Every Clayton County Public Schools teacher will get a laptop as an early or belated Christmas gift.

The school system is playing Santa Claus to the tune of $7.9 million.

It's the largest school system in Georgia to undertake giving personal computers to all teachers.

The system on Tuesday and Wednesday started distributing sleek Dell laptops at three schools. Most of the 5,600 laptops will be given to all Clayton teachers, principals, media specialists and some administrators on Jan. 6.

Clayton County has undertaken the large outlay under the belief that this equipment will ultimately improve student learning.

Clayton County students scored below state averages in every subject tested on the state Criterion-Referenced Curriculum Test, according to this year's results.

SAT scores have fallen three years straight to 904 out of 1,600. Fifty-five percent of students in the system are eligible for free or reduced price lunch.

Superintendent Dan Colwell is quick to caution that the teacher laptops are not expected to be a fix for the county's falling test scores.

"We've had a lot of technology in this system for quite a while, but we've never been able to successfully use it for student improvement as we should," Colwell said.

"We obviously hope to develop ways to use the laptop computers to improve our test scores, but I'm not going to offer that as a guarantee."

Students also benefit.

Each high school will get 150 laptops that will be wheeled into classrooms for students to use in school. Each elementary and middle school will get 15.

The teachers' old desktop computers will go to the elementary schools for students.

Ultimately, Colwell wants all students in third grade and up to have their own laptop, courtesy of the school system.

"We think that if our kids have laptops and they are able to use them more readily, they are going to do better on standardized tests," Colwell said.

"Our attitude is our students deserve every learning opportunity that students in more affluent counties have."

The laptops may not be an educational panacea, but they can and do expand a teacher's world.

That's what happened to 35 middle school science teachers from 10 rural school districts south of Macon.

They received laptops, science and computer training, home Internet access and equipment last year through a $160,000 grant from Georgia Tech.

The teachers used the laptops to create their own learning community via chat rooms and e-mails.

Scientific probes

The computers, which were equipped with various scientific probes, allowed teachers and students to conduct experiments they hadn't been able to do before.

It also allowed them to prepare more thorough lessons at home, according to Ron Bryant, science coordinator for the Heart of Georgia Regional Educational Service Agency in Eastman, and Paul Ohme, director of Georgia Tech's Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing.

"They were doing more lessons plans at home," Bryant said.

"They could e-mail across these district lines and find out what was working or not working so well."

But Ohme said that, although many aspects of participation would have been difficult without laptops, teachers still need extensive training to effectively use it to benefit students.

"The computer is simply a tool," Ohme said.

The training and technical support that Clayton supplies with it "is going to be a make-or-break issue."

Flush with computers

Clayton County has already learned that, Colwell said.

Outside audits of Clayton County's instructional program repeatedly found that the Southside school system was flush with computers.

But teachers didn't use them, Colwell said.

It took too much time to rotate 25 students onto seven classroom desktop computers or to take everyone to the lab, they told him.

Teachers had to stay late using their classroom computers developing lesson plans, creating spread sheets and PowerPoint presentations for class if they didn't have their own computers.

Elizabeth Lee, a seventh-grade Jonesboro Middle School social studies teacher, fiddled with her new computer at the Laptop 101 session held Tuesday.

Trainers showed the teachers how to turn on the machines, change out the floppy disk drive for the CD-RW drive, download software and change settings over the computer's wireless Internet connection.

She envisioned the PowerPoint presentations she'll be able to create at home on the laptop.

Unfortunately for her, she just bought a Dell for home use.

"Before I got a computer at home, if I couldn't do it at work, I had to make time for it or it didn't get done," Lee said.

Lee and everyone else will get two additional hours of training in how to integrate the computer into their lessons.

Clayton County Schools has provided InTech professional development training in technology since 1998.

There will be more classes developed in addition to the training that comes with the laptops, according to Margaret Dam, the county's executive director of staff development.

The school system will also make sure teachers use them.

This year teachers will be evaluated on how they use technology to teach, Dam said.

Clayton is buying the computers through a two-year lease-purchase with Dell Computers. The computers, training, and technical support are being paid for with special local-option sales tax dollars, state lottery money, and federal E-Rate school technology funds.

In metro Atlanta, the distribution of laptops is spreading. Marietta City Schools teachers have had laptops since 2000, spokesman Bill Doughty said. They are planning to replace the laptops in 2003 with new SPLOST money, he said.

Laptop plan

Gwinnett County, Georgia's largest school system, plans to distribute laptops to its elementary school teachers starting in January, spokeswoman Sloan Roach said. Pilot programs at several Gwinnett schools provide laptops for teachers and students to use.

DeKalb County is in the process of distributing laptops to teachers who are in trailers so that they have wireless Internet access in the classrooms, and some schools in the city of Decatur provide home computers, officials with both systems said.

About one-third of Cherokee County Schools teachers have received laptops for meeting certain requirements, spokesman Matt Cardoza said. Rockdale County Schools allows teachers and students to check out laptops, as does Bibb County Schools in Macon.