Laptops open global doors for Piscataquis pupils

GUILFORD – They have virtually circled the globe several times, infiltrated the minds of inventors and followed mushers on the snowy trails of Alaska’s Iditarod sled dog race without ever leaving their classrooms in this Piscataquis County mill town.

With state-of-the art technology at their fingertips this year, Piscataquis Community Middle School pupils have become movie producers, world travelers, photographers and researchers, all because of a forward-thinking governor, a supportive local industry, a future-minded board of directors and a teaching staff that embraces change.

Eighth-graders at the school were the first in the state and possibly in the country to each be provided an iBook computer last year for use in the classrooms. Because of their quick mastery of the laptops, they have been called shining examples of what pupils can learn and accomplish, if equipped with the latest technological tools.

“It’s gone quite well,” Crystal Priest, a technology teacher at the school, said of the laptop program Friday. “It’s really cool to see what’s going on in the classrooms. There’s neat stuff going on all the time.”

The laptops were given to the school by Guilford of Maine, an innovative textile company, even before Gov. Angus King’s proposal to equip middle school pupils with laptops hit the desks of legislators. In 1999, three teachers at the school got a technology grant with which they purchased 17 iBooks that were shared all year by eighth-graders. Guilford of Maine then stepped up to the plate and offered the district $50,000 in 2000 to purchase about 100 iBooks, and another $50,000 in 2001 for laptops for other grades, provided the district matched the donation.

King’s proposal, a $50 million endowment fund with the interest gained on that fund to be used to purchase and provide laptops for every middle school pupil in public schools, since has been scaled back to just seventh- and eighth-graders. The governor said the laptops would close the “digital divide” between pupils who have computers at home and those who don’t, and would prepare them for the new economy that relies mostly on innovation and technology.

Although the House of Representatives ultimately adopted the endowment, the Senate approved a gutted version of the program. The Senate, however, did not return the document to the House of Representatives, so negotiations are now under way, according to Sen. Paul Davis, R-Sangerville. “I think the endowment will survive in some form,” the former SAD 4 board chairman said Saturday. “I think there’s going to be a compromise.”

But while state officials haggle over how best to use the endowment and how much money should be spent to give Maine pupils an advantage, Piscataquis pupils are orbiting the technology world.

“It’s allowed me to go places where I wouldn’t have gone,” said eighth-grader Shelly Griffin. She said she visited the Louvre museum in Paris on the Internet, mapped out a little travelogue and then actually visited the tourist attraction in February. “It’s made me a little smarter and a little more open to ideas,” she said of her laptop.

Jared Pingree, another eighth-grader, said his iBook has made him more creative. “You can only do so much with a computer and then you can take your imagination and do a whole lot more,” he said Friday during a break between classes.

For Priest, a technology teacher and computer teacher for fifth and sixth grades, the laptops have shown pupils and teachers alike that their uses are endless. For instance, one class conducted a weather project, tracking the local weather patterns via their iBooks. For a week, the pupils broadcast the forecast over the school’s in-house cable system.

The iBooks open up a whole range of resources that can be accessed in the classroom, Priest said. Instead of connecting wires from the laptops to the electrical outlets, the computers get their software and Internet connections through signals from “way stations.”

“It really breaks down the four walls of the classroom; they can go on a virtual field trip,” Priest explained. “It’s allowed us to improve the quality of the final product.”

To those people who predicted the pupils were not responsible enough to have their own computers, Priest said only one computer “crashed” this year. The pupils, who carry their individual iBooks from class to class and cannot take them home, have been very protective of them, she said.

But the pupils aren’t the only ones who totally embraced the new technology. Priest said it has been interesting to watch the Monday morning “almost cutthroat” competition among teachers vying for the limited number of iBooks that are available for use by fifth and sixth grades.

“Teachers would like more training – anything we’ve offered they’ve snapped up,” Priest said. But there is frustration among the staff that the district has yet to hire a technology coordinator even though the position was advertised and the funds budgeted.

That frustration and the reality that the eighth-grade pupils will not have individual laptops at their disposal next year have been duly noted by SAD 4 directors, who are trying to find funding for more computers.

“I’m sad, I’ve grown attached to it,” Griffin said.

Pingree, too, is despondent about leaving the iBook behind when he enters Piscataquis Community High School. “I’m kind of pretty dependent on it,” he said. “I think all the schools should get into this because it’s a learning experience they’ll never forget.”

Priest likens the iBook to a screwdriver. Using an analogy, she said you can use a screwdriver to stir paint and pry nails, and once in a while you actually use it for its intended use. The computer is like the screwdriver – it is used for research and data collection, and once in a while it is used for its intended purpose of number crunching, she said.

“This is one of those things that you’ve got to see it in action to believe what’s going on – it’s just phenomenal,” Priest said. “It’s definitely the future.”