GOSHEN — To those teaching the lessons at Goshen High School, Noah Tonk is the man with the answers. One of the champions of the new freshman laptop program initiated this year, the GHS assistant principal knows he’s in for an interesting day of challenges every time he walks into the building.

“There’s an ancient Chinese curse, I’m told,” Tonk said before pausing a moment to remember how it went. “‘May you live interesting times.’”

Tonk, a former English teacher, and his colleagues are most definitely living in interesting times as Goshen High School began trudging headfirst last month into an advanced era of technical-based instruction.

Instead of textbooks this year, GHS freshmen were given laptop computers. Instead of worksheets, they’ll work with spread sheets. Instead of using No. 2 pencils for important exams, they’ll use their keyboard. Instead of handing in a research paper, they’ll “share” it electronically with their teacher.

“But what’s really nice,” said GHS freshman Jonathan Bailey, “is I don’t have to lug around a bunch of textbooks. We’re virtually paperless and that makes things a lot easier.”

For the freshmen, maybe. For Tonk and the faculty, however, each day is a new adventure that can be soothed with a notion that the “curse” they currently carry will eventually become a blessing for all.

“We’re building the plane as we’re flying it,” Tonk said Wednesday. “This is going to be a growing year where we’re developing these best practices using our new technology.”

Phasing in

Earlier this summer, after much discussion, Goshen school trustees approved the expenditure to purchase 500 laptop computers to distribute to incoming freshmen. The overall cost was more than $300,000. At the same time, the decision was made to forego new textbook adoption.

A portion of that will be paid through a rental program with parents, much like book rental fees are handled. The majority, however, will be paid through the school corporation’s Capital Projects Fund.

The plan is to phase-in the laptop program by class until each student in the school has one by the 2014-15 school year. Until then, upperclassman who are not assigned a computer are allowed to use their own if they have one. Students can even use their “smart” phones in class to access information on the Internet.

“Yeah, instead of yelling at us for having our phones, teachers are actually encouraging us to use them,” said senior Cooper Douwsma. “It’s a whole different view now.” Douwsma, who plans to attend Indiana University Fort Wayne next year, is actually enrolled in GHS’ first computer repair class that will help maintain the computers, troubleshoot and track the inventory.

Just days before school was to start, 500 Lenovo Thinkpad Edge laptops arrived at the high school.

“There were eight creates of computers,” said Brock Maust, an engineering technology instructor who teaches the repair class and helped oversee the distribution of nearly 480 of the laptops. “That was a little overwhelming. ...Sometimes it can feel like we’re a snowball rolling downhill.”

Maust and his repair class students unpacked the laptops and made sure each one was charged and imaged correctly for the schools’ system. Earlier in the summer the tech department installed four separate wireless systems in the building to be able to accommodate online needs for the students.

On Aug. 25, school officials hosted a computer distribution/orientation night in the gym. The freshmen arrived with their parents, filled out some paperwork and were assigned their laptops.

“We want these freshmen to feel like it’s their laptop,” Maust said. “(Aug. 25) was amazing. We gave them their laptop, smiled and said, ‘Go home and have fun.’”

‘A whole new world’

For GHS Principal Jim Kirkton, the new program is a step toward making learning as practical and efficient as possible for students. He also believes it can help level the educational playing field.

“We gave out a lot of computers to families that don’t have them,” Kirkton said. “Computers are nothing new. Almost every household has a computer. But to those families that don’t, we opened up a whole new world.”

It’s a new world for educators also, who are now transitioning from lesson plans based on a single text book to instruction gleaned from a multitude of sources. It’s an adjustment, Kirkton admits, but one worth making in the technical age.

“Textbooks contain what you’re teaching,” Kirkton explained. “But a textbook is also just one source of information. That’s fine, but it’s not necessarily what you need to solve problems.”

Therefore, Kirkton explained, textbooks will eventually fade out of the schoolhouse. Because the freshmen were assigned laptops this year, they weren’t assigned a single textbook. Instead, teachers plan for the instruction and sources are found on various websites.

It’s a new tech concept that Kirkton believes will help Goshen students work more efficiently, access a much broader range of information, keep up with state standards and ultimately improve their test scores.

For Tonk, who was also a technology in education director at a school district in Arizona before coming to Goshen, the laptops also are a great benefit to teachers.

“As a teacher I remember bringing the milk create filled with research papers home and a tenth of them get graded and the rest just get a ride back and fourth from home to school and back again,” he said with a chuckle. “You’re doing that each day with a cup of coffee hoping that the coffee cup and the crate of papers don’t actually collide.”

Google Docs, Tonk said, takes coffee-stained papers out of the equation, along with a sore back. Now, instead of handing in a report written longhand on wide-ruled paper, students hit a button on their laptop and “share” their report with their teacher.

That document will then appear in the teacher’s electronic queue and is ready to be graded.

“I told our teachers that this is their new crate of papers,” Tonk said. “Only it’s very small and you can stick it in your briefcase.”

Teachers can then open the document on their laptop and add comments and corrections to the work and send it back to the student who can see the results of their efforts immediately.

It’s indeed an interesting, new era of instruction.

“These laptops aren’t about making us look good or some 21st Century buzzword we get to use,” Tonk said. “It’s about really adding another tool to our toolbox. It’s not a teaching strategy. It’s a tool.”