Developing future-ready skills like collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and digital citizenship are objectives of Mid-Prairie Middle School.

With its one-to-one Chromebook laptop computer program the fifth-eighth grade students use Chromebooks to gain individualized learning support in the classroom. Mid-Prairie will be replacing the seventh grade students’ Chromebooks this fall with a $23,843 grant from the Washington County Riverboat Foundation.

Mid-Prairie Middle School Principal Marc Pennington says they not only use the Chromebooks as educational tools but also as a way to teach students how to use technology responsibly, “A big part of it is about the material information you can take off of that, but it’s also about being a safe online citizen and learning that way of life so to speak. Because if you look around now the kids come with cell phones or with iPads or iPods or other devices and they’re on them all the time at home and now they’re at school and so how can they use them safely and effectively in the right way? And so we try to do a lot of that as well at the middle school we can always do better at that and we try to do so, but you combine that with the educational component and we think it’s been a good asset to the school and to the district.”

The Mid-Prairie School District funded 25% of the Chromebook update with $7,947 for the 110 incoming seventh grade students. This coming school year will be the sixth year for the one-to-one program.