The days of heading to the chalkboard may soon be a thing of the past.
At St. Thomas the Apostle School in Delmar, sixth-graders are getting a chance to learn using Google Chromebooks. The laptops, which are built to pick up a WiFi signal, give students the opportunity to share projects and assignments with classmates and teachers.
“The idea of it is we are out in a cloud,” said Julie Sica, Technology Coordinator at the school. “We’re not storing documents, we’re not taking pictures and downloading them to our own computers and then going home, to the library, or to grandmother’s house and saying, ‘Oh, I forgot my homework.’ It’s all saved in the cloud, in the web.”
St. Thomas is one of the first schools in the country to use the technology. All students need is a Google email account, which gives them access to elements such as documents, spreadsheets and other projects posted by classmates and teachers.
Sica said the 22 students in sixth grade have not taken the computers home, and added that because most have a personal computer at home, they can access the information there.
“It’s a learning curve for us, because we haven’t done this before, so the students are learning really slowly,” said Sica.
Principal Tom Kane said the technology has changed drastically since those who are now parents were in school.
“When I speak to people of my generation who have school-aged children, we are constantly reminded that we grew up in an era where the future was talked about quite a bit,” said Kane. “It was long spoken of that a time would come when textbooks or notebooks would be gone, or you would be learning on electronic blackboards.”
An equally important part of the program for Kane is the ability for staff to protect the privacy of students while they work on the lightweight personal laptops.
“Most importantly, we administer it carefully, so we are able to see and be assured that they are staying on task and are engaged in their work,” said Kane.
If the computers have problems, Sica said Google will maintain them, and as part of the agreement with the school the online giant has promised to update the technology if a new operating system is made available.
The goal is to get students, by the spring, to take all of their notes on the personal computers.
“Our expectation is that it will translate into heightened achievement,” said Kane. “It’s not the technology itself that’s going to lead to higher achievement. It’s that the technology brings in a deeper engagement.”
School officials are convinced that this is the next wave of learning.
“This will be their world,” said Sica. “We have to prepare them for that. By the time our sixth graders are in high school, they are all going to be using one-to-one devices.”
“By the time they graduate from high school, it is very likely most of them will take a course, and the teacher won’t even be in the room,” said Kane. “It will be distance learning and it will be through video conferencing, and certainly by the time they are in the workforce, it will be such a different world for them.”
The school was able to pay for the laptops with money raised from its capital campaign in 2010. Kane said each of the computers costs $20 per month, and the school can keep them after three years of payments.
