Students take home school computers
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ARLEE – High school students successfully incorporated Chromebooks into their education. Principal Jim Taylor reported a standing ovation during a meeting to introduce parents and students to the laptop computers.
“The parents are excited,” he said.
Students are able to checkout a computer for the year and take it home to do homework. Teachers utilize the computers in the classroom.
“We are one of three schools in the State of Montana that has one-to-one,” he said of the student computer ratio in the high school.
One of the problems students discovered was that they were unable to connect to a printer to print assignments, but being paper free was one of the incentives behind getting the computers. Taylor said printing was an issue that would have to be discussed.
Watching YouTube videos, assigned by teachers, was the only other reported issue.
“We had to tweak the filter,” Taylor said to allow students to watch those videos.
The Family and Consumer Science class is unable to utilize the computers without a teacher this year. Students taking that class were moved to other classes. Taylor reported to the board that he had hired a teacher.
“A week before school started I found out she wasn’t coming,” he said.
Taylor is still hoping to find a teacher for this year. He said the next group of college graduates with a teaching degree in the subject are soon to graduate.
The Friends Forever Mentoring Program — a development of the Big Brothers Big Sisters Program — is scheduled to begin matching high school students (“Bigs”) with elementary students (“Littles”) for one-to-one interaction.
“We need more ‘bigs’,” said Julie Williams, program coordinator.
The school currently has 108 students in the high school, 70 in the junior high and 256 in the elementary. The next school board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 14 at 6:30 p.m. in the district office.
