On Friday, January 20, fellow writer Monique Jensen and I sat down for a brief interview with Alliance High School’s Computer Science teacher and driving force behind the One-To-One Laptop Initiative, Leonard Hartman. Our “brief interview” turned into a thirty-five minute conversation and we walked away from it with some very alarming and upsetting numbers.
Midway through first semester the initiative became a reality: each high school student was issued his or her own laptop to use for schoolwork. This more than $500 thousand investment was a landmark undertaking and has ushered AHS into a new age of technological advancement and unprecedented learning. Faculty members have embedded the laptops into their day-to-day teaching plans, creating a much more effective learning environment for every student.
Now, however, the student body may have proved itself not worthy of the very didactic but costly tool placed in their hands. At $1000 dollars a piece the liabilities are high. Accidents do happen. Computers do malfunction and hard drives do go bad. But recently, in addition to the normal wear and tear incidents, there has been a rise in plain and simple carelessness.
Three laptops have had drinks spilled on them. Four screens have been broken. One was turned in with a shattered track pad. Several have been turned in dented beyond what an accidental dropping would do and there is no way to measure how many dented computers are still out there. Many batteries have been let drain down to nothing, which completely wipes the computer. Critical updates have been interrupted which sometimes leads to a hard drive failure. Somewhere around one hundred laptops have had to be repaired for various reasons. There is no excuse for this.
Our school system put in countless hours of work to put this initiative together. They handed us a $1000 dollar gift. This is an opportunity most schools don’t have. We are lucky enough to have a school that genuinely wants and strives for the best for us. When asked who takes the laptops to Rapid City for repair, Mr. Hartman said he does. He has made four trips in the last five weeks. The school has paid for all of the repairs and, hopefully, will be reimbursed by insurance or warranty-covered cases. Is this really how we are going to repay the system that worked so hard to give us technology?
For now, the plan is to continue the One-To-One Initiative next year, but, according to Hartman, the contract students signed is definitely going to have to be revisited. While some of the incidents have been understandable, much of what he has seen has not been acceptable.
I often hear adults complaining about our generation. I’m starting to understand why. If we are really so self-centered to blatantly ignore what so many people have done for us through their combined effort, then we really are something worth complaining about. What we have going for us is truly remarkable. Its high time we appreciate it and as a student body start having the respect and school pride we seem to be in short supply of. With the new PAC and laptops our luxuries are higher than they have ever been, and we stand to lose more than we ever have if we don’t turn things around.