Local Schools First To Receive Laptops

Tom Luna made a big announcement Tuesday involving several local school districts.
The state superintendent has picked30 districts and two charter schools to pilot the first wave of laptops by a 1 to 1 ratio.
This will start in 2013, but preparations are already well underway for the new technology.
Scott Woolstenhulme is District 93’s technology guru, so to speak

Even he is a bit overwhelmed by the prospect of 1,400 students going virtual next year.

“With the excitement, now comes the reality that we’ve got to be prepared for all those students having laptops and figuring out how we’re going to use those to impact student learning,” said Woolstenhulme.

Bonneville School District is already well ahead of the pack though.

As part of the technology push, this year they’re equipping 1st to 8th graders with mini-laptops called Neos.

The district already has 2,300 of these Neos for students to use this fall, and they’ll up that number to 5,000 in 2013.

Over at District 91, they’re getting a jump start on the program as well by implementing laptops in Compass Academy, the magnet school, this Fall.

Superintendent George Boland said teachers and administrators will also get laptops this year.
“There are still a lot of pieces to this puzzle and, at this point, I think that there may still be more questions than answers,” said Boland.

Even the device vendor is still up for bid and may not be selected until July.
Woolsthenhulme said it will be a laptop though, and the device will not differ from school to school.

“We’ll try to do as much training as we can with them, so we’ll have a couple of days in our school year carved out. Next year we have some early release time with our teachers,” said Woolstenhulme.

The goal is that every student and teacher will eventually have a laptop.