Alvarado ISD
High-tech school open for learning
Students provided with laptops
A little cold and a little rain couldn’t sour the dispositions of staff and students on the first day of school Monday at new $22.5 million Alvarado Intermediate.
Some 502 fifth- and sixth-grade students were “where they needed to be,” said first-year principal Chris Everett, “and everybody is out of the rain.”
Students and parents got the lay of the land Sunday during grand opening ceremonies. And the land is large. AIS is 119,000 square feet, “huge compared to the old building,” Everett said.
There are obvious distinctive features, such as a library that will hold 10,000 volumes, a large gymnasium and a spacious cafeteria with murals.
“The library will be one of the best around,” Everett said. “The gym is beautiful. The old gym had no heat, and you could barely see in it.”
An advanced energy system should save the school district a large sum of money.
“Every room with a light has a sensor,” Everett said. “If there’s no activity or sound for a period of time in that room, the light goes off.”
But the most distinctive feature of the school is technology. There’s a laptop computer for every student. When the fourth grade arrives next year, that will translate to a total of about 750 computers.
The computer system was the brainchild of the district’s director of technology, Kyle Berger.
“The technology end is the culmination of his plan,” Everett said. “The original computer allotment was 10 per teacher. When the numbers came back, we were so far under [the budget] that we were able to look at going 1 to 1.
“They’re good computers, 71⁄2-inch screen and full keyboard. There’s a cabinet in every classroom to store the computers, and there’s a battery-charging station. There are no cords.
“The batteries are the power supplies. The students aren’t traveling with the laptops right now. They’ll ease into that. They log on and log off in the classrooms.”
Not surprisingly, the teachers will require more computer literacy training than the students.
“The kids won’t need a lot of training,” Everett said. “They’re way ahead of the adults. The teachers will spend one day a week after school for about an hour for some very specific training. That’s a huge shift from paper and pencil.”
Teachers won’t be working behind their desks much anymore, Everett said.
“They’ll be walking around, talking to students, watching them work, asking questions about what the students are finding out. The key thing is helping students take those next steps. There are a lot of rabbit trails we can go down now.”
The trails will be free of debris.
“We can teach the students in a way that translates to the world they live in,” Everett said. “When they have a question, they can pop on the Internet and find out the answer, then talk about how that relates to the topic in question. Kids connect to that kind of learning.”
AIS isn’t a one-of-a-kind campus with 1-to-1 computer ratio.
“Forney has a 1-to-1 campus,” Everett said. “Irving has one and maybe more. But there aren’t many.”
Another striking feature of the new AIS: It’s spectacularly bright inside, even on an overcast day.
“My favorite part of the building is just the feeling,” Everett said. “It’s a very warm place, very comfortable.”
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