Tucson school embracing laptops, iPods for kids

TUCSON, Ariz. — Fourth-grader Paul Juarez has never visited the Grand Canyon in person, but he has explored the national park's rock walls and plunging depths from a 13-inch screen at Ascension Lutheran School.

"On Google Earth, I like to go to the Grand Canyon," he said of his visits by way of an Apple MacBook. "It's really cool. On big canyons, you can go down in them. You just use the arrow keys to move around the Grand Canyon."

Paul's computer-screen trips to the Grand Canyon on his MacBook laptop were impossible three years ago at the small northwest-side school at La Canada Drive and Magee Road.

Computers were absent from Ascension Lutheran classrooms, and the few used by teachers were usually second-hand.

That changed in 2009 when the school bought enough Apple laptops to provide one to each of its third- through fifth-graders for use in the classroom. The school has about 100 students.

This school year, second-graders were also assigned school laptops.

Principal Kathy Holden ushered the school into the 21st century knowing that learning has changed and the method of delivery had to change as well.

"It's here," she said of technology. "It's not the future."

Preschool through fifth-grade classrooms at the school also feature iPod touch stations where students play educational games that have been downloaded onto the devices.

Students in fourth and fifth grades use their laptops to access class wikis, which are simple web pages where assignments and book reports can be posted, and they send completed lessons to their teacher via their own e-mail accounts.

E-mail accounts are hosted by the school's internal server, which went live this school year, and students are only allowed to send e-mails to accounts hosted by that server, school officials said.

Older students also are creating presentations on Keynote, which is like PowerPoint, and making their own music on GarageBand.

"I like having computers in the classroom because it makes learning more exciting," fifth-grader Micaela Zachmeier said.

Micaela, 10, created a presentation of Bible verses on Keynote that was shown during the school's chapel services.