Thanks to a $40,000 grant from the Foundation for Saline Area Schools, the 360 fifth and sixth graders at Heritage School now have access to MacBook laptop computers. “The mandate for education is really quite simple - we must be relevant to students while giving them the latest skills to compete globally,” said Heather Kellstrom, Director of Instructional Technology for Saline Area Schools, who has degrees in both education and instructional technology. The computers are rotated between teams of teachers throughout the year. Fifth grade teacher Ms. Amy Robke and her students already miss the laptop computers they used last trimester. “It changed how we taught,” Robke says. “And that opened up new avenues to do things. I just think they’re fantastic and wish more classes had the opportunity to use them, and for a longer term.”Ms. Robke was amazed by how quickly they learned the programs. “After about five minutes, they were trying out things we hadn’t figured out ourselves,” she says. “It makes it more real for them. It’s more like what their work situation will be in the future.” Ms. Kellstrom says schools must reassess current instructional delivery models to include a variety of technologies that will encourage inventive thinking; strong problem-solving and self-directed skills; collaboration and creativity. “We frontload our kids’ skills at a lower level to teach them how to use the software and all those particulars,” Heather Kellstrom says, referring to the media/technology specialists in the K-4 buildings. “So by the time they get to fifth grade, they’re really ready to do technology projects.”
A classroom laptop program helps address these needs, she says, adding that the goal is for teachers to use the laptops to introduce, reinforce and extend mastery of curricular targets in a 21st century learning framework. “Kids are digitally wired,” Kellstrom says. “It’s just unbelievable to see how motivated they are; to see how self-directed they get; how they can problem-solve through learning experiences; how they learn to communicate. It just really builds on those 21st Century skills that the world is requiring of us.”
