NORTH RIDGEVILLE - If you have to go back to school, at least go back to some cool, new stuff.

Like the new $25,000 computer lab at St. Peter School featuring several dozen new Apple iMac computers for its approximately 250 students who head back to class Thursday from summer vacation.

“The old computers were so slow,” Janice Kennedy, the school’s librarian-technology coordinator, said. “We had to waste so much valuable learning time waiting for things to get up and running.”

Not anymore.

Students will be on a fast track to learning, thanks to the gleaming new rows of iMacs housed in a modular classroom that sits behind the school’s main brick building. Students and parents got to see the new lab for the first time Sunday during an open house.

“Everyone thought it was impressive,” Kennedy said. “They were surprised, but really pleased.”

The new equipment was purchased with money given by parishioners and raised from a Raise Your Paddle live auction held last year at Wagner’s Country Inn in Westlake.

The auction raised money from bidding on prizes and items that included a week’s vacation in Florida including airfare, and a “Cool Kid at School” contest.

“There were three groups really bidding on that one,” Kennedy said. “The winner gets to have three dress-down days and do the announcements one day.”

Bidding was so intense that the decision was finally made to declare three winners.

“That way, three kids will get to be the “Cool Kid,’ ” Kennedy said. “That alone raised something like $2,500.”

The new computers will give students access to the latest educational software, something they didn’t have available before.

“Nothing ran before,” Kennedy said with a smile, referring to programs on the lab’s old computers. “There was so much wait time. They were Apples, too, but they were ancient. They couldn’t handle any new programming.”

The new computers look to have good support from G&G Inc., a Westlake firm that deals in computer training, updating of programming and software, and specializes in educational software.

“The kids will be bilingual,” Kennedy said. “They’ll learn on Macs at school. And most have PCs at home.”

She’s looking forward to having her own children, Morgan, 9, a fourth-grader, and Matthew, 6, a first-grader, take advantage of the new computers.

Despite being the school’s “techie,” Kennedy knows she may end up heeding the advice of other teachers when it comes to knowing her way around the new computers and their new Mac software.

“They said if you get stuck, get one of the kids to figure it out. That’s probably what will happen at some point,” she said.

The fundraiser was so successful that the school is already planning another one in the spring of 2012 to generate money for a new playground.

Contact Steve Fogarty at 329-7146 or sfogarty@chroniclet.com.

---

Print this story
Report an inappropriate comment

---

In order to comment, you must agree to our user agreement and discussion guidelines.

Need help? Email Us.

---