A
laptop for every student
 Aaron Clark student
the screen of his brand new Dell laptop computer Tuesday while his
mother Birdy Clark, point at the screen at Tohatchi Middle School.
Clark was the first student to receive a new laptop computer as part
of the New Mexcio Laptop Learning Initiative, a program that will provide
a laptop fo each seveth grade student at the school. (Photo by Jeff
Jones/Independent)
By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer
TOHATCHI — Amiel Belonie, a small gang of younger brothers
and sisters crowded around him, starts up his new laptop for the first
time,
his eyes
glued to the screen.
At the next table, inside Tohatchi Middle School's media room, a classmate
does
the same. "You broke it," her sister teases as the computer rattles
and hums through its start-up motions.
It's Thursday afternoon, and one at a time, some version of the same is going
on at each of the tables around the room: a Tohatchi Mid seventh-grader, beside
them a mother, a father, maybe a few brothers or sisters, is starting up his
or her brand new laptop.
Bouncing from one table to the next, Principal Bart Stanley talks them through
the steps, reading out an ID number here, pointing out a tool bar there. And
although a few students have trouble logging on, things are going much smoother
than a few days ago, when the school handed out its first batch of computers.
"This is going really well compared to Tuesday," he says between tables.
This organized confusion is all part of Gov. Bill Richardson's Laptop Learning
Initiative, a plan the governor has to place a laptop in the hands of every
seventh-grade student in New Mexico. It's the part where months of preparation
of soliciting
companies, buying computers, writing up legal contracts, planning curricula
finally take off and the students get to take their laptops home.
But not all students.
Although Richardson's goal is to give a laptop to every seventh-grader in the
state to keep through high school, Belonie, along with the 102 seventh-graders
at Tohatchi Mid and their teachers, are among just 800 staff and students in
six schools across the state who will be testing the waters, the first wave
of participants in the governor's grand plan.
"I think it's exciting," said Valencia Tsosie, Belonie's mother. "They'll
be able to accomplish a lot more education-wise ... especially for some parents
who can't afford computers."
Modeled after a similar program in Maine, Richardson has high expectations
for his initiative, hoping the laptops will help get students excited about
school,
better prepare them for an increasingly technology-driven work force, and,
or course, raise their test scores.
Students will get to take their laptops home like they do their books and pens
and bring them back to class every day.
He's targeting the middle schools, where student achievement tends to drop
off.
In Stanley's opinion, that's because students are asked to achieve that much
more once out of elementary school. "I think the level of work becomes more
difficult and we expect more from them," he said.
That, he added, and the usual strains of adolescence. "It's a difficult
age to be."
And if the governor is right, the answer to solving the state's middle school
slump, or at least part of it, is more technology.
Like the rest of the McKinley County's struggling public schools, the predominantly
Navajo Tohatchi Mid is having a hard time bringing many of its students to
English proficiency. So that, said Stanley, is where teachers will focus their
students'
use of the laptops. "Our main focus area here is to improve our language
acquisition ... so we're going to focus on writing and oral skills."
"Technology is a proven benefit to students in the writing process," said
David Oakes, a former principal and now the school district's technology director,
who has watched the progress of other schools that have gone before where Tohatchi
Mid is now going.
Most students, he said, find it easier and faster to compose and edit their
writing when typed out on a computer. So the more writing they do on a computer
the better.
Besides straight-forward writing, said Stanley, students will be using their
laptops to access on-line resources, such as Campus Learning.
"It's a web-based supplemental program," he explained, for students
who are behind needing extra help or those who are ahead seeking new challenges. "The
kids take a test and they know what areas they need to work on."
Depending on how students perform on the tests, Campus Learning gives them
assignment to stimulate their weak spots.
But is there a point where the drive to incorporate technology into the classroom
turns that technology into a distraction, shifting focus away from what is
being taught to how it is being taught?
"It can be," Stanley said, which is why he believes it's imperative
to not just give the students the technology, but also have teachers who know
how to make the most of it.
"The better question to ask is how to make our teachers more comfortable
with technology," said Oakes. "Our kids aren't afraid of technology;
it's our teachers that sometimes hold us back."
He said the goal should be to achieve a comfort level with technology "where
it becomes not what you learn about, it becomes what you learn with."
Schools he's seen struggle with similar initiatives, he said, "have been
schools that haven't given the staff the training they need to incorporate
that technology."
To see that that doesn't happen in Tohatchi, teachers there will be receiving
28 hours of training from New Mexico State University and additional training
from the school district itself.
Betty Manchester is director of special projects for the Maine Department of
Education, now in the third year of its Learning Technology Initiative. The
inspiration for New Mexico's own initiative, it has provided a laptop to every
seventh- and
eight- grader in the state.
"The most important thing states need to do," she said, "is have
a good implementation plan; that is one thing we really did that helped our
project."
Comprehensive and ongoing staff training, said Manchester, is one vital component
of that.
And based on preliminary results published in a February report, Maine's gamble
seems to be paying off.
According to the report, 70 percent of the students surveyed believe the laptops
help them organize, improve the quality of their work, and make them more efficient.
Most teachers surveyed, meanwhile, believe the laptops help motivate their
students and make it easier for them to meet state standards, teach the curricula,
and
mold their instruction to individual students' needs.
Teachers have also reported a lack of technical support and professional development,
and superintendents the additional costs their districts have incurred since
the laptops were introduced.
But the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. And whatever some educators
might say about striving to educate the whole child, it's test scores that
matter most
when federal funding is on the line.
"But we haven't been in the project long enough to see hard evidence on
scores," Manchester said.
As in Maine, New Mexico will gauge the success of their laptops by their impact
on teachers, students, and school and community perceptions.
So far as Tohatchi Mid is concerned, Stanley said the school staff will focus
the rest of the semester on learning to incorporate the laptops into their
classes. Next year they'll begin studying in earnest the laptops' affects on
student achievement
and start comparing those test and assessment scores to this year's.
So far, the laptops appear at least to have gotten the students' attention,
said Stanley, a valuable first step to be sure.
"It really has created a much more excited atmosphere in our school," he
said. "Hopefully that's excitement we can foster."
|
Weekend
March 6 , 2004
Selected Stories:
Suit
alleges school official is a racist
HRI
president defends uranium mining process
Chinle
students ROC steady!
A
chicken in every pot?
Psst...Need a ride?
Richardson
signs several education bills
Cattlemen want to beef up sales
Deaths |
