By Nelson Davis, SLHS Newspaper Writer
Imagine starting your fifth grade year with a brand new Apple laptop to take home and do school work! As one walks through the halls and visits with students of all ages everyone seems to be excited about the new change coming to the Spirit Lake School District.
For the last month students in Grade 8 have had laptops in their classrooms. Through a loan from the Apple company, a classroom set of laptops was used in various classrooms throughout the month of January. This allowed teachers and students to get used to how it would be if students each had a laptop all of the time.
The 1 to 1 program under the recent, successful levy vote will provide a new Apple laptop for every student from grades five through 12, and it will provide carts of laptops for grades K through four to move around and share. These laptops will be added to other technology that the school district provides for the students. The laptops come fully loaded with the hardware and software, 24-hour service and support for the staff as well as the students, a security and virus network, a monitoring system, and the entire school will be going to a wireless network.
On the learning side of things the school is trying to level the playing field for all students to be able to have the same technology. This means that over time the district would probably cut back on printing costs. For example, a teacher could tell the students that a worksheet is due and simply e-mail it to his/her students saving roughly 20 pieces of paper per class period. Another way costs could be lowered is through textbooks; some text-books are now online. All the students would have to do is get out their laptops and go to the website, and it would be a student‟s classic textbook only online.
Other questions can be answered by going to the Spirit Lake School District webpage
