Working with paper doesn’t compute

Luis Pena

When students walk into Gabe Del Real’s fourth-grade classroom in the

morning, they don’t place their textbooks in cubby holes -- they dock

their Toshiba laptops instead.

Del Real’s Rea Elementary classroom has the only fourth-graders in

Orange County using laptops during school hours. But instead of

locking them up like diamond rings at a jewelry store, the students

take them home.

The Beaumont Foundation gave the school a grant of $60,000 for

equipment, Rea Technology coordinator Jenith Mishne said.

“Our main focus of the grant is to improve literacy,” Mishne said.

Upon walking into Del Real’s class, one doesn’t get the impression

it’s a fourth-grade classroom, as the room is dead silent. The

students are busy because they know it’s serious business when

they’re using the laptops, Del Real said.

“I’m teaching the same standards that every other fourth-grade

teacher is responsible for,” Del Real said. “It’s just that I have a

different tool for teaching them.”

In one assignment, students needed to answer questions from their

text readings, then find clip art to accompany it.

Nine-year-old Eduardo Antunez scanned through the story “Salmon

Summer” with his left hand as he typed his answers to the questions

with his right hand.

Erik Rendon, 9, has become savvy with the screensaver option in

Windows XP by using a password requirement to get back to the desktop

after the screensaver is activated. He did it because people at his

home were accessing the laptop without his permission.

Completing assignments using a keyboard has become much easier

than trying to finish them on paper, 9-year-old Julio Barajas said.

One of the features that has benefited Kevin Perez,10, is the

ability to access the Web from home after completing his homework.

“I think it’s cool that you get to do your homework on them and

take them home,” 10-year-old Lauren Davenport said. “I think we’re

really fortunate to get the laptops.”