AUBURN — Educators from as close as Gray-New Gloucester and as far away as India were at Sherwood Heights Elementary School on Friday, watching kindergarten students use iPad tablet computers.

It was the third and last day of the Leverage Learning Institute, a national conference on iPads in early education hosted by the Auburn School Department.

Auburn schools have been in the spotlight with the department’s decision to give every kindergarten student an Apple iPad 2 this year to boost learning. Despite some protest from taxpayers over the $240,000 cost, half of the students got their iPads in September, the other half will get iPads next month.

Adults stood watching 5-year-olds at work on on the devices. Garrett Pray sat with other kindergartners at a table playing educational games. Garrett’s game challenged him to identify and match the beginning sounds of words.

Garrett had three columns to chose from: a lion, turtle or dinosaur. He had to pick which pictures went in which column. After sounding out words, he moved the tiger to the turtle column, the dog to the dinosaur column, the ladybug to the lion column.

“Excellent,” the iPad exclaimed when he matched the words.

In another room Micah Joler, 5, worked on a math game. When she touched her screen she was asked which jars had the most, and the least, beans. She correctly identified the jars and counted the beans aloud.

Satish Bangalore of India said he came to Auburn because he’s involved in launching a private preschool in India. He’s also visiting other schools in the United States.

“I was not sure whether it (iPads) would work in pre-K or kindergarten,” Bangalore said. The conference showed him “it is working with this age group. It is working effectively.”

Kindergarten students are able “to do reading and math and writing in a much better way,” he said. “They’re able to create things, like their own books.”

Mona Towner also watched students use iPads. Towner teaches technology at the Irving Elementary School outside Chicago. Her school has 550 prekindergarten to grade five students. Some of Irving’s classrooms have one-to-one Mac books, she said.

“When I get back we’re rolling out one classroom of one-to-one iPads in the second grade,” she said.

Any age is a good age to use iPads, Towner said. If a school district can afford them, “it’s a good learning tool at every grade.”

Heidi Dunn, a second grade teacher in Gray-New Gloucester, said her school has 30 iPads that are new this year. “We’re here to learn how to use them.”

Dunn was sitting at a table of students working on math the old fashioned way, with markers and papers. “I wanted to know when the children using iPads, are the kids doing the traditional learning distracted by the iPads.” she said. They weren’t, Dunn said. “They all know what they’re jobs are.”

The conference has shown her “how appropriate it is for 5-year-olds to have the iPads, and how much they can do,” Dunn said.

Auburn Superintendent Katy Grondin called the sold-out iPad national conference “a big success.”

Several educators came not sure that iPads were appropriate for young students. “Now they’re excited,” she said. As teachers left the conference held at the Hilton Garden Inn, “we had a lot of ‘thank-yous.’”

Auburn may host more national technology in education conferences, Grondin said. “People paid to come. But we didn’t do it for that.” It was held to share information, network, generate excitement, “and put Auburn on the map.”

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