Published: March 25, 2008 11:13 pm         

Senator talks technology with students, teachers

For more than an hour Tuesday morning, a group of students and teachers at Woodrow Wilson High School shared their thoughts on technology and the future of computers in education with Sen. Jay Rockefeller.

Rockefeller, D-W.Va., met with the group to learn more about technology needs in West Virginia’s classrooms as he prepares to sponsor the America’s Better Classrooms Act, which would provide tax-exempt bonds to schools for construction and repair.

“These are smart kids, and they have interesting futures,” Rockefeller said. “I just want to learn what part the Internet plays in that.”

Rockefeller also authored the E-Rate program 12 years ago, which has provided more than $91 million to West Virginia’s schools and libraries to pay for the cost of wiring to the Internet.

Without the E-Rate program, Woodrow Wilson High School would not have been able to make necessary upgrades to its technology infrastructure, said Mary Foster, technology coordinator at the school.

But while most schools now offer Internet access to students and educators, Rockefeller said the challenge is to make sure schools have the computers, software and trained teachers needed to take advantage of the Internet. He pointed out computers and software evolve so quickly that staying up-to-date can be expensive for schools.

And the stakes are high for young people getting an education in the United States who hope to compete in the global marketplace, Rockefeller said.

“Other countries are just plowing ahead on this,” he said. “And then you look at the job market, what job out there doesn’t require good computer skills?”

Educators echoed the same concerns about foreign competition.

“It used to be that we were competing against schools in other counties or other states,” Wood-row Wilson principal Bob Maynard said. “But now we are competing against the world. We are holding our students back if we don’t provide them the right technology.”

Rockefeller asked several students what careers they were planning to pursue. There was a future military officer, art teacher, lawyer and music teacher. The discussion focused for several minutes on identifying some of the uses for computers in each of those fields.

While teachers talked mostly about recent improvements in integrating the Internet into the curriculum, there were some concerns expres-sed about the availability of technology support staff.

“The hardware is funded. The software is funded, but the support staff to work on them is limited,” math teacher Neal Lacy said.

Woodrow Wilson has about 450 computers and a limited support staff. At the same time, groups of schools in Raleigh County have to share one computer support technician, Foster said.

“There needs to be a permanent person at every school, not just for integration, but actual support,” Foster said.

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