[August 28, 2010] North Greene students get laptop computers ROODHOUSE, Aug 28, 2010 (The Telegraph - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- You couldn't tell Thursday morning who was more excited about all the students at North Greene Middle/Junior High School receiving new Apple Macintosh MacBook laptop computers -- the students, teachers or administrators. A technology grant covered 75 percent of the cost of the laptops, and the North Greene School District bridged the gap in the cost of the units, considered a "must" tool for students today. Thursday was deemed "Roll-Out Day", with an assembly in the school gym featuring guest speakers: Middle/Junior High Principal Cindy Carlson-Rice, District Superintendent Les Stevens and Apple representative Tim Grimes. All 340 students from fourth through eighth grades received laptops for their personal use at school and home. Parents had to attend a meeting regarding laptop policy and use, and had to provide proof of home insurance for their children to have a computer; if parents did not have homeowner/renter insurance, a policy to cover the laptop was made available through the district at a minimal rate. "The students won't be able to take the laptops home for the first two weeks, until they have adequate training in their use," said Brett Berry, seventh- and eighth-grade reading and language arts teacher. Berry, sixth- and seventh-grade computer teacher Aubrey Bushnell, librarian Lea Ann Brannan and fifth-grade teacher Anna Albrecht have served as the school's technology committee for the past two years, working to align curriculum with digital technology. "This was the dream of Mrs. Rice for five years, and she worked hard to see it become a reality," Berry said. District staff toured the Apple facility in Chicago, and teachers have attended multiple in-school training sessions to ensure all the teachers are adept in utilizing the laptops as the educational tool students must master today. During the raucous Roll-Out Day assembly, Superintendent Les Stevens addressed the misinformation posted on an area newspaper's website regarding the laptop cost to students and the reason the district is utilizing them. "There is no cost to the student to use the laptops, and the reason our teachers are using them is not because they are lazy," Stevens said. "Our teachers are not lazy. They have had to put in a lot of extra hours working to align their curriculum to use them in their classrooms and on training." Students, staff, administration and guests watched a video of the school's students being interviewed in groups of two to four, stating what they felt about getting the new laptops. A few of the comments included: "It will be exciting, and we can use them at school and at home;" "It will be a great way to learn while still having fun;" "It will be so cool to have our own laptop;" "It will be awesome;" and "We won't have to carry as much stuff in our backpacks." Several representatives from each of the grades, fourth through eighth, lined up to see which grade would get their laptops first Thursday morning. When a whistle blew, the first student in each line had to run up to a liter soda bottle with their own straw and drain as much from the bottle as they could until the whistle blew again, signaling them to stop; then, they had to run back to their line and let the next student in line do the same when the whistles blew. The class that emptied the soda bottle first got to be the first class of students to pick up their laptops and carrying cases from their teachers. Lots of shouting and encouraging accompanied the "soda race," but the eighth-grade class won. The students were allowed to retrieve their laptops, then go out of the gym, where they were videotaped, saying how they felt. Once all the students had their laptops, they headed back to their classrooms to plug them in to charge, then head out to lunch. "The rest of the day is Mac Day, and each teacher has the same laptop introduction program scheduled for them on the computers," Berry said. "The rest of the day, students will have a hands-on day with their laptops as they learn to enjoy what this technology will enable them to do." This year's eighth-graders will return the laptops to the school at the end of the year, and those laptops will be presented to next year's fourth-graders, allowing the cycle of integrated learning to continue. mborman@thetelegraph.com To see more of The Telegraph or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.thetelegraph.com/. Copyright (c) 2010, The Telegraph, Alton, Ill. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com, e-mail services@mctinfoservices.com, or call 866-280-5210 (outside the United States, call +1 312-222-4544). [ Back To the Online Project Management Community's Homepage ]