FARMINGTON - Mt. Blue High School’s students recently joined Mt. Blue Middle School students in experiencing the benefits of “viral communication” by receiving MacBook computers from the Maine Learning and Technology Initiative. While Mt. Blue Middle School students have been reaping the benefits of 24/7 access to this tool for six years now, the transition to the high school has meant less access – until this year.

Anyone who has been a student knows that one of the biggest frustrations in completing course work is understanding the requirements of a given assignment. While talking with your teacher, you may understand the assignment’s requirements, but that understanding may go away when faced with the actual work. Even though today’s students have access to more information than any other students in history, misunderstanding an assignment’s requirements is still commonplace.

Several Mt. Blue High School teachers and students stated that an immediate benefit to having the laptops available around the clock is that students are able to ask questions that make it possible for them to continue work over vacations and weekends.

“My students were able to ask clarifying questions about a project they were completing over the recent Thanksgiving break. Before getting the laptops, I would have had several students claim they couldn’t complete the project because they didn’t understand the assignment’s requirements,” said Sam Dunbar of Mt. Blue’s Social Studies Department. Teachers Dave Ronald, Gayle Perry, Jim Burrell and Nate Theriault, who also work in the Social Studies Department, were in agreement, noting they’ve realized similar benefits of expanded teacher-student access online.

English teachers Meadow Sheldon, Melody Tinkham, Travis Tierney, and Alicia Wolfe noted another overall benefit of each student having his or her own computer is seen in general organizational skills.

Ask classroom teachers what organization has to do with communication and you’ll likely hear them exclaim, “everything!”

 While talking, we organize words to verbalize our thoughts. While writing, we organize letters into words, words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, etc. In a classroom, organization benefits communication in these ways, but also in assuring that all students receive the same message.

In Alicia Wolfe’s English classes, students are currently reading The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. Focusing on the literal and figurative things carried by a band of Vietnam War soldiers, Wolfe’s students are using a mind map (see the image Backpack Mind Map at left, below) to begin their in-class conversations about the plot of the book, characterizations, and any parallels between the book’s characters and themselves.

In the past, Wolfe would have created the mind map, photocopied it, handed it out, and then hoped that students would keep track of the papers for subsequent classes. Now, she can email them the electronic mind map that they can then modify with their own impressions of the characters. In addition, she has noticed an estimated 40 percent increase in the volume of writing in one of her courses since the arrival of the laptops.

“I think that some of the students were not able to put their words on paper as quickly because of problems with putting pen to paper – it was a physical thing. These same students are now able to communicate their thoughts by typing, and it’s been great to see,” Wolfe said.

What about the students? What do they think? Seniors Jared Foster and Kelton Cullenberg simultaneously said that “Skyping homework” – an innovative, streaming video way that students can help each other work through complicated academic concepts - has been tremendously helpful in completing work for their Calculus class. Skype, a program that allows users to either type, talk, or video conference in a “live” manner, is one of the major leaps forward offered by the newest versions of the MLTI laptops because of the tiny iSight camera that comes embedded in each and every MacBook.

Instead of limiting themselves to talking on the phone, writing emails back and forth, or going to one another’s houses for homework sessions, these students can use the video cameras to talk out and graphically demonstrate the process by which they solve complicated mathematical equations.

And parents? How can they benefit from this increased communication? Some teachers are now publishing more assignments, more frequently to sites that students and parents can visit via Internet browsers such as Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, to name a few. Again, more information, available 24/7.

Another less obvious way is that now classroom projects can be seen in process by parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, guardians, etc., because the tool that allows the students to communicate, collaborate and create can be carried back and forth between school and home. One such example of parents and grandparents benefiting from the communication allowed by the MacBooks occurred in this authors’ Spanish II class.

Realizing that Thanksgiving cooks sometimes don’t receive all the gratitude they deserve, I asked my students to write and deliver a Spanish language Thanksgiving thank you to the primary Thanksgiving cooks in their lives. I also asked that they record audio or video of themselves delivering the messages.

Sophomore Devan Heutz beamed as he showed me the video of himself reading his Spanish Thanksgiving message to his grandmother Belinda Winter. Truth be told, she looked pretty pleased with her grandson’s work.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the Mt. Blue Regional School District’s Community Crier newsletter published by the administrative office for employees. It’s the first of a three-part series, on the benefits of using the new MacBooks at Mt. Blue High School this year.