Author: John Cotey

Chiles Elementary fifth-grader Aaron Back has his notebook open, and his laptop charged up. Instead of doing his research by paging through a book — and good luck finding a book on sand boils, which he currently is studying — Back is able to peruse the web, scribbling his findings and ideas on paper.

“I like that you have more than one option,’’ says Back, who is 10 years old. “When you’re reading, you only have one option, but (on the computer) you have lots of options you can go to.”

Back is one of 146 fifth-graders at Chiles, which is located in Tampa Palms, taking part in Hillsborough County’s “Project Innovate,” which provides students with a Hewlett Packard x360 laptop for a completely different — and a little more advanced — learning experience.

“The concept is to prepare our students for the digital age they are growing up in and to increase engagement with their teachers, as well as meeting the needs of students by differentiating instruction in a more confidential way,’’ says Chiles assistant principal Ashley Galfond.

The county has provided 150 of the laptops to Chiles, with the hope of changing the learning landscape and getting kids comfortable with more high-tech means of taking notes and producing projects.

Schoolwork is done using Microsoft products, and the work is all held in OneNote, a digital note-taking app. If insurance issues can be worked out, the students may even be able to take those laptops home during the second semester, but for now, they can still access their work on their families’ home computers.

Back and the other students will be able to ultimately file their assignments to English Language Arts (ELA) teacher Nancy Erickson in many different media. “They can do their projects however they want,’’ Erickson says. “If you’re passionate and an artist and want to make posters, that’s a great thing. I can’t draw to save my life, so I might be more comfortable doing something digital-oriented. The nice part is, they can look at the info and say, ‘This is the best way I can present my information, so I’m going to present it in a brochure, make a poster or make a movie trailer.’”

Galfond is in her second year at Chiles, after coming over from Turner-Bartels, the grades K-8 school in Live Oak Preserve.

At Turner-Bartels, Galfond was part of preparing the first “cohort,” or group of students working together, for Project Innovate, before coming to Chiles last year to prepare the students for being the second cohort, which started this new school year.

“We’ve been doing it on a small scale to learn as we go and to be able to support the students so there is a successful implementation,’’ Galfond says, adding that the intent is to include other grades in the near future.

The current laptops have keyboards, but also can be flipped to work as a tablet. But, Erickson said the goal is to get kids used to the more traditional laptop form. In fact, she says, so many kids have iPads and other tablets that this has been their first work, for many, on a regular laptop computer.

“They don’t have the basic computer skills that, I guess, I use every day,’’ Erickson says. “They are not users, they are players, if that makes sense. So, things like editing, and copying and pasting things like URLs (Uniform Resource Locators), or typing and moving the cursor up and down, they didn’t know that.”

Erickson adds, however, that she expected the transition to be a learning process — even for her, since she is primarily an Apple user.

The students are enjoying their new tools. Their class, part of a daily “Genius Hour” afforded to students to work independently and on whatever they choose, is quiet. The students seem more earnest in their work, and the only sound is the tappity-tap of a keyboard or students softly whispering as they share their work with one another.

As for Erickson, she likes the options the project gives her as a teacher.

Instead of collecting papers and taking them home to grade, she can look at quizzes and assignments immediately and provide feedback while the topic is still fresh in the students’ minds. She also can make suggestions and help privately instruct individuals who might have questions they wouldn’t normally ask in front of the whole class.

“I can post something and ask them, ‘Type in your reactions to this,’” Erickson says. “I can take polls, and I can do really quick, down-and-dirty assessments that way. We can do quiz-like games, and (the students) are having a blast doing that, too.”

Erickson’s group is currently studying Crystal Springs, which is located in the southeastern corner of Pasco County, since the class will take a field trip there Sept. 14-15. The students have been tasked with producing reports on various aspects of the springs, from why they exist to the wildlife that lives nearby, to, well, even sand boils (which, according to Wikipedia, occur when water under pressure wells up through a bed of sand. The water looks like it is “boiling” up from the sand, hence the name).

For other things they study where a field trip is not possible, the students will be able to use their laptops to Skype with experts on location.

“The great things about (the laptops) is they (students) can take this as far as they want,’’ Erickson says, adding that one student already has asked if he can do coding for a Nintendo game. “I think you’ll see a lot more great things as we go forward.”