gave rise to the cartoons.
Frost said there aren't a lot of elementary textbooks available to download this year, but the applications are coming. Students will be able to download novels that they are reading in class, keep track of their assignments, do reports at home and bring them to school the next day on their iPads.
"I didn't see any reason to get them and leave them in school," she said.
The school also will offer a class for parents on how to use them, and will demonstrate how they will be used in the classroom.
The school had a partial Wi-Fi network, which was expanded and updated to allow the use throughout the school.
Frost said she took the idea of providing the iPads to eighth-graders to the Rev. Bernard Nowak, pastor of Nativity of Our Lord parish. He suggested expanding it to the sixth- and seventh-graders as well, and raised $58,000 for the project, she said. There are 60 students in the three grades.
It was going to be a surprise, but word leaked out last year.
"There was a rumor going around we would get iPads last year," said-seventh grader Joseph Ricottone. "A lot of people didn't believe it."
But students should not think the embrace of technology portends the end of pen and paper.
"They'll keep on handwriting some things, just so they don't forget how," Frost said.

email: bobrien@buffnews.com