Laptop program emphasizes research

Fort Smith schools' pilot program allows students to learn in different ways

Computers sit on shelves next to the books in the Ramsey Junior High School library in Fort Smith. Ramsey is one of three schools in Fort Smith that provides students with laptops to use at school and home to help with their studies.
Computers sit on shelves next to the books in the Ramsey Junior High School library in Fort Smith. Ramsey is one of three schools in Fort Smith that provides students with laptops to use at school and home to help with their studies.

With access to a laptop computer at school and home, students in Rachel Foster's sixth-grade English class at Sunnymede Elementary in Fort Smith were able to do more than just write essays during a recent unit on the civil-rights movement.

They searched online for photographs, chronicled events that happened decades before they were born and put them into a movie on their computers.

"They would see these pictures that are depicting racism and tension that they didn't know existed," Foster said.

Sunnymede is one of three campuses in the Fort Smith School District that just finished the first semester of a "digital conversion" pilot program. While students throughout the district have access to computers, the digital conversion involves issuing laptops to students to use at school and take home.

Pupils in grades three through six carried the laptops home from school during the first semester of the program. Younger children's devices stayed at school.

More than 90 percent of children attending the two participating elementary schools, Morrison and Sunnymede, are from low-income families, as are about half of the children enrolled at the participating junior high, Ramsey, said Barry Owen, assistant superintendent of instructional services for Fort Smith. Districtwide, about 71 percent of the 14,317 students in Fort Smith are from poor families, using those who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches as the gauge.

"We wanted to show students that there are new ways to learn," Owen said. "We wanted to provide students resources that weren't finite in that they ended at 3:10 p.m. and didn't start up again until 8:10 [a.m.] the next day."

The computers give students instantaneous access to information and Internet programs instead of outdated information in textbooks, Owen said. Students have the ability to work together to solve real problems and gain skills that will be necessary for taking new computerized standardized tests this spring.

"More than anything, it's a direction we're all heading," Owen said.

The district has spent $1.7 million on the laptops and related technology for the nearly 1,850 students enrolled at the three schools, said Charles Warren, the district's director of financial services. The district also has spent $200,000 on additional personnel and training.

Making the change

Owen often visits the campuses and asks students how school has changed with the laptops, he said.

During a visit to Ramsey Junior High School several weeks after the laptops were issued to students, an eighth-grader told him she was sick one Friday. In the past, she would return to school after an illness and have a pile of assignments to complete and return the next day, he said.

This time, when she started to feel better that Friday, she logged onto her class's Web pages and found assignments and documents teachers had posted, he said. She completed her makeup work before returning to school Monday, Owen said. She told him it was as if she never missed school.

"As with everyone who has had any experience with technology knows, it's not perfect all the time," Owen said. "Sometimes, if sites will go down, you can't get to where you need to go."

Some computer screens have been cracked, and carrying cases have needed repair, Owen said. Students were instructed to wear their laptop bags slung across their bodies to avoid accidentally dropping them. The district has an employee to make repairs.

The district also created two new positions to help teachers create lessons that incorporate technology, Owen said. One technology integration specialist works at the junior high school, and the other specialist works with both elementary schools.

District officials are interested to see what effects the pilot program has on student achievement, Owen said. District officials will look at student performances on tests that students take throughout the school year and at results from the state's standardized tests given this spring.

District officials also will evaluate whether the program leads to increased attendance or a reduction in discipline referrals, Owen said.

Owen plans to recommend an expansion of the program to the Fort Smith School Board but has not decided how many campuses to add, or what grade levels or types of devices will be involved.

Before the change, Foster had 28 mini-laptops in her classroom, but they were limited to classroom use, she said. Sometimes the laptops required repair, and one time half of the computers were out of service.

"Now I don't have that lag time," Foster said. "I have more time to teach. They have more time to learn and apply their skills."

More motivated

Foster was interested in using technology for more than for word processing and slide shows. In the past semester, she experimented with having students make movies and develop animations. She also is interested in establishing lessons for her students to create podcasts about grammar, she said.

The movies have provided Foster an opportunity to know her students better because the kids sometimes involve family members in the productions, she said. Students are able to more easily show their parents what they are doing in class.

This semester, she estimated that three-quarters of her students turned in homework, compared with about half last school year. She's seen growth in her students' learning, with 107 of her 111 sixth-graders showing a grade-level's worth of growth in one semester.

"They're more motivated to learn," Foster said. "Because they're more motivated to learn, I'm more motivated."

At Ramsey, students are adapting to using their laptops as a primary mode of receiving and returning assignments, said Julie Cobb, technology integration specialist. They no longer have the excuse of losing homework or not remembering a due date, because that information is available on their devices.

For some students, the laptops give them ready access to social media, she said. Cobb gives students weekly lessons on using the technology and includes discussions about appropriate times to use social media, managing their time and being aware that their private posts online may not stay private.

"In junior high, they're still learning all the social rules," Cobb said. "We're just now learning them online."

Teachers are developing activities that challenge students to do more than find answers to questions with a simple Internet search, Cobb said.

"The level of thinking that is required has gone up considerably," she said.

More involvement

One teacher told Cobb about wanting her students to build slide shows to share with the rest of the class, Cobb said. The teacher worried about keeping the rest of the class on task during each student's presentation. Cobb worked with the teacher to create an online form that the rest of the class could use to grade the student giving the presentation.

"The level of engagement went up considerably," Cobb said. "They had some great suggestions for their peers on how to improve their presentations."

Cobb worked with another teacher on a lesson on the constitutional amendments. Rather than having students memorize a list of amendments, Cobb required them to research court cases online that challenged specific amendments. They found documents online with different points of view on the amendments from judges, lawyers and those whose rights were in question.

Students are used to being told what they need to know and then answering multiple-choice quizzes, so the teacher struggled at first with how to explain the assignments, Cobb said.

The teacher adjusted her explanation of what she wanted from her students, and students learned to do research from their laptops, Cobb said. The lesson took several days to finish.

With everyone having a laptop, teachers have an easier time making connections to the world outside of school and are able to do it faster and easier, Cobb said.

"We've had access before," Cobb said. "You had to schedule it out. This was happening in real time and for a real purpose. What I see happening, the learning that's going on, it's very relevant. It's very timely."

Metro on 01/04/2015

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