Enthusiastic eighth graders use their new laptop computers.
GREG TARCZYNSKI PHOTO |
By Carrie McClish
Staff writer
With the deadline of a class project looming, Dana Bayer,
the 8th grade teacher at St. Joachim School in Hayward, gave her students
a new option — contacting her between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. for online
homework help.
Several students took her up on the offer. “Kids were e-mailing
with little questions like ‘Do we do this?’ or ‘How
do I get this on my computer program?’” she said. “And
I was able to answer them really quickly. That was cool.”
Online office hours is one of several new ways her students are enhancing
their learning, thanks to the school’s participation in the One-to-One
laptop program, a project with Apple Computers that has been adopted by
public and private schools across the country.
St. Joachim’s is believed to be the first elementary school in the
Oakland Diocese to take part in the program, joining nearby Moreau Catholic
High School, which also unveiled the One-to-One laptop program at its
campus this semester.
Bayer used the word “amazing” to describe the laptop program’s
impact on her classroom. “It totally transforms the way the classroom
runs,” she said. Instead of “old school” writing assignments
that involved questions and answers, students are making iMovies and podcasts.
Among other things, the laptop program accommodates to various learning
styles, allowing students to “grasp the information in different
formats,” said Bayer, a teacher at St. Joachim for the past 15 years.
Unlike many computer-based programs, this one allows students to take
the computers home each afternoon. Those who did not have home computers
and those whose computers had limited upgrades are not left behind, she
said. This is a way “to level the playing field because everyone
now has access to the same type of technology,” she said.
The new laptops have built-in video cameras, regular cameras, microphones
and the ability to do video conferencing with each other.
The program at St. Joachim’s will be implemented over a three-year
period. The eighth grade received computers this year. Next year the program
will be extended to the seventh grade and the following year to the sixth
grader.
Principal Armond Seishas began planning with his school board for the
laptops about a year and a half ago. “I felt that 21st-century learning
is really important,” he said. He also brought Bayer, who has a
master’s degree in learning technology, into the discussion.
Before the students were given computers, all the teachers received laptops
and the services of an Apple professional development trainer who came
to the campus to help them learn the new technology.
There was also a meeting for parents. “We had a whole presentation
for them and we got a tremendous amount of support,” Seishas said.
He proposed that tuition be increased by $6 per month per student over
the next three to four years. “After that we would have a baseline
in our budget for the one-to-one laptop program and no additional increases
will be necessary,” he said. “I think people really bought
into that, that basically the cost of less than one movie ticket per month
could provide this for the school.”
Although only sixth, seventh and eighth graders will have access to the
laptops, all students will benefit, Seishas said, because all the other
computers in the school will be available for students in the lower graders.
Seishas won’t soon forget the excitement generated on Sept. 11 when
the eighth graders received the new computers. But instead of their exhuberance
turning into classroom problems, they paid close attention to instruction
and immediately started collaborating with one another. “That first
day was probably the single, most exciting day that I’ve spent in
the classroom,” he said.
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