A similar program in the U.S. helped children improve their language and math skills, said Elmwood teacher Matt Perreault. (CBC)Grade 1 students at an Ottawa private school are using Apple's iPod Touch to help them learn math and reading.

On Tuesday morning, a dozen girls at Elmwood School sat in their classroom with the white wires of Apple's signature earbuds dangling from their ears. They slid and tapped their fingers across the touch screens of the hand-held device, using it to make movies and learn to tell time.

"We just have been learning a lot about these," said seven-year-old Grace Brunner. "And it's really better than writing with a plain boring pencil on paper."

The girls have been issued the devices as part of a six-week pilot project that began about three weeks ago.

While some teachers might see devices like the iPod Touch as an unwelcome classroom distraction, staff at the Elmwood School view them as a potential learning tool.

"It's our jobs as teachers to help students use the technology in the most effective way that they can instead of sheltering them from it," said Matt Perreault, Elmwood's technology teacher.

Perreault said a similar program in the U.S. helped children improve their language and math skills. The pilot project at Elmwood will end with an assessment of the girls' reading and math skills. If the program is successful, it will be expanded school-wide.

'It's really better than writing with a plain boring pencil on paper,' says Grace Brunner, right, as her friend Caitlyn keeps an eye on her iPod Touch. (CBC)"We wondered how young we can go with this," said Cheryl Boughton, the headmistress of Elmwood. "The assumption would be that this would be beyond them so it was really interesting to see that actually, it isn't beyond them."

Grade 1 teacher Ginny Strachan said children nowadays have access to a lot of technology at home, and it should be embraced in the classroom as well, alongside traditional teaching methods.

She stocked the devices with a few applications she thought would be useful before handing them out, Then, she let the children explore on their own and show each other what they found.

"It was amazing," she said. "There was no hesitation … They were pressing buttons and figuring things out … The girls are very intuitive with it."

She's noticed that recording their voice with the iPod motivates the students to improve their reading out loud.

"That's something pretty neat already," she said.