Wednesday was a big day at Mill Creek Middle School in Kent, with every student in the school getting a new laptop computer as part of the kent School District’s One-to-One program.
Funded by a 2006 technology levy, the One-to-One program seeks to level the playing field between students, as well as to better prepare them for life outside of school, where computer use is the norm.
“Their lives don’t exist without technology,” said Director of School Technology Services Dani Pfeiffer in an interview this week. “And it really does prepare them for the future.”
Students lined up all day long this past Tuesday and Wednesday as Mill Creek became the first school in the district to extend its computer program to all students. Last school year, the seventh-graders – now this year’s eighth-graders – each were loaned laptops in February.
Wednesday, there was excitement in the room as seventh-graders stopped in to pick up their new computers, register them and get a quick course in how to log on to the district’s servers.
According to Pfeiffer, every time the students use their laptops to connect to the Internet, they will have to do so through the district’s servers, which are protected with a filter program to restrict students from visiting social networking sites, Youtube, or inappropriate content.
Before they’re allowed to take their computers home, however, each student also must pass a basic skills exam that will teach them to properly save files, navigate through programs, caring for their computers, as well as protecting themselves on the Internet.
Until they can pass those requirements, the computers are for in-school use only.
Teachers at the middle school are receiving training to integrate the computers into their lesson plans. Parents, too, will have to take part in an Internet-safety class before the laptops go home with the students.
The classes will take place sometime in the next four to six weeks.
Emrie Hollander, the Teacher on Special Assignment with the laptop program, said the kids also will help teach the teachers, which she called “empowering.”
On top of that, having information at student fingertips helps to level the playing field, in a district that is culturally diverse and at a school where family-income levels vary greatly.
For example, Hollander said, if teachers are doing a math or reading problem that involves a carnival, some foreign students may not know what a carnival is. They’ll now have the power to look it up with ease.
“It’s amazing,” Hollander said. “It opens up so much of the world for the kids.”
Principal Anthony Brown lauded the program.
“It provides our kids access they may or may not have at home,” he said.
Brown said his school has the highest percentage of free or reduced lunch of any middle school in the district and there is a “digital divide” created between students who have and use the Internet at home and those who do not.
Pfeiffer also noted that recent studies show that fusing technology with lesson plns adds to student achievement and excitement about school.
“It absolutely gets them excited,” she said. “You can see a heightened level of engagement with the students.”
Eighth-graders Alexandra Galvez and Prabpreet Minhas agreed, adding that having the computer also cuts down on the number of excuses one can use to avoid work.
“It makes you do your homework because you really don’t have any excuse – it’s on your computer,” Galvez said.
Having the computers, which come loaded with the Microsoft Office software suite as well as several other programs – including one that allows access to the new SMARTboards installed throughout the district – also means less for the kids to carry.
“It was cool because we didn’t have to carry as many books,” Glavez said.
“Everything we do is pretty much on the computer so we don’t have to search our backpacks,” Minhas agreed.
As the year progresses, students in every middle school in the district will be receiving laptops – approximately 1,800. Pfeiffer said the goal is to go back to voters in 2010 to try and pass a bond to get all students in grades seven through 12 in Kent schools equipped with laptops.
“We’re getting the workforce ready,” Pfeiffer said.
Brian Beckley can be reached at 253-437-6012 or bbeckley@kentreporter.com
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