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What happens when you pair wireless laptops with inner-city elementary students? Here, some first-hand observations.
Domenic Grignano is the man with the plan. Chatty, effervescent, and prone to eating only Power Bars for lunch, Grignano, known to his students as "Mr. G," is the hustle behind the technology program at East Rock Magnet School in New Haven, Conn. In 2001, the K-8 school was chosen to be part of a Department of Education study to evaluate the impact of laptops on student achievement. A year later East Rock's third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade classes received 220 wireless-networked HP notebooks to use at school.
"It's like night and day," sums up Grignano about life before and after the program, which also supplied teachers with their own laptops, PLATO Learning's Orion assessment software, and...