AUBURN — When Angus King heard about Auburn’s plan to give Apple iPads to kindergartners, he wasn’t sure it was a good idea.

Yes, he was the governor who, a decade ago, put Apple laptops in the hands of all Maine middle-schoolers, but this was different. These students were so much younger.

“I thought, ‘iPads for kindergartners. I’m not so sure about that,'” King told a crowd gathered Wednesday at the Hilton Garden Inn in Auburn for a national, three-day conference on iPads in education.  

King’s early misgivings didn’t last long. When he saw kindergartners using the iPad 2 tablet computers at an Auburn School Committee meeting in April — the meeting at which the project was unveiled and approved — he said he realized the interface worked for 5-year-olds. They could use their hands rather than a keyboard. The technology was perfect for them.

On Wednesday, he touted the project in front of educators from 10 states and Washington, D.C., as well as Chile and India. 

“I think we’re going to see some pretty neat results from this,” King said.

More than 100 people will gather in the Auburn hotel this week for a three-day conference called “Leveraging Learning: The iPad in Primary Grades Institute.” Organizers believe it’s the first national conference to examine the educational benefits of the iPad tablet computer. The event is hosted by the Auburn School Department, which is among the first school systems in the United States to give iPads to such young students.

The project has proven controversial with some taxpayers, who question spending $240,000 a year for one-on-one technology for young children. But the project has piqued the interest of some educators, who see iPads as a possible way to engage children and meet their different learning styles.   

Since it announced its iPad program last spring, the school system has been flooded with questions from educators in Maine and around the world. This week’s conference was one way for Auburn school officials to address those questions.  

“It’s also a wonderful way for us to learn from them,” said Mike Muir, who is in charge of special initiatives for the Auburn School Department.

The conference’s first speakers were former Gov. Angus King and Maine Commissioner of Education Stephen Bowen, who answered questions from Auburn kindergartners on prerecorded video.

Some of the questions — “What is your favorite color?” — seemed genuine. Others were more obviously prompted. 

“How does MLTI fit your vision for school?” one kindergartner asked, referring to the Maine Learning Technology Initiative, the state’s laptop program.

For an hour, King and Bowen answered the questions, talking about their experiences with technology, the future of education and how they saw technology affecting that future. 

Both said schools must engage students more — or risk losing them — and they said iPads and laptops are a good way to secure students’ attention and to tailor education to their needs. They supported greater teacher training in technology, so students get full advantage of the machines, and they supported increasing innovation in schools. 

King, who has a daughter in high school, lamented that today’s teenagers are surrounded by 21st-century technology in their private lives but not in their classrooms.

“They go to school and it’s 1955,” he said.

Bowen said he was happy to see Auburn experiment with iPads. 

“I’m thrilled a district is going to try it out,” said Bowen, who believes there isn’t enough research and development in Maine’s educational system. “We’re very excited to have a district that’s out on the leading edge of this.”

Conference attendees said they were excited, too. They said they hoped to learn from Auburn’s experiment and from each other this week, though some attendees spent the first hour, during Bowen and King’s talk, checking their email, surfing the Web and playing elementary school-level games on their own iPads and laptops.

Auburn’s project gives one iPad to each of its 285 kindergartners. This year’s students are receiving them in two phases, with half of the classes getting iPads in September and the rest set to receive them early in December. The School Department will compare test scores to see how students with and without the technology fared. If the test data show the iPads boosted learning, Auburn hopes to get grant money to pay for the machines next fall, releasing local taxpayers from the cost.

Auburn’s long-term plan is to buy iPads for every incoming kindergarten class. Students would keep the iPads as they moved from one grade to the next.

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