Rock Hill high school students get laptops through $5M technology initiative

South Pointe High School junior Jacob Brasington was thrilled to get a new HP 840 Elitebook this week from the Rock Hill school district.

Brasington, 16, said the new laptop being distributed to high school students in Rock Hill will make school work more accessible. He owns a personal laptop but doesn’t bring it to school.

“So if you’re at lunch, and you need to finish a project or a PowerPoint, it’s right there,” said Brasington, who is taking AP classes in English, history and chemistry. “We’ll use it a lot.”

Brasington was among about 500 South Pointe students who received laptops Tuesday and Wednesday. Distribution at Rock Hill and Northwestern high schools will be Thursday and Friday.

The district spent $5 million to buy 5,000 of the HP laptop computers, cases, software and other related equipment. Distribution was delayed last fall, while the school board waited on protective cases to be made and installed.

The laptops are part of the district’s one-to-one computer initiative, which intends to assign a tablet or laptop computer to each student in grades three through high school.

All students at Rock Hill’s three high schools are eligible to receive the laptops, but both students and their parents must first complete required paperwork and an orientation program that’s available online.

Parents can buy a $35 technology protection plan; those who can’t afford the cost can apply to their school for assistance. Parents do not have to buy the plan for their child to bring a computer home, but they assume liability for it if they do not.

South Pointe Principal Al Leonard said 1,300 students at his school are eligible for the laptops. Some students or parents haven’t completed the paperwork, and some may have opted out of getting one, he said.

Leonard said he expects more students to get the laptops when they see them in the hands of classmates.

“Once they start going home with kids, other students may start getting their paperwork in,” he said.

Caleb Blackwood, a 16-year-old junior, said he will use his laptop to check out resources for his classes. He said teachers can spend less time and money making paper copies for students.

Blackwood, who has a desktop computer at home, said he can write papers for his AP English and history classes on the laptop instead of taking the work to and from school on a flash drive.

Cashton Christensen, a 17-year-old senior, said he’ll use the laptop to write essays for English 102, a dual-credit class. He said he has a desktop computer at home, but the laptop will be easier to use and more reliable.

“I haven’t had a laptop before, so this will be a new experience,” Christensen said. “I am going to try to have fun with it.”

Jevon Felder, a 17-year-old senior, said he hasn’t had a functioning laptop since this summer. “This will help me out at home,” he said.

The computers are equipped with Microsoft Office software, and each computer has a tracking device that can be used if it’s reported lost or stolen.

Ethan Wallace, a South Pointe social studies teacher who served on a district committee that evaluated laptops and chose the HP devices, said the laptops will open students’ access to resources.

“The problem has always been getting those resources in the hands of students,” Wallace said. Without online access for all students, he said, teachers need to find the resources and print them out or arrange time in a computer lab.

Wallace also said most students have a cellphone, but many don’t have a reliable computer they can use for school work.

“We haven’t even gotten all the laptops out and it’s already revolutionized my classroom,” he said.

He said students can keep track of their assignments and grades on Canvas, the district’s educational management system. Some students said it was hard to use the system with a phone.

Wallace said he tries to expose students to resources beyond the textbook in their study of history, including videos, letters, poems and government documents.

Students will be able to use online material to create their own content, he said. “They can make websites, they can make blogs, they can do desktop publishing and publish a newspaper of the period,” he said.

The laptop distribution was handled by BridgeTek Solutions, a Greenville-based company which will have two technology specialists at each high school during the academic year to provide service and support, said project manager Steve Messer.

Messer said students will turn in the laptops at the end of each school year. They will be serviced and refreshed during the summer by another company, RTI, before being returned to the students in the fall, he said.

This story was originally published January 6, 2016 at 4:10 PM with the headline "Rock Hill high school students get laptops through $5M technology initiative."