KENT, Conn. -- Hoping to level a
high-tech disparity among students, the school system here has
bought laptop computers for every student in the seventh grade --
all 36 of them.
The $80,000 purchase last month was the first part of an unusual
program aimed at providing all seventh and eighth-graders in town
with their own portable computers to use in every class, and to
take home. Computers will be purchased for the eighth grade in
1998.
Ed Epstein, the school principal, said the purchase is intended
to eliminate the gap between the computer haves and have-nots.
About half the families of seventh-graders in Kent already have a
computer at home, he said.
What is more important, assigning students their own laptops and
encouraging the children to take them home provides broader
experience than the standard computer lab delivers, he said. Mr.
Epstein said the students are on line several hours a day.
"It's like learning French in France rather than in
Connecticut," Epstein said. "It's total immersion as
opposed to dabbling."
The school bought the $1,855 laptops through a new program by
Toshiba and Microsoft. Given a seventh-grader's penchant for
losing homework assignments, permission slips and hats, the
school has set up strict rules for handling computers. Students
store their computers in locked cabinets during lunch, gym and
after-school activities. Parents needed to attend a training
session themselves before students could take their laptops home.
Since receiving computers Feb. 10, the two classes have been
learning how to write a research paper on the computer, how to
create a spreadsheet and how to track their French grades. They
set up electronic reminders for homework assignments. Soon, they
will use the Internet for research.
Students interviewed at the school said that of course they like
to play computer games -- a pastime allowed only outside school.
But two girls said they wrote "novels" of about 2,000
words one week just for fun.
Students also said the computers make it easier to write and
revise papers and take notes in class.
"It helps keep us organized," Tait A. Nielsen, 12,
said. "All our papers are in one place."
Kent officials say the town is able to do this in part because of
its small size -- about 3,000 full-time residents who include
everyone from factory workers to New York City financiers, as
well as well-known weekenders like Henry A. Kissinger.
Yet they also point out that the laptop purchase is a sizable
chunk of a $3.5 million education budget -- nearly eight times
the $11,000 heating oil budget and more than four times the
$17,000 allocated for textbooks. An insurance policy covers drops
and losses, for a $500 deductible that the school will split with
parents.
Carolyn MacLeod, Kent's computer coordinator, stressed that the
computers motivate students to do more learning on their own, to
explore areas they just touched upon in class.
"They're soaring," she said. "They're not waiting
for us to take their learning to the next level."