This school year, the Las Virgenes Unified School District, is implementing the Forward

Learning Initiative into classrooms district-wide. The program aims to strengthen students’

abilities in writing, content creation, media literacy and Internet skills in a technology-rich

environment. In order to do this, the district is providing students in the third, sixth, seventh, ninth

and tenth grades with laptops to use both at home and school. Over the course of the next four

years, LVUSD, with the help of its Education Foundation and parent organizations, will invest two

million dollars into the Forward Learning Initiative with the aims of increased academic

achievement to meet Common Core Standards.

The LVUSD Technology Committee chose the Acer TravelMate B115 laptop for this program

because it evenly balanced durability, functionality and cost-effectiveness. They also deemed the

third, sixth, and ninth grade to be natural times of transition and therefore appropriate times to

introduce and replace new technology. With their laptops, students will participate in collaborative

learning by means of media creation, collaboration, self-evaluation and online assessment tools.

“In the long run the laptops are beneficial to students because it is inevitable that the more

technology progresses, the more we will depend on a computer than pen and paper,” said

sophomore Krystal Gilbert.

Recent changes in curriculums and standardized testing across America-such as

Common Core Standards-encourage an increased involvement of technology in classrooms. On

top of that, the evolving expectations of colleges and the workplace necessitate skills and

experience in technology. As a result of these events, LVUSD is taking the opportunity to

modernize its learning environment in order to better prepare its next generation of students.