Schools Provide Laptops, Other Technology to Learners at All Levels
Students in Wilkes County Schools are some of the most tech-savvy in the region, if not the state, and grants and donations ensure that this tradition will continue.
The school system has always invested heavily in classroom technology. It's aided in this goal by a $900,000 grant from the Golden LEAF Foundation, an organization created in 1999 that received half the money from the state’s piece of the national tobacco settlement. It distributes funds to once tobacco-dependent counties , as well as economically distressed or rural counties. Wilkes county also has received $1 million from the Lowe’s Charitable and Educational Foundation and some private funds for a total of almost $3 million, says Dr. Stephen Laws, superintendent.
Each of the 646 classrooms in the Wilkes County schools is equipped with a SMART Board, a data projector and laptop for the system, amounting to a value of around $5,000 per classroom. Teachers and twelfth grade students have been given individual laptops. Students in grade six have an e-mini, or smaller, laptop, while students in grades four and five have personal digital assistants.
All the devices are wireless, as the schools have been adapted for Wi-Fi. Even though the price tag is around $6.5 million, Laws says that based on the level of support so far, that goal should be met with continued hard work.
“We think this is the way to go,” he says. “We are giving students access to more knowledge than they’ve ever had before, and we’re awfully proud of the program. We’re very grateful that these foundations, and the people who have donated, have chosen to invest in us.”
Having high school graduates come to campus with this edge is helpful to Wilkes Community College, which has several projects and programs that connect directly to the local and regional economy.
“That puts them ahead of the curve as far as moving into college-level work,” says Mike Pierce, the college’s advanced materials technology director. “If they’re accustomed to utilizing technology for learning and not just playing games or texting, this is a huge leap forward.”
Pierce also is director of the Northwest North Carolina Advanced Materials Cluster, a consortium of the college and Wilkes, Ashe and Alleghany counties devoted to developing business and creating manufacturing jobs utilizing advanced materials products. As the organization sees success, it will need workers who are ready to move into these fairly high-tech positions, Pierce says.
