Laptop plan almost online Teachers prepare for 7th-grade use

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Using textbooks, Piscataquis Community Middle School pupils learned that the colonial settlement at Jamestown was almost wiped out.

Using computers they found out the rest of the story.

Last year, the class logged onto a Web site listing names and occupations of Virginia’s first settlers, teacher Thelma Regan recalled recently. Pupils were surprised to discover that most were privileged gentlemen, unaccustomed to hard labor.

“My kids were amazed – they said ‘Wow! No wonder Jamestown almost failed – no one wanted to work!'” Regan said.

With the state gearing up to give every seventh-grade pupil and teacher a laptop next September, educators like Regan, who already use technology in their classrooms, will be called on by other teachers to answer a burning question:

Now what do I do?

“Teachers always have been great at collaborating and learning from each other,” Kim Quinn, the Department of Education’s technology integration specialist, said this week. She predicts teachers will be looking over each other’s shoulders to figure out how to put the machines to the best use.

Quinn, who has been traveling the state getting word of the initiative out to educators, said they are excited about the new opportunity, and are wondering what the device will look like and how the program will work.

With all the debate that ensued last spring about Gov. Angus King’s controversial initiative, some didn’t realize that it actually had been given the green light, she said.

Last June the Legislature set aside $30 million from a budget surplus to provide portable wireless devices for all seventh-graders and their teachers next fall and for eighth-graders the year after.

The endowment will guarantee the program for four to six years while additional funds must be raised by January 2003 so the initiative can go forward indefinitely, according to Department of Education spokesman Yellow Light Breen.

Vendors have been asked to offer bids on supplying the machines and software, installing the internal networking and providing technical training.

With responses due next week, the department should have the computers and a signed contract by early 2002, Breen said.

Teacher training then will take center stage.

“We know we need to do a huge amount of work to create a comfort level in terms of how they use the equipment,” Breen said.

The state plans to identify teachers in every school and in eight regions across the state to act as liaisons with the department, to determine what types of training and development are needed, and to provide technical support to their colleagues.

For some teachers the laptop program is a step into a brave new world. For others it’s simply a continuation of what they’ve been doing with just a few computers.

Regan, whose school pioneered the use of laptops by eighth-grade pupils last year, considers computers a perfect foil for more traditional learning methods.

“They augment the textbooks,” she said. “Our textbook did a great job, but it didn’t tell us everything.” The source was a Web site sponsored by Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia.

Skowhegan Middle School teacher Laura Richter is unequivocal about computers in the curriculum.

“I couldn’t adequately prepare students for the world around them without technology. It’s like having 10 libraries at their fingertips,” said Richter, who began using computers with her pupils in 1990.

Her classes have made Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, or computerized slide shows, about their favorite poets, and have created a Web page with videotaped oral histories about people in town.

At Penquis Valley High School in Milo, Kerrie Alley-Violette’s students created their own publishing business, producing almost all of the district’s stationery and envelopes, programs and tickets for the school’s basketball games and graduation leaflets.

Students even produced materials for the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad, and were commissioned to publish the Brownville annual report.

Alley-Violette, who soon begins teaching seventh grade at Fort Fairfield Middle High School, said she’ll have no problem adapting her program to the younger set.

She expects the same positive results.

“This makes a big difference in a lot of kids’ lives,” she said. “You hear a lot about kids getting bored in school. But this is a hands-on, technology-is-your-best-friend [project]. It lets kids take ownership – they take a lot of pride in their work, they see it out in the community and it makes them feel better about themselves.”

The program isn’t about computers, but about creating better learning experiences and enabling teachers to do things they couldn’t do before, said Mike Muir, a University of Maine at Farmington education professor.

Students don’t need sophisticated software to benefit from technology, he said. Even a word processing program that allows a student to easily rearrange paragraphs and add and delete words can prove a boon to a reluctant writer.

Using middle school to launch the laptop program makes sense, said UM professor Ed Brazee.

“High school curriculum is much more set because of graduation and college requirements,” he said. Also, middle schools traditionally have been more willing to be flexible and to try things out.

“A lot of young adolescents in middle schools are very savvy in terms of technology and they’re going to be key players in helping teachers understand how to use [computers],” Brazee said.

Don’t be afraid to learn from students – they know a lot, said Tammy Ranger, a teacher at the Margaret Chase Middle School in Skowhegan.

“Let the kids teach each other and let them show you some things. It makes them feel important,” said Ranger, whose pupils have used sophisticated computer programs to create brochures about ancient Greece and Web pages about the Holocaust.

The Learning Results say we should all be lifelong learners, Ranger pointed out. “So if you show the kids you’re still learning, you’ll be modeling for them.”

Maine is on the cusp of a huge revolution but it will happen gradually, according to computer guru Seymour Papert, who was on the task force that advised legislators about the laptop proposal.

“Within five years, the curriculum will be unrecognizable, everything will change,” said the former MIT professor. “Most of what’s in the curriculum now is there because it’s suitable for pencil and paper. We teach kids very boring pieces of mathematics just because it happens to be teachable in a pencil-and-paper environment.

“But there’s no reason why kids should multiply fractions or do long division in math – there’s much more interesting things to do like using probability and statistics and making models.”

Teachers won’t feel comfortable with computers overnight, according to Cyndy Fish and Penny Rice of SEED, a professional development group for teachers.

They shouldn’t feel as though they need to know everything all at once or that they should immediately incorporate technology into every subject each day, they said.

“Teachers need to be as patient with themselves as they are with their students,” Fish said.

Also as part of the laptop program, the state has created committees to oversee teacher training and to advise the commissioner of education; and has applied for $1 million from the Gates Foundation to be used for gathering data and evaluation.