The students at Heritage Middle School in West St. Paul knew they’d all be getting Apple iPad 2 tablets to use for schoolwork. They just didn’t know when.

School staffers were maddeningly evasive when asked about this, even though they recently held a series of iPad-orientation sessions for the children and parents, assuring them the tablets would likely see the light of day before the end of the school year.

Then Principal Chris Hiti began to boogie.

Students in a gym Thursday for what they thought was a standard pep rally were agog when the tall, burly administrator bobbed his hips and doffed his sweatshirt to reveal a black T-shirt imprinted with “iHeritage.” Teachers joined him in a frenetic line dance.

And then the kids saw the unfurled banner and the answer to their big question: “Heritage iPads are here!”

Heritage has become the latest in a growing number of K-12 schools around the world outfitting their students with iPads to modernize teaching and energize the students.

It is not the first school in Minnesota, and it will not be the last. Gibbon Fairfax Winthrop Schools has deployed tablets in its Winthrop, Minn., high school, and the Little Falls school district plans to give a tablet to every student in grades five through 12 starting next school year.

But Heritage is bustin’ with pride to be a Twin Cities trendsetter, Hiti said. “When we are the only school around here to do this, it makes this pretty special for the kids and the teachers.”

As for the energy at the school Thursday afternoon, Hiti explained: “We have been whoopin’ this up for a while, and the excitement has built up.”

Sixth-grader Kara Osborne, getting a look at her tablet in a classroom session after the pep rally, explained the fuss about the iPad another way: “It’s an iPad.” Duh.

Alex Radack, 11, said he welcomes the chance to cut down on paper — including some of the textbooks and notebooks he customarily has carried around. “You only get one chance to save the environment,” Radack said.

“We will not have as many excuses to lose schoolwork” because it will be stored electronically on the tablet and school servers, added Joseph Dill, 12. “Turning in an assignment will be easier.”

Besides, said 12-year-old Dalia Lopez, writing with pen and paper is lame.

Heritage is distributing 685 iPads to students this school year, with plans to boost that figure to 730 by next school year. It is installing more than 100 educational apps on the iPads, and tying the devices to facility-wide Wi-Fi and Google-branded Internet services such as Gmail.

Students will be able to take their tablets home next week after more training. They’ll return the iPads at the end of the school year and get them back in the fall.

The tablet deployment was made possible by a federal grant that pumped more than $7 million into Independent School District 197 in West St. Paul, Mendota Heights and Eagan. The cash transformed Heritage into a magnet school emphasizing science, technology, engineering, the environment and mathematics. The iPad program figures into this new educational emphasis.

Two of the district’s elementary schools, Pilot Knob and Moreland, also are receiving some of the federal cash and will get iPads, though on a lesser scale, with tablets mostly used on-site.

District Superintendent Jay Haugen describes the Heritage iPads as “digital backpacks” that allow schoolchildren to consolidate the bulk of their learning material into a single device. The ultimate goal is to abandon physical textbooks, though Heritage is not close to doing that yet.

The iPads also are intended to help bridge a “digital divide” between students from well-to-do households and those that can’t afford fancy computers or broadband Internet, Haugen said. Heritage’s tablets have cellular-data capabilities built in but are deactivated. The district will look at turning on the data service for Internet access, based on student need, said Marilynn Smith, the district staffer who is coordinating federal grant implementation.

Heritage staffers relished the secrecy surrounding the iPads’ arrival and went to extraordinary lengths to keep the students in the dark. The tablets were whisked into the building through a side door and locked in an out-of-the way storeroom.

“This was very covert, very sneaky,” said Sarah Shanley, who is Smith’s counterpart on the Heritage staff.

Now, with the secret spilled, “Parents are very excited to have the tablets coming home with their kids,” Shanley said. “Everyone is very excited to see what kids will be doing with them.”

Julio Ojeda-Zapata can be reached at 651-228-5467.