By MAGGIE MCMURRAY
Moapa Valley Progress
While many middle schools and high schools are feverishly working to grab a piece of the technology-driven future, one local elementary school is way ahead of the game.
Perkins Elementary school in Moapa recently acquired a Chromebook computer for every student in every grade of the school except kindergarten. And Chromebooks for even the kindergartners are in the works.
“There is no way we could have ever done this on our budget alone,” said principal Hal Mortensen. “But we were lucky enough to be adopted through the Adopt-A-Classroom program by former educator Dr. Ann Rice of Mesquite, NV, who spent $46,000 outfitting our school with these laptops.”
A Chromebook is a special laptop that runs Google Chrome as its operating system and that does not contain a hard drive. It runs primarily off the internet, utilizes apps, and stores all data in the “cloud.” As such, these mini computers are cheaper to manufacture than a traditional laptop, making the dream of having a computer in every student’s hand more easily realized. Schools are currently the biggest category of consumers of Chromebooks.
Seeing the wave of the future, Perkins had already begun to purchase Chromebooks on its own. With the help of digital coach Dennis Jarrel, students were being trained in their use. So, when the laptops came to the school in December, the students could get right to work.
In preparation, the school had also done a significant overhaul of their wi-fi system so that it could handle the increased traffic as well as being accessible throughout the school.
Mortensen said the school has already seen a huge payoff from the change.
“With the introduction of Chromebooks into every classroom there is a whole new atmosphere at the school,” Mortensen said. “Of course the students are excited and enthusiastic, but there is also a great excitement and engagement on the part of the teachers.”
There are so many student-friendly learning applications available that often students don’t even realize they are learning. Many applications utilize a game format, which keeps the students so engaged and on-task, that they frequently continue using the programs at home even when they are not assigned to.
Perkins uses a combination of free apps and purchased apps to accomplish their goals. For example, in Mrs. Carri Leete’s 4th grade class, Jaden Smith says that one of his favorite programs is a free program called Nitrotype. This program has students race cars that travel according to how fast the student is typing.
Sarah Doty, however, prefers a typing program the school purchased called Typing Trainer because it helps teach her where each of her fingers go, which she knows will give her a bigger payoff in the end.
“I’ve already seen my typing speed go way up and that’s good because on Chromebooks we do a lot of typing,” she said
Bryan Mota says his favorite thing about the Chromebooks is, “All our assignments are right there online. If I get sick and miss school, I can work on a computer from home and be all caught up by the time I’m well enough to come back.”
Another feature that Leete really likes is that the apps generate reports after every assignment.
“I can immediately see which kids are struggling in which areas,” she said. “I can give kids individual assignments to help strengthen areas in which they are weak. It is much easier to track every single student’s progress now so they can have more individualized attention.”
Fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Valeri Morgan agrees that having all assignments online is both helpful for student progress and a real time saver. In her class, she used to have to copy things over and over. Classrooms used so much paper that last year the school actually ran out of paper before the end of the year. This year the school expects a surplus of paper because so little is used.
A favorite app of all the kids is Prodigy: a math game with wizards and monsters and rewards for right answers. Many kids had scratch paper in front of them covered in equations to help them answer problems correctly and advance through the game.
Even the younger kids are involved in learning more with the Chromebooks.
“The biggest change I see is a huge improvement in their writing skills,” said third grade teacher Lana Hess. “Before, kids had to do corrections and rewrites.Now they can edit online and we can go over things as a class. This has made their enthusiasm toward writing increase ten-fold.”
Mortensen is pleased with the huge difference a computer in the hand of every student has made in his school. In looking to the future, he says the school is looking next to getting Chromebook totes and maybe developing a program for kids who do not have home computers to take their Chromebooks home to work. He is very excited about the prospect of being able to extend classroom learning to the home in what has come to be known as “blended learning.”
“We are still learning and taking baby steps, but the future certainly looks bright,” Mortensen said.
