Teresa Williams
CNHI
THOMASVILLE —
More than 100 high school students in the Thomasville City Schools system were each given a piece of cutting edge classroom technology Monday.
The week-long pilot program for eTextbooks has wrapped and eligible students at Thomasville High School and Thomasville City Scholars Academy received their netbooks throughout the day, Donita Hinckley, system instructional technology coordinator, said.
“We’re excited that we’ve been able to get a large number of netbooks into the hands of our ninth and 10th grade students,” she said. “Teachers are beginning to use electronic textbooks with students in the classrooms.”
Netbooks were distributed Monday to students that attended an orientation session with a parent or guardian and completed all paperwork.
“I was very excited to get it,” Nil Patel, 13, said of receiving his netbook. “The first thing I did was sign onto it to check it out.”
Patel looks forward to being able to type his notes, save them and know where they are at all times.
Netbooks were distributed Aug. 23 to pilot group students that attended a required orientation session with a parent or guardian and completed all paperwork.
Caitlin Tabacchi, 15, was in the pilot group.
“It went well,” she said of the first week. “It is a lot easier not having to carry all those books around and I can type a lot faster than I write.”
Now, THS is implementing the program to the rest of the ninth and 10th grade students.
Hinckley said there will be one additional orientation session 6 p.m. Thursday in the THS cafeteria with the rest of the netbooks being distributed the following Tuesday, Sept. 7, for those students that have not yet attended a session or completed their paperwork.
The Georgia Department of Education awarded THS a $1.3 million eTextbooks Title IID American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, or ARRA, grant, to provide netbook computers and electronic textbooks for all high school students over the next three years, interactive whiteboards for all high school classrooms, and supporting infrastructure.
“The students are so proud to have these and I’m hearing them coming down the hallways and saying they ‘love it,’ that the netbooks are ‘wonderful,’” she said.
“And, students are coming up with ways to use it in their classes. One girl said she is using the ‘sticky notes’ application to make notes show up on her screen. She said she uses them to keep up with her homework.”
