Schools Give Teachers a New Kind of Apple

By Erin Richards, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Jun. 10–It was after lunch in a social studies classroom at North Shore Middle School in Hartland when seventh-graders began tapping out messages to students in Germany, France, Kosovo and Bosnia on a fleet of shiny Apple laptops.

The modernized electronic version of paper-and-stamp correspondence the children were using, called ePals, is one of several programs being piloted in suburban districts this year as teachers and curriculum coordinators seek ways to extend learning beyond the physical limitations of the classroom.

The next big step, say officials in suburban districts, as well as in Milwaukee Public Schools, is exploring a 1-to-1 student laptop initiative or the possibility of issuing every student a hand-held computer, such as an iPod touch.

"There’s a far greater use of technology (in schools) when you make it mobile," MPS Director of Technology Jim Davis said.

Fueling technological learning in Hartland are $25,000-apiece computers on wheels — roller cart units affectionately known as "cows" — that hold 20 Apple Macintosh laptops, a projector, a printer and a wireless router for Internet access. With the units, teachers have increasingly steered lessons in new directions through the use of open-source software and video chatting between different classes in different buildings, said the district’s technology coordinator, Therese Jilek.

"It’s about deepening and strengthening communication," said Jilek, who added that the district will purchase or lease more cow units next year.

"The focus is not on the technology," she added. "The focus is on student learning and content."

For a project between different age levels, teacher Maria Fricker’s seventh-grade literature class recently took turns being interviewed by students at a nearby elementary school through iChat, a Webcam communication program produced by Apple.

A few weeks ago, the middle schoolers interviewed their third-grade partners through iChat in order to glean enough information for a children’s story, which they are writing and illustrating and then will present to their elementary school partner today.

This past week, the third-graders asked questions of the older students in order to write poems about them, though the inquiries were basic.

"What’s your favorite food?" asked Jacob Komp, a third-grader who frequently bounced out of view of the computer camera.

"Pizza," responded seventh-grader Sam Reynolds, as he tried to keep track of Komp in the frame of the computer screen.

Jilek said it takes awhile for students to become comfortable with Webcam technology, and that is why they’ll practice on each other before teachers start using iChat to set up talks with museum curators, experts in other fields or classrooms of kids they don’t know from locations outside the city, state or country.

The goal of all this, she continued, is to change the way teachers share information with children who have grown up watching videos on YouTube.com while simultaneously talking to their parents and instant-messaging their friends.

Fricker said her social studies students got an unexpected lesson about the conflict between ethnic Albanians and Serbians in Kosovo when the country declared its independence in February. Many of the children didn’t understand why their ePals quit writing until they got an e-mail from the teacher in Kosovo explaining that many of her Serbian students had simply left school after the Albanian-led government of Kosovo asserted independence.

Districts look ahead

In New Berlin, District Superintendent Paul Kreutzer will soon pitch spending at least $250,000 to update the Internet networking in the more outdated of the district’s two high schools, and he plans to make every building wireless within the next few years.

Then, Kreutzer said, he wants to pilot a program in which students will get a hand-held computer, such as an iPod touch, much in the same way children get textbooks.

"There are ways to make the iTouch a graphic calculator, and it also has Word and Excel on it," he said. "We want them to be able to draw files from our school Internet and intranet. They could do data entry along with note-taking, and even take pictures if they needed to."

In MPS, Davis said the district just finished the first year of a pilot program in which 600 Dell laptops were issued to sixth-grade students. Hand-held computers would be out of the district’s budget and a risky choice for the student population, but Davis said he’s heard nothing but positive feedback from those in the laptop program so far, even though several of the units were stolen. The district got them back, Davis said, because the computers were outfitted with tracer technology that led police right to the thieves.

Over the summer, Davis said, the district will spend about $10 million to replace outdated computers, printers and software. Much of that money is coming from credits the school district has received from Microsoft as a result of the state’s antitrust lawsuit settlement with the company.

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