Laptop program draws admirers
Canadian group visits local schools
Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
FARMINGTON — Maine's effort to put an Apple iBook computer in the lap of every seventh-and eight-grader in its public schools is attracting international attention.
About 50 Canadian and French educators and multimedia professionals on a trade mission from Quebec descended Monday on Farmington and Skowhegan to learn more about the laptop program and to determine how they might integrate something similar back home.
"We would like to see if it is possible for us to have an 'e-learning' experience, and how we could give laptops to the greatest number of people," said Joelle Eichelbrenner, a middle school teacher in Poitiers, France.
Eichelbrenner and two of her French colleagues participated in the International Conference on Educational Multimedia, an initiative of the Board of Trade and Industry in Metropolitan Quebec.
The group toured Skowhegan Area Middle School in the morning, where they observed students using their iBooks in the classrooms, and later attended workshops at the University of Maine at Farmington.
UMF, through its Maine Center for Meaningful Engaged Learning project, is considered the leading educational institution providing training to teachers who are implementing the laptop program here.
After visiting UMF on Monday afternoon, the delegation planned to travel south to tour the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab and to meet with business development experts in the Boston area.
"The Skowhegan school was amazing," Eichelbrenner said. "There are small groups and small classes, and the teachers we talked to seemed to be interested and convinced that the program is working."
Denys Lamontagne, the director of an information Web site that offers articles on distance learning around the world, said what impressed him about the Skowhegan project was that it is integrated so extensively into the classroom.
"The students are using it intelligently as a tool to do their work," Lamontagne said. "I talked to an English teacher who said it has made a huge improvement on the quality of work being handed in."
John Krasnavage, principal at Skowhegan Area Middle School, said during the workshop —called "Laptops in Middle School Classrooms" — that the goal is to "turn every classroom into a lab using technology as a tool to enhance education."
Other speakers talked of the pitfalls and the successes of the laptops initiative and the importance of teacher training.
Michael Shannon, the regional technology integrator at Auburn Middle School, said teaching the teachers has been among the more challenging parts of the program.
He estimates that 5 percent of the teachers with whom he works are still resisting it after two years. But, that is changing slowly.
"I think as the teaching and learning procedures improve, the information-gathering and problem-solving skills will be the real benefactors of this technology," he said. "It has enriched learning and has changed how students and teachers interact."
Melanie Mason, the regional technology integrator at Maranacook Community School in Readfield, said for the program to succeed, it needs the support of school administrators, the community, parents and the school board.
"The support has to come from the top down," she said.
The technology director in Skowhegan, Laura Richter, told the group that many Web resources are available, oftentimes free, to help teachers with their classroom assignments.
"If teachers are not comfortable," Richter said, "the (computers) will not be used."
Michael Muir, an assistant professor of education at UMF and director of the UMF program spearheading professional development for teachers in the laptop program, said he attended the Quebec international multimedia conference last year and invited the group to Maine to see the program firsthand.
He said he did not expect it would grow into a major trade mission.
"We are very pleased they are here — and it is not very often that UMF gets mentioned in the same breath as MIT," Muir said during a break. "And I understand that on the bus ride down from Quebec, the big draw for these folks was the laptop program — not MIT."
Betty Jespersen — 778-6991
bjespersen@prexar.com