High-Tech High

With its gleaming new classrooms and freshly painted halls, Empire High School in Vail, AZ, looks, at first glance, like any newly constructed school in the burgeoning Sun Belt. But come morning, as the school day begins, students are sprawled everywhere, on the hallway floors or outside on the grass, busily clicking away at their brand-new wireless laptops.

In a unique initiative launched this fall, Empire distributed Apple iBook laptops to its 340 students, becoming one of the first schools in the nation to do away with printed textbooks.

Students can access materials and assignments, communicate with their teachers, and upload homework, all via Empire’s wireless network. Internet content is subject to filtering, and the school also monitors student use of chat rooms and instant messaging.

“The real pioneers in this venture are the teachers,” says Vail School District Superintendent Calvin Baker. “They’re the ones making it happen.” Armed with their own laptops, teachers are using technology to produce dynamic new lessons, according to Sharon Gaddis, Empire’s librarian. English teacher Jori Flom, for example, has taught lessons on similes and metaphors through a video project she created on her iBook.

“I believe this is the way schools are going,” says Baker, who spearheaded the initiative. The laptops cost approximately $800 each, he says, and funds were drawn from the school’s textbook budget, which amounts to about $500 per student and the computer lab fund, at about $100 per student. The remaining funds came out of Empire’s capital budget. The program is a success because everyone was on board from the start, says Baker. Students who enrolled at Empire did so knowing they were committing to a high-tech learning environment.

Gaddis, however, would like to make one thing clear. “We’re not a bookless school, we’re a textbookless school,” meaning there will be plenty of traditional resources available, she says.

With an initial collection budget of $88,000, Gaddis is stocking the library, set to open this month, with standard print materials, as well as online databases, and streaming video. She is considering acquiring ebooks, but only in the category of reference. The fiction collection will remain in print format. Gaddis also coordinates with teachers on classroom projects, which she infuses with her own instruction in two specific areas: plagarism and critical evaluation of Web sites.

Although tech savvy, today’s teens still need guidance in basic research skills, says Gaddis. “Students are great at iTunes, iChat, and e-mail, but they don’t have the computer skills they need in the real world. We will be teaching that.” And plagiarism remains a major problem, she says. “It’s so easy to do these days. [Students] need to be shown the reasons why they shouldn’t be doing it, and how not to do it. It all goes back to basic skills in notetaking.”

Meanwhile, Vail, a district of 5,000 students southeast of Tucson, has received national attention for its laptop program. “We plan on continuing the use of the laptops in future years, expecting a lifetime of about four years for the computers,” says Baker. “We also expect to increase the use of technology in our other schools.” A rapidly growing district, Vail is planning a new elementary school, and, not surprisingly, says Baker, “the parents and teachers are asking what kind of technology is happening there.”