Back to the Books (and Laptops)

If the end of the year is exam time for students, the first day is test time for school technology staff members. All summer long they plug in, boot up and log on, but yesterday, the keyboards were no longer in just their hands.

At Rachel Carson Middle School near Herndon, with 1,200 students and more than 600 computers, the scramble for technology specialists Steve Holmlund and Robert Maffett began when the doors opened.

When the first students arrived, Holmlund was there, digital camera in hand. Later, he would be standing behind the TelePrompTer as the principal declared, "Welcome back, Carson Panthers!" on the morning in-school TV show. And then it was off to address one call after another: a printer jam in the physical education department, wireless network problems across the school, a newly married teacher needing a user name change for a dozen different accounts.

Maffett, meanwhile, was checking the backup files on the school's server, replacing software on recently repaired laptops and helping a half-dozen students in the library get set up for Algebra II, an advanced offering available only online.

"In the course of the day, I get a good bit of exercise," Maffett said.

A decade ago, a single technology specialist would handle all the training and support for up to 10 schools in Fairfax County. Now, every school employs a full-time specialist tasked with bringing technology into classrooms, and each school has at least a part-time troubleshooter.

Christopher Dede, a Harvard University professor of learning technology, said the digital revolution in schools is not about teaching students to use technology, it's about "teaching students how to do everything using technology." It's not enough for them to know how to collaborate across a table anymore; they have to know how to work virtually with someone who might be in another country, he said. They can't know only how to work a computer. They need to understand how to weed through a million possible sources of information, he said, and figure out quickly which five are useful.

"In a sense, the last bastion of not using technology was the classroom, and finally that is changing," said Dede, who has studied the subject for more than three decades. "People are recognizing to prepare students for life, it's important to have technology there."

At Fannie W. Fitzgerald Elementary School in Woodbridge, one of a handful in Prince William County outfitted entirely for wireless Internet access, the second-graders in Lilian Armstrong's class started with a seemingly simple task.

They had to turn on their laptops and find the appropriate Web site. For at least some, it was a first experience in what will become a common task when they grow up.

First, Minelly Dinarte, 7, got a password prompt.

"I don't know how to spell 'student,' " Minelly said, looking at the window to type in her user name and password.