Reprinted with permission from the Piscataquis Observer - June 19, 2002
By Ben Bragdon
Staff
Writer -- The Piscataquis Observer
The desks at Piscataquis Community Middle School in Guilford are still stuffed with paper, pens and pencils.
It's been six months since PCMS was chosen as a demonstration site for the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI) laptop program, and the shelves are still stocked with books. Grammar posters celebrating the uses of hyperbole, alliteration and metaphor still line the walls. Down the hall, black laboratory tables fill a science room. The steps of the scientific method grace the wall near a blackboard covered with numbers and symbols.
The seventh-grade students and teachers here have had one-on-one access to Macintosh iBooks for half a school year now, and the classrooms do not look so different from many others across the state, even though it is one of only nine schools in Maine acting as a pilot site for the MLTI. In fact, the only immediate difference between a classroom here and one in any of the thousands of middle schools across the country may be the identical black bookbags that sit on each child's desk here in Guilford.
But wait a few moments, until after the teacher has finished the day's lesson and released the class to work on their assignments, and you will see what truly sets PCMS apart from most other schools. Instead of starting work with blue pens on white notebook paper, or merely staring blankly at the desktop, the students unzip their bags and turn on their iBooks, gaining access to a whole new world of colors, images and information without leaving their chairs.
As the kids rush to work on their various projects, it is easy to see why students, teachers, staff and administrators in SAD 4, of which PCMS is a part, are calling the laptop initiative here an unequivocal success. Students and teachers alike are proud of their work over the past six months, and are equally excited about the program's potential.
PCMS has been publicly praised for its implementation by Gov. Angus King, and students recently showed off their various projects to Apple CEO Steve Jobs during a publicity event in Portland.
While they are quick to say that the computers are merely another educational tool--albeit a high-tech, expensive one--students and faculty alike praise the way the laptops have injected new life into the learning environment. While middle schools across the state prepare for the arrival of laptops in their seventh grades this fall, it may be helpful to see how the MLTI program has changed life at PCMS, motivating students and multiplying the school's resources along the way.
The students, who navigate through the computer's operating system with the quick, steady hand of an old pro, clearly appreciate the opportunities offered by the laptop program. The computer's presence has given all their work a certain cachet, providing the students with a higher sense of ownership toward the projects they complete.
The kids, with little prompting, race to be the first to show a recent visitor all the work they have accumulated over the past half-year, a scene that is hard to picture if you replaced the laptops with notebooks or paper folders. While showing off a slide show done on the iBook for social studies class, Jeromy Pratt, a PCMS seventh-grader, says the laptop has changed his reports from bland, black-and-white stacks of paper to colorful, informative multi-media presentations featuring charts, pictures and even movie clips. With a simple click of the mouse, Pratt says he can take images from the Internet and incorporate them into his project, giving his paper a polished, professional look while at the same time pushing its point across more effectively. "You can just go to the Internet and pull over pictures to use," says Pratt, as he grabs an image from a Web site and positions it on his "virtual" desktop.
Briana Shufelt, also a seventh-grader, agrees that the clip art and other images available through the computer make for "more interesting presentations", but she also targets a simpler benefit of having a laptop on hand at all times--never having to write and re-write lengthy papers longhand. "It's much quicker typing," says Shufelt. Teachers throughout the school say even a small change such as the ability to type and store everything electronically creates a ripple that makes all parts of the curriculum more effective.
Trisha Moulton, a science and math teacher, says the computers have taken away some of the restraints previously present in the classroom and improved the quality of work coming from the students. The speed with which they can write and edit their work frees up valuable class time that can be used for extra instruction or additional work. And by cutting out the kind of repetitive busy-work that tends to bore a teen-ager, Moulton says the computers inspire the students to work longer on their projects and dig deeper into their subjects. "They would much rather be on a computer. It makes it much less of a chore," says Moulton.
Another benefit of every child having a personal computer is the improved organization many of the students have exhibited, says Moulton. By placing their work in labeled electronic folders on the computer's desktop, a student can keep all their work intact and available. There are no papers or folders to mangle or misplace, an important point, teachers say, when dealing with 12- and 13-year-olds.
The results of the laptop test program in Guilford bodes well for the future of the program statewide. As middle schools across the state prepare to for the fall arrival of laptops for every seventh-grade student, SAD 4 has set an example for how the computers should be integrated into the curriculum. The administration and faculty at PCMS made a conscious decision to align the computers and curriculum in a slow manner with reasonable expectations, keeping in mind that the laptops are not a cure-all, but a component of education.
Ann Dall, a PCMS teacher who has been intimately involved with the laptop project, says that the school's faculty was given ample training so as to be adequately prepared to use the computers from day one. Prior to the start of the MLTI program, teachers at PCMS had been using Macintosh computers for eight years, and eigth-grade students had had one-to-one access to iBooks since August 2000, so a culture of technology had already embedded itself in the SAD 4 community, putting PCMS a step or two in front of other Maine middle schools.
Still, the faculty was given three days of intensive training before the arrival of the devices. The teachers were then given their expectations for the remainder of the year, says Dall. Complete one project on the laptop with each of your classes, they were told, and the implementation will be a success. The idea was to slowly introduce the computers into the classrooms, keeping the focus on education while finding the right spots in the curriculum for the technology.
Now that the teachers and students are comfortable using the computers in their everyday work, the school continues to educate the staff on new ways to enhance their classwork using the new technology. Robyn Rich, the lead teacher for the laptop project at PCMS, and Crystal Priest, technology coordinator for SAD 4, are in charge of funneling continuing education information to the faculty as well as setting up classes and refresher courses for the staff.
As schools in Dover, Dexter, Greenville and Milo, as well as others across the region and state, prepare to follow in the footsteps of pilot sites like PCMS, it is important to note that the success of the MLTI program in Guilford has as much to do with the leadership of staff members like Rich and Priest, and the willingness of the faculty to adapt and adjust to a wonderful new tool, than to any quality inherent in the use of laptops.
Time and time again, those in charge of implementing the program stressed that the laptops were not there to take over education, but merely to reinforce and enhance it. The faculty fell in-step with this mantra, using the computers when helpful, keeping them zipped up when not.
By following these simple steps, with a lots of sweat and hard work, the SAD 4 community has turned PCMS into a flagship for the MLTI project and an example for schools all over the country, while bringing 21st-century technology to Piscataquis County.