COMPUTING IN SCHOOLS CHANGING RAPIDLY, SCHOOL BOARD TOLD

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 17, 1993                   TAG: 9304170124
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI                                LENGTH: Medium
COMPUTING IN SCHOOLS CHANGING RAPIDLY, SCHOOL BOARD TOLD
The idea behind putting computers into Pulaski County classrooms at all levels, following voter approval in 1990 of a $2 million bond issue, was to prepare students for an ever-changing world.
From the viewpoint of Jim Sandidge, county supervisor of computer technology and information systems, it is changing faster than anyone expected.
The school system's 474 computers are using an electronic curriculum that is the equivalent of 200,000 pages of text, or 2,700 hours of instruction, he told the School Board Thursday night.
The computers are doing more now than when they were installed, because of new programs and software becoming available.
For example, he said, they now have the capability of reading back, by voice, what a student has typed. They provide communications links between students in Pulaski County and other countries.
Teachers as well as students need constant re-training in the expanding computer uses, as new software gives them more speed and memory, he said. "There's no way to sit still in the kind of situation we have. It's a continuous upgrade."
But teachers and students are eager to learn computer capabilities, some coming in before and after regular school hours for more computer time.
"It's a tool that you don't have to force anybody to use. You have to ration their use of it," he said.
John Hocker, who teaches fifth grade at Dublin Elementary School, said youngsters who do not like to write on paper are writing exercises, stories, poetry and more on computer keyboards. Even special-education students find it easier to write on computers, he said.
Sandidge, who obviously has a sense of history, tied the timetable of computer use in Pulaski County schools to recent events to show how quickly the world is still changing.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB