Pascack Valley High School - 1:1 ELearning Initiative

1:1 ELearning Initiative

In the fall of 2000, it was proposed to provide a laptop to every student and teacher for educational purposes. A wireless network environment for the school part of a referendum project. As the concept evolved, school representatives visited districts where such a program was already in place. The school's Steering Technology Committee was responsible for the logistics of the plan from 2000 forward.

For the 2004-05 school year, the school issued all its students laptops, the first public school in the state to do so. The laptops were issued by Sony and were put under a contractual lease for a period of four years, expiring in 2008. While the laptops were hailed as a success by the administration, students largely differed in their opinions.

As a response to a possible drop in academic performance due to non-academic use of the laptops during the school day, computer use was for the first time restricted for all students in the 2005-06 academic school year. Students no longer have access to student email during the school day and are limited to a restricted screen with a single window full of shortcuts to only the applications recognized as being appropriate for student in-class use.

The high school ceased use of the Sony Vaio laptops given to students and teachers during the years 05-07 in order to integrate 1.6 GHz MacBooks from Apple. for the student body and administration's use for the 2007-2008 school year. Several classes were used as "guinea pigs" with the MacBooks in order to test the students' abilities to adapt to Mac OS interface, and assess the laptops' value for use with school activities. The MacBooks run Mac OS X Tiger and feature all the standard Mac programs as well as having a digital camera built into the top of the screen. The "test runs" of the MacBooks were successful. However printer driver issues arose but were addressed during the 2007- 2008 school year.