 |
|
|
|
|
State funds buy new iMacs for WG middle schoolers
By Jessica Lyons
Willow Glen Middle School students can now taste a rainbow of flavors, all from the comfort of their own computer lab--iMacs have come to the Glen.
Thanks to a $43,000 grant from the state, Willow Glen Middle School boasts a new 35-iMac computer lab with all five flavors--blueberry, grape, lime, tangerine and strawberry--of the colorful new Macintosh computers.
In addition to the iMacs, 25 new Power Macs were also donated to the middle school this summer by Menlo Park's Space Systems Loral.
According to technology resource teacher Jeri Taylor, all three of the school's computer labs will eventually house brand-new computers. She can't estimate a date, however. The culmination is still quite a ways off.
"Nobody just gives you money and says, 'Go out and buy yourself some computers'," she says. But she's not complaining, either.
"Just by the fact that the students come in and have a look at the lab and go 'ahhhh,' and the fact that the iMacs are fast and networked with Ethernet means no delay time in accessing information--they're just a marvelous machine," Taylor says.
Taylor's eighth-grade computer lab, computer science and journalism classes will use the iMacs, as will the seventh-grade computer classes.
"We work on Internet skills; we do a lot of research and teach them how to go from a subject category and filter down to the single idea before doing a search," Taylor says.
"I teach them how to make a web page, and for the final, they have to make a subject-oriented web page with a certain number of links. When they're done, I ask how the final reports went and the students say, 'We didn't write a report.' The fact that it's in the form of a web page, makes students enjoy it while they're learning."
Sixth-grade computer classes, on the other hand, work within a self-contained database.
They don't use the Internet. Instead, they learn word-processing skills and how to use spread sheets. They also use drawing and career-oriented computer programs, and learn how to research topics on the database.
|
|
|
|
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
