As of September 20th Juniors in AP English and AP U.S. History classes will have netbooks for their use at all times. They will each have one of the new Lenovo S10-3s with them all day at school and then they will bring them home each night.
At the beginning of the school year Mariemont High School received 150-160 Lenovo netbooks. 100 went to the Library. The rest have been committed to the pilot program. Principal Dr. James Renner says that other schools the administriative team met with suggested that we pilot going 1-to-1 on laptops with a small group first then expand it from there. That’s if it works for Mariemont.
“The netbooks must improve quality of teaching and instruction in the classroom, otherwise it’s just an expensive toy,” Renner says.
Some students have critiqued the rollout of 1-1 program either because they do not like the netbooks or because they find having a computer with students at all the times is unnecessary.
Junior Bryan Routt voiced his opinion about the new netbooks saying they are too slow and the screen is too small. He also stated his thoughts on the contract Juniors we’re made to sign before accepting the computers.
“The restricting contract that comes with the computers renders them completely useless for the average teenager to do anything but school work on them at home. I will personally only use mine at school,” Bryan Routt said.
It has been made clear by the school that this is all they should be for. Downloading any music, videos or games onto the Netbooks is not allowed. Bryan Routt does admit that having a computer in every class will be a great convenience to him.
Mrs. Toepfer agrees and says, “The juniors are fairly savvy with technology and often use computers to facilitate their learning anyway. Now, we will have an even playing field: everyone will have computer access, and they will all have it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”
Toepfer has already planned out ways she will be using the netbooks in class saying that “the laptop rollout coincides with the junior research paper assignment, which necessitated class trips to the library for computer access. Not only will we not need to tie up the library’s schedule, but also students will be able to access their research projects at any time during class. She cites that students will also be able “make use of a few moments after other classwork is finished to work on the paper.”
The Junior class is only the test class. If this goes well, Mariemont plans to be allowing more and more students to take these netbooks home within this year.
