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Friday, May 3, 2002
Diocese logs on to laptops
Copyright © 2002 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. | ||
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When Rosie Guerin heard that Gov. Angus King's laptop plan didn't apply to parochial or private schools, the eighth-grade Catholic school student lamented: "We should get opportunity, too." But after the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland unveiled its own newly purchased laptops Thursday, the 13-year-old had all but forgotten her earlier disappointment. "I think it's awesome," Guerin said as she admired a sleek Dell Latitude C510 laptop, one of 42 acquired by the diocese. The technology program will be rolled out at Guerin's school - St. James School in Biddeford - and Cathedral School in Portland, just months after public school students got the first shipment of Apple iBooks earlier this year. With the help of corporate sponsors, each school will get one wireless base station and 21 laptops - complete with Intel Celeron processors, Microsoft Windows XP operating systems and wireless networking, said Dell spokeswoman Karen Bruett. Each laptop is valued at $2,500. Thursday's announcement at Cathedral was a joyous event for students, administrators and parents, some of whom had felt left out of a statewide technology movement. King, who came to watch Guerin and 19 other students from the two schools test the laptops, was roundly praised for vision and leadership. He told students "you are now joining your colleagues in the public schools of Maine in the largest educational technological project in the history of the world." "No one has ever done what we're doing on the scale we're doing it, and it's going to change Maine and you forever," he said. Chris Robinson, a parent who is leading the technology push at St. James, saw King's plan as a model "to do a public-private partnership where we raise our own money and leverage the state's buying power to make the best use of it." In the final months of last year, Catholic school officials and parents contacted the governor's office for help in getting laptops. Jim Doyle, the state's director of operations and technology, and other staff members facilitated discussions between the schools and vendors Dell, Intel and Microsoft, said Mark Mutty, spokesman for the diocese. "In order to put the package together, we needed the local match," Mutty said. "Each (school) came up with donors to provide those resources." Biddeford Savings Bank underwrote $10,000 for St. James; Verizon did the same for Cathedral, Mutty said. Dell plans to use the pilot program at the two schools as a model to share with other nonpublic schools around the country, said spokeswoman Bruett. Sister Rosemary Donohue, superintendent of Maine Catholic Schools, said she would like to see the technology program extended to the 16 other Catholic elementary schools and three high schools, but said that it would depend on available funding. Donohue said there are no plans now to let students take home the laptops, as is allowed at the public schools. On Thursday, 85 seventh-graders at Lyman Moore Middle School in Portland became the first students to take their iMacs home. The event was originally planned weeks ago, but Principal Steve Rogers said at the time that guidelines for signing out laptops had not been finalized and students had not completed school projects on the computer to show their families. King told students the "overwhelming response of adults in Maine was kids can't be trusted with those devices." Prove them wrong, he said, and take good care of the laptops. Nola Martin, an eighth-grader at Cathedral took his words to heart. "We're going to show people that we can handle (the laptops) and with them we can be 10 times better at school," Martin, 14, said. Guerin said that the laptops will make a big difference at her school, "where we have a pretty small computer lab." "It's going to give the younger kids a better chance to explore the Internet and have a better understanding of computers," she said. Asked later about the impact the new budget shortfall would have on the laptop program, King said it was too early to say. Josie Huang can be contacted at 791-6364 or at:
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