With just a few days left in the school year, the new arrival signifies the start of the school district's final step in getting an electronic device in the hands of the school district's more than 12,600 students.
Both students and teachers are given a Lenovo Yoga 11E, a dual purpose device that can serve as both a laptop and a tablet.
The device was selected by a committee of students, parents and teachers working in cooperation with efficiency consultant LEAN Frog to find the best device and how that piece of technology would best be implemented in the school district.
Students in grades 3 through 12 will take the devices home with them to complete assignments, read books and work on projects, with no internet connection required.
According to Maury County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Chris Marczak, an estimated 20 percent of the district's students do not have connection to the internet at home. Over the past year, the district's information technology department has been installing the infrastructure required to allow all students to have strong connection while at school.
"This is the revolution," Marczak said. "This is the beginning of our digital initiative in Maury County Public Schools. It is bringing the world into Maury County's classrooms. This is big, and they still don't know what is coming, what is going to be possible now."
The superintendent said there is currently a clear divide between those students who have access to technology at home and those who do not.
"We have started the movement of leveling the playing field here at Maury County Schools, where all kids have access to the world's information at any time," Marczak said.
Mt. Pleasant's fourth grade teachers Angela Knight, Allison Kittrell, Jennifer Jones, Angie Lynsey and Danielle Roberts all said they and their students are ready for the new tool.
"It opens up opportunities for our students," Jones said. "Instead of just giving them information, the students can now go out and find the information that they need and then talk about it. It is really about creation."
The fourth grade students and teachers at Mt. Pleasant Elementary were the first in the district to satisfy the prerequisites required by a student technology integration rubric, which proved that students were prepared for the devices and have transferred to a classroom concentrating on project and problem-based learning, moving away from the traditional lecture-driven classroom environment.
"They are really the ones pushing us now, instructing us about how they want to learn," Knight said.
DIPLOMA, or the Digital Integration Plan for Learning on Mobile and Accessibility, was officially announced in November 2016.
For technology specialist Kelly Stoops, the new laptops are a part of three years of preparation, teaching the students computer literacy staring in the first grade.
"Every year, the kids are more proficient," Stoops said. "That makes my job harder, but it is great for them. They can do everything and anything that someone proficient in computers could do."
Mt. Pleasant Elementary School Principal Julie Tidwell said that having a school in Mt. Pleasant become the first to earn the devices shatters the notion that Mt. Pleasant is in any way behind the district's other schools.
"I think now we are showing that to people," Tidwell said. "They are paying attention, and now they are going to see that Mt. Pleasant is a great place to be."
More than 100 devices were given to students on Wednesday.
"The school system is so much better than what it used to be," parent Michelle Sims, said, who was picking up the laptop with her 11-year-old daughter, Addison. "They are listening more to the kids and they have new leadership."
©2017 The Daily Herald (Columbia, Tenn.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
