This school year, St. Thomas students’ backpacks will be a little lighter as the school extends the use of notebook computers to every child through its widely recognized 1:1 computer program. The school is eschewing textbooks in favor of tablets for all 185 first- through eighth-graders.
The St. Thomas School in Medina has implemented a 1:1 computer program run with specially adapted code to all of their grade school students. They are also working with Microsoft to mentor other schools.
“The beauty of being in a small, independent school is we’re so agile and adaptable. [Fifteen years ago], the culture was as risk-adverse. Now, we have this culture where it’s OK to take calculated risks,” Kimberly Mecham, the school’s director of information and communication technology, told the Reporter.
The St. Thomas School has a long history of having a 1:1 program beginning in the late 1990s, Mecham said. But the school began taking another look at their use of technology after doubling in size over the last decade and expanding to include seventh- and eighth-graders in 2013.
Mecham began hearing more about schools across the country using tablet computers. While doing research, she discovered Cincinnati Country Day School’s shared OneNote learning program. The school was the first in the nation to provide each student with a laptop in 1996 and later transitioned to tablets operating with a specially coded OneNote program.
With the Cincinnati Country Day School code, students can write, listen to audio files to perfect their pronunciation in language classes and take the tablets home to complete homework. Most importantly, students can still write notes and complete assignments electronically in a private section each student shares with their teacher thanks to high quality styluses.
“There are many studies that say that people do learn more and retain more if they write it. So, we still want, encourage and require kids to use the stylus. And the Microsoft surface stylus is almost like writing with paper and pencil,” Mecham said.
They aren’t the only local institution to move toward a 1:1 computer program. The Bellevue School District is in the process of implementing its own initiative and the Seattle Preparatory School and Kent School District have already created their own programs.
St. Thomas’ program has been singled out by Microsoft as one of the five original Showcase Schools for its use of Microsoft OneNote and code adapted from Cincinnati Country Day School. As a Showcase School, they are working closely with Microsoft to lead innovation in education and communicate a vision for education enabled by technology, as well as mentoring educational institutions from across the world.
Over the last few years, they have hosted delegations from Turkey, China, Ghana and the Bellevue School District.
When implementing their initiative, the school was careful to work with teachers and unfurl the program slowly. To Mecham’s surprise, two of the teachers who applied for grants the pilot year had taught at the school for several decades.
“It’s our job to give teachers just enough info to make sure they can do jobs, but not make them feel overwhelmed. Every once in a while, you get a teacher who’s not super excited, but when there’s a bunch of teachers around them, you get a little bit of peer pressure,” she said. “We do have this expectation that once we’re ready, everybody buys in. It’s a consensus.”
