Southland to provide after-school computer hours for students

Published 9:58 am Wednesday, October 29, 2008

The Austin/Southland Integration Collaborative will fund an open computer lab for students after school hours at Southland. Beginning in October and for each Wednesday until the end of April, (except December) the computer lab at Southland Elementary in Rose Creek will be open from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Students in grades 2-12 and their families are invited to come and use the lab. Laura Freund, technology and music specialist, will be at the lab, assisting as needed. She hopes that parents will come in with their children because they can learn a lot together. There are 27 computers available, all with fast Internet.

Freund noticed great disparity in computer skills between those students who had computers at home and those who did not. She saw the integration grant as an opportunity to level the playing field. Last year’s open lab logged roughly 800 computer hours.

“Students have realized many benefits from open lab, some that I didn’t anticipate,” Freund said. For middle and high school students who don’t have time to complete work at school, this time is convenient because they can access their documents via network. Elementary students become engaged in educational sites and software that are used in school and online games. Students readily share sites, play games together and learn computer skills from one another. Students from every culturally and economically diverse group have participated in the lab. “Even when kids are playing,” Freund said, “they are reading, honing skills, interacting socially and just generally becoming more aware of what’s out there.”

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Each session begins with a brief activity that is based on inter-cultural awareness. In January, a robotics lab will be added to Open Lab during this same time frame.