Students, teachers to receive school laptops

Published 6:54 am Monday, March 3, 2008

SHORELINE – Teachers dream of this day. Their students are enthusiastic, attentive, eager and – best of all – they’re learning.

“That’s the power of technology,” said Justin Irish, Echo Lake Elementary teacher. “It’s very cool.”

The teachers and students at Echo Lake Elementary began piloting a program that provides laptops to students on a two-to-one ratio last school year. The staff has seen the benefits, said Mary Koontz, Echo Lake principal, and she is eager to see the school move forward with the pilot.

“Technology is an integral part of learning,” Koontz said.

The next step for the Shoreline School District’s laptop pilot program is to distribute laptops to each of its teachers, about 660 total, in the next month, Superintendent Jim Welsh announced at the school board’s April 4 meeting.

Beginning in the fall, Echo Lake and Kellogg Middle School will have one laptop for each student and Einstein Middle School will have laptops on a two-to-one ratio, to continue expanding the program, Welsh said.

This project’s funding comes from the voter-approved bond of 1994. If the school district sees continued benefits from the pilot, it will consider further expansion in consultation with the community, Welsh said.

With the expansion in the fall, students in grades four and up will have the ability to take their laptops home to work on assignments, Welsh said. This process will be similar to the one already in place for music students who borrow school instruments, although the exact details have yet to be determined.

Echo Lake students have no doubts that the laptops are worthwhile.

“You’re learning, but you’re having fun,” Taylor Winsor, 11, said.

Winsor is a student in Paul Shanahan and Genevieve Wheaton’s sixth-grade class, where the students were using Microsoft Excel and the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives Web site to calculate the volume and surface area of rectangular prisms last Friday. Working in pairs, the students could complete their calculations and enter the figures into Excel before finishing the problems and double-checking their work on the Web.

What could be a complicated task using paper and pencil turns into more of a game for the students, with visuals and interaction that children enjoy.

“It’s a lot more fun,” Spencer Davis, 12, said.

“And easier,” added 11-year-old Dolores Scroggins.

Shanahan and Wheaton have seen changes since they began integrating technology into their lessons.

“The motivation for them to be working on this…it just skyrockets,” Wheaton said.

Shanahan said technology will not replace the foundations of teaching, but it will help them build upon the principles already being taught.

“Using technology, we’re able to supplement the texts,” he said.

Not only are they learning the material, but they are also gaining knowledge in programs, like Excel, that will be applicable in the long run, the teachers said.

“They’re learning skills that they’ll use,” said Shari Wennik, fifth-grade teacher at Echo Lake.

Next door to Shanahan and Wheaton’s classroom, Wennik is using the laptops for a math project that incorporates Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.

Students in Wennik’s class viewed a math movie that posed math-related problems. Using clues woven into the storyline, students were asked to solve the problems and present their solutions in their PowerPoint presentation, Wennik said.

Working in groups, the students completed their work and then viewed their classmates’ projects so they could learn from each other, she said.

“They all love using (the laptops),” Wennik said. “For them, it’s so natural.”

Although the tasks are not as intricate in Irish’s third-grade class as in the fifth- and sixth-grade classes, the assignments completed using laptops still incorporate a number of skills.

Students who are more visual learners will benefit from programs that incorporate graphs and pictures in math, Irish said.

“Technology is such a visual tool,” he said. “It really promotes teaching.”

Using a computer program called Kidspiration, students can listen to the pronunciation of new words, he said.

“For this grade, phonics is so important,” Irish said. “They can hear the sound and see the words at the same time.”

The laptops also come equipped with World Book Encyclopedia and other educational resources, Koontz said.

She sees the laptop pilot program as beneficial for both teachers and students. It’s an efficient use of time and resources, she said, and an important step for schools.

“I think kids live in a digital world,” Koontz said. “We have to be thinking ahead.”