Laptops change learning

While waiting for class to start at Superior High School this year, the upperclassmen no longer open their notebooks. Instead, juniors and seniors open their new laptops.

As of this school year, Superior High School has added Apple laptops for each upper classman.

Superior Principal Allan Labbe said the laptops were paid for by technology funds available from the technology committee that helps run a school improvement process.

“We use our technology funds to fund the laptop program,” Labbe said. “Some schools will buy a lab and spend their money that way. Instead of buying new lab computers, we opted to buy laptops.”

With brand new laptops in the hands of each upper classman, Superior High School had embarked on a new generation of learning.

Rather than jot down notes with a pen and paper, these 2011 high school students open a Word document and type down writing assignments.

Superintendent Wayne Stanley said the biggest learning curve for teachers is turning the learning over to the students.

Stanley said the laptops let students activate their learning by creating presentations on the laptop, which is different for teachers used to dictating class.

“It gives kids the best opportunity to succeed,” Stanley said.

The students with laptops are not allowed to bring them home.

Although, Stanley said the school is working towards letting students in good academic standing bring home their laptops.

In future years, Stanley said he hopes to also supply freshmen and sophomores with laptops.

“Our goal is we’ll get laptops to the freshmen after next year and it will be their machine for four years,” Stanley said. “After they graduate, those machines will still be handy and useful for our classrooms.”

“Realistically, in eight years we will have computers in every kid’s hands,” Stanley added.

For now, the students arrive at school and grab their laptops from a storage unit. All the laptops are stored together and each student is responsible for plugging in and charging their laptops every day.

“It teaches kids responsibility,” Labbe said.

Before students could use the laptops, they had to sign an agreement with the school. The agreement assures the students care for the laptop like any textbook and avoid using it for anything other than school assignments.

“It’s like a textbook, if you wreck it you are going to buy it,” Stanley said. “The kids are very aware of that and those are the concerns people have.”

“If you think they are going to wreck it, then they are going to wreck it,” Stanley said. “If you think they will take care of it, they will live up to those expectation.”

So far the students have lived up to expectations. Between classes, students carefully carry their laptops to the next class.

Stanley said when students first got the laptops and realized they are nicer than what the administration uses, they all started grinning.

Some students even expressed using the laptops at the local coffee shop on their lunch breaks.

“It’s pretty much what college will be like,” senior Connor Norris said. “It’s just different.”

Superior High School is one of the first schools in the state to get portable laptops for students.

Stanley said Browning tried it and Philipsburg is working on it, but Superior is leading the way right now.

The new laptops are the first step in the changes facing public schools.

Labbe said soon printers will be out and students will email all of their assignments from their laptops.

Also in the future, textbooks are on their way out as students could just download a digital copy of the textbook to their laptops.

In each class, the new laptops make a noticeable difference.

Students have access to the Internet and other computer programs at the tip of their fingers.

In yearbook class, the students meet in the computer lab, with desktop computers, and bring their laptops.

Surrounded by computer screens, the students replay “no” in unison when asked if they still use paper notebooks.

“These things are awesome,” senior Melinda Steinebach said while uploading pictures on her laptop for the yearbook.

Stanley said the new laptops are a positive for the students. He said they take pride in their laptops and patrol each other to return them on time.

“They are responsible enough to take care of it,” Stanley said of the students. “You just have to believe in them.”