Five Sand Springs Schools Receive 20 iPad Minis Each

Sand Springs' five elementary schools got a surprise gift Tuesday from the Education Foundation.

Each school received 20 iPad Minis.

It's the kind of technology upgrade the schools would have had difficulty providing for students without help from the Foundation.

Administrators are already working on how to put the iPad Minis to work.

Kids in the Northwoods Fine Arts Academy working on improving their reading on some older computers in the Library can now be a little more portable.

Sand Springs Superintendent, Lloyd Snow, said, "There's 100 iPads, that's gonna be awarded this morning, a set of 20 at each site."

The gift was a surprise to the principals of the five schools; apparently none of them even knew.

The Foundation awarded 21 grants to teachers and schools before the holiday break.

The 100 iPad Minis represented a doubling of the foundation's gift to more than $76,000.

The superintendent was thrilled.

"We're not able, with the funding restraints we have in our state right now, to provide the kind of technology we'd like all our sites to have," Snow said.

So the gift was exciting for everyone, except perhaps for the students who were so intent on reading improvement, they had no idea what was happening across the room.

But the principals knew and are planning how they are going to use them.

They can do research and reports and take pictures and video, it's a terrific new tool to get kids excited about learning.

Who knows, before school is out in the spring, the kids may be doing power point book reports on their new iPad Minis.

The actual iPads have not arrived but the Sand Springs Education Foundation said they are on the way.

The schools each got a certificate equal to 20 iPad Minis.