KS High School Launches Laptop Initiative

Dodie Ownes -- School Library Journal, 9/8/2004

More than 1,000 students at Hays (KS) High School received Apple iBooks when they enrolled in August, thanks to the Hays Public School Board, which approved a $1 million initiative to provide each student with a laptop computer. The board entered a three-year lease agreement with Apple Computer in May to provide laptops for the students and 95 teachers. Principal Michael Hester reported that on the third day of school he visited 20 classrooms and all of them were using the laptops to accomplish the learning objectives for the day.

Will Roth, Hays's deputy superintendent for curriculum and instruction, says the laptops will replace aging PCs in classrooms. The district offered day and evening classes on laptop use to students and parents prior to the start of school in early August, adds Roth. By midyear, the laptops will enable students to access their classroom assignments online, along with their test results, in real time.

Elizabeth Harris, a library media specialist at Hays, began this year's freshman orientation with one-to-one tours of the library's Web site, which was never possible before. "Information skills have always been part of our curriculum," she says. "And we're enthusiastic about all the possibilities ahead with the laptops." Harris expects to address questions on appropriate online content and plagiarism as the school year gets further underway. She says that online note taking has already decreased the amount of paper being consumed--one change in the way students are doing research with their laptops.

Hester says, "The students and teachers are having a blast and there is a partnership toward learning that I have never experienced in my 20-plus years of education. It's tough but you smile at the end of the day because you're seeing and touching the future and empowering all students for tomorrow's challenges."