Jim Thorpe students returning to new MacBooks

Jim Thorpe Area School District is the only school system in the county that gives each student in grades 7-12 an Apple laptop.

When students return to school on Wednesday, they will be using brand-new MacBooks. Over the summer, the school board decided to invest in new four-year agreements with Apple to rent more than 1,000 laptops for students. The laptops replace the initial round of laptops the district purchased in 2015 when the program began.

The new laptops, servers and networking equipment will cost the district $2.3 million through the 2023-24 school year.

The district also provides iPads to every student in grades K-6.

The board approved the purchase in June after a presentation from Jerome Brown, the district’s director of technology and information services. He said the program has met its stated goal of transforming the way students learn and teachers teach.

“Their learning was transformed by the use of these laptops. Teachers’ teaching was transformed by these tools,” he told the school board in June.

Brown presented several examples.

He said teachers and students were invited to present at the National Technology Education Conference in Philadelphia about a project they did to adapt toys for use by disabled children.

He read a letter from a parent whose son was accepted for a summer internship with a Division I college athletic department for graphic design. The parents said the laptop program was partly responsible for that opportunity. The student learned how to make promotional materials for Jim Thorpe’s athletic department, and his work helped him get his internship.

Trudy Miller, who retired as a high school English teacher following the 2018-19 school year, said the computers have become vital to the learning process. She said students now understand that even on snow days, they have an obligation to complete their work.

She said through the use of cloud-based apps she can check on students’ writing projects as they are working on them, and offer comments and suggestions in real time.

Miller said the laptops have also saved her department money on books they used to buy in print. She said the district didn’t have to buy new anthology books because the stories can be accessed online.

“Last time we bought a set was $25,000 for one grade,” she said. “We don’t need those anymore. We go online and find them in public domain.”

Board members asked if they could provide PC laptops. Brown said teachers have been trained on the Apple computers, and some of the curriculum has been redesigned around them.

Brown said going with another platform like PCs or Chromebooks might cost more in the short-term, but the cost of maintaining them would be much more.

“If you look at any district with HP, they have double the repair staff we do. We manage over 2,000 devices with four people. My staff is incredible,” he said.

Students receive the laptops at no cost. They must pay an insurance deductible — which helps cover the cost of loss or potential damage — to take the laptop home.

At the beginning of each school year the district distributes a laptop to each student. At the end of the school year, the students have to return them, and they’re wiped of all data.

Students are expected to charge their laptops each day.

The district has a content filter and a policy covering discipline for violations like cheating and cyberbullying. During class times, teachers can restrict activity.

When the district started the program there were several stated goals. The laptops are intended to provide a level playing field for students through equal access to technology. They were supposed to increase the academic rigor in order to prepare students for post-high school opportunities. They were supposed to increase student engagement in the classroom. Finally, they were supposed to help differentiate learning based on each student’s needs.

Miller said she failed no students in her final year as a teacher, and she attributed that to the excitement around combining technology and the learning process.

“Technology, it’s gotta be in our life. These kids are going out into the world and they are prepared for today’s technological world. They’re amazing,” she said.