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New laptops
help students, no matter where they are
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| McKinney School eighth-grader
Ben Adams worked on one of the school district’s 60 new Toshiba
laptops in health class last Wednesday. |
Last Wednesday morning 20 students sat in a classroom
working his or her own Toshiba Pentium 4 laptop computer, which was hooked
up to the Internet by a wireless connection. They could have been M.I.T.
students coming up with a replacement for fossil fuels, but they were
McKinney School eighth-graders uploading personal fitness data onto a
physical education Web site for health class.
With opportunities like the one they got last week,
when they were given a total of 60 laptops to use at their discretion, Yellow
Springs students may be the ones developing solutions to space exploration
and renewable energy down the road.
What must it feel like to be responsible for giving
local youth the very best tools to design the future? The local resident
who anonymously donated $78,000 to the Yellow Springs school district to
purchase the school’s laptops knows and might feel something of pride
and satisfaction that the students are already savvy enough to hit the Web
surfing.
The McKinney health class students were the first
to use the new machines last week to participate in the National School
Fitness Foundation study, as part of a grant YSHS and McKinney received
for their weight and fitness room. The eighth-graders entered personal data
such as body composition, flexibility and blood pressure into a national
databank to help researchers identify fitness improvement over time.
The foundation’s server happened to be down
on Wednesday, but the students used the morning to visit sites of their
choice and familiarize themselves with the laptops, which they found to
be easier and more comfortable than the older desktops they had been using.
“It’s so much faster than the other ones,
and it feels better than sitting at a big old monitor with uncomfortable
chairs,” Nate Hosket said in class.
The laptops are neatly shelved on two rolling metal
carts, one cart of 30 computers for the high school and middle school and
another cart of 30 computers for Mills Lawn School. Particularly since several
laptops were stolen at YSHS, the computers must be tracked and signed in
and out one by one. The students understood the extra care necessary to
preserve a valuable resource, and they seemed impressed with the person
who showed such interest in them.
“It’s pretty cool that someone gives
you a laptop and doesn’t want to be known,” Julia Schenning
said.
The donor approached Superintendent Tony Armocida
last year after reading a study showing that exposing young students to
technology has major benefits for them later in their education.
“He asked me what would I do if I could get
computers for all the middle school students,” Armocida recalled.
He said he answered that it would depend on the cost of the computers and
the resources available.
“Then he asked me ‘what if you could
buy anything you wanted?’ ” Armocida said.
The idea of providing computer access for middle-schoolers
grew into computers for all students, and the donor remained avidly involved
with the district as officials selected quality equipment with the newest
software at the best value, Armocida said.
“He got really involved in a neat way,”
Armocida said of the donor. “It’s unusual to have a person in
the community who cares so much about the kids that they would donate like
this.”
Last year, the schools’ music department received
a $10,000 anonymous grant, which was used to purchase and repair instruments.
But Armocida said this most recent gift is the biggest individual donation
the district has received since he became superintendent seven years ago.
Without grants like these, there would never be a time when the school could
provide all students at once with a standardized set of cutting-edge equipment
for simultaneous in-class use, he said.
YSHS teachers are excited that they can bring the
computers to the students instead of taking the students to the computers.
The wireless laptop system allows teachers to use Internet resources without
spending time setting up a projector, having students share a computer or
moving to the computer lab.
Spanish teacher Kathryn Burkland said allowing her
students to read front-page news in Spanish from Bogota, Columbia, gives
them a real-time connection to the world they are studying. Staying in the
Spanish class lets students use the room’s resources and choose what
they want to research and share with the rest of the class, she said.
“There is an enormous amount of resources on
the Internet that are interactive and include sites to practice listening,
speaking and pronunciation skills,” Burkland said. “We just
got bumped up to a different level because of the wireless system, and I
want to thank this person for giving us such a huge and serious leg up.”
The carts are available in the YSHS/McKinney and
Mills Lawn libraries for teachers to check out and use for classroom research
projects, PowerPoint presentations or professional development training.
Students can check them out overnight for word processing and other class
work.
The district’s last big computer acquisition
occurred five years ago when the McKinney School received 60 to 70 desktop
computers through a Raise the Bar grant. Though those computers are now
considered slow, cumbersome and on their way to obsolete, they gave students
experience and prepared them for the next generation of innovation, said
Vickie Hitchcock, the YSHS and McKinney technology coordinator.
Armocida said that technology is “an extremely
powerful tool” that when harnessed will give students an advantage
as they grow. Mills Lawn students will use the resource because “in
our district we’ve never been afraid to let kids use technology and
integrate it” into local programs, he said.
“A first-grader taught me how to minimize my
screen four years ago,” Armocida said. “And I’ve been
using computers since 1982.”
Since then, Armocida said, he has felt committed
to incorporating technology into education, and luckily for the students,
others in town feel the same way. —Lauren
Heaton |
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