By Junior Editor-in-Chief Aubrie Wise Students across the nation join the moderns age of technology. Teachers are running Instagrams and using Bitmojis in the classroom, and on-by-one districts are beginning to go one-to-one with Red Lion joining the buzz. Students in the Red Lion Area Senior and Junior High Schools have their own device that they carry with them from class to class, and even home. The idea of one-to-one, that is one device for every student, is becoming more and more popular as paper copies become outdated and the internet becomes the best classroom. Before taking the leap of going one-to-one, technology administrators conducted multiple trials including testing it with a focus group of teachers, conducting wifi tests, and starting the junior high with one-to-one last year.
Freshman Charlie Jess was at the junior high last year for the one-to-one start-up.“The laptops are pretty good. (They) helped a lot overall,” Jess said. “For me, being digital makes it easier to get things done.” One-to-one has remade the idea of an online classroom. The use of tools like Google Classroom and Remind have changed the day-to-day class. From the survey conducted by Red Lion Administration in August 2018, 80% of students have reliable high speed internet at home which is a good sign for teachers who are going digital. “From an online prospective, I do like one-to-one,” Red Lion online teacher Mrs. Andrea Rohrbaugh said. “I know now that my online students will have access to a computer, which is their primary resource that they often don’t have when taking an online course. Mr. Tim Smith serves as Supervisor of Instructional Practice and Technology for Red Lion Schools. He and the rest of the technology team had the job of making sure each student had a working device. The seniors were issued Dell laptops used in previous years. Underclassmen are using newly purchased Chromebooks. “That was a really tough decision." Mr. Smith said. The Dells are four years old, and our process is usually a five to six year replacement." Budget was the main concern. "We wanted to maximize the dollars we had, if we had to buy (Chromebooks) for seniors as well, we may have had one more year of not having one-to-one environment in our school.” The number one advantage of going one-to-one is the accessibility to the internet and what that means for the students. By every student carrying a laptop, they all have immediate access to google and its expanse database of information. The answer to almost any question is a just click away. ”The laptops are enabling the kids to all be on the same playing field,” junior Gianna Dovell said. “We all have the same access to information.”
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