RALEIGH, N.C., November 9, 2005 — Lenovo today announced that Saint Mary’s School, an independent all-girls’ college preparatory school in Raleigh, is the first high school to deploy ThinkPad X41 Tablet PCs to students and faculty. The writable slate and unique functions of the ThinkPad X41 Tablets will help students and teachers discover new ways to work, learn and interact in the classroom and on campus.
The fall semester marks an exciting advancement in the school’s curriculum as Saint Mary’s launches its ATLAS program – Applying Tablets for Learning and Academic Success. Saint Mary’s School will work with Lenovo to integrate tablets into the classroom and expects the technology will facilitate greater collaboration and more efficient and engaging lessons.
“Our teachers and students are raving about the ThinkPad Tablets from Lenovo in their classrooms,” said Theo Wilkes Coonrod, Head of Saint Mary’s School. “Classroom instruction and student learning have been revolutionized with this one cool machine. I am impressed with the increased level of interaction and enthusiasm this technology has created. Security and self-service features of the ThinkPad Tablets also help protect the investment we have made in this new technology and in our ATLAS program.”
Tablet PCs enable Saint Mary’s School faculty to approach traditional classroom exercises with an innovative twist. For example, instead of sketching a costume design for dance class using a pen and paper, students can use graphical software and the tablet’s stylus to quickly create, review and modify images, such as changing scene and costume colors with the click of a button. Music teachers can e-mail (1) handwritten lessons in musical notation to student tablets for tailored homework assignments. In biology class, a student’s well-executed molecular diagram can be instantly distributed electronically, instead of made into a transparency or drawn on the chalkboard.
“With my ThinkPad Tablet in writing mode, I can have geometry notes on a projection screen, highlight and color code items of importance and work out examples while facing the students. I can even refer back to previous examples, which I couldn’t do when I had to frequently erase the board,” said Katie Bradbury, Saint Mary’s School mathematics teacher. “I envision my notes one day being completely tablet generated. I will send my students a document and we’ll work on the lesson together. Students will then save the notes on their tablet and have their own electronic binder.”
The school selected the ThinkPad X41 Tablet for its weight, handwriting recognition capability and keyboard-to-writing slate convertibility to support classes in a liberal arts and sciences curriculum. Teachers and students are now able to create and share images, diagrams, documents and research as they are developed for immediate feedback or to save or print for absent students. For example, a wider variety of activities is now possible since both images and words can be captured, saved and shared during classroom lessons. These electronic documents can also be manipulated in real-time through image, text, sound and color, then shared across the room or across the city through the Internet to a classmate home sick from school that day.
Using tablet PCs, teachers can engage every student, whether they are an auditory or visual learner. In addition, the portability of the tablet expands lesson options. “When I am away from a classroom I can still use the functions of my computer as if I was in my office,” said Kathy Burke, Saint Mary’s School tennis coach. “The drawing function is great for athletics because I can use the tablet for diagrams and explaining drills. After I draw a drill I can then share it with students.”
ThinkVantage Technologies™, available on Lenovo PCs, can help improve student productivity and efficiency. For example, using Access Connections™, a ThinkVantage Technology™ tool that can automatically reconfigure PC and network settings to find available wired and wireless connectivity, students can easily connect to the school’s wireless network to submit or retrieve assignments.
Students can also use Rescue and Recovery™, a one-button recovery solution that helps students recover from a software crash often caused by a virus or worm. An additional feature called Active Protection System™ can help protect students’ data by detecting certain sudden changes in movement, such as in a drop or fall, and responding by temporarily parking the hard drive’s read/write head to help prevent system crashes.
Saint Mary’s School has maintained a mobile computing program since 2002, providing ThinkPad notebooks to faculty. This fall, 95 ThinkPad X41 Tablets were deployed to teachers and classrooms. The school of 268 students expects to have a complete one-to-one tablet environment by fall 2007.
About Saint Mary’s School Founded in 1842, Saint Mary’s School in Raleigh, North Carolina is an independent, Episcopal, college-preparatory and boarding and day school, dedicated to academic excellence and personal achievement for young women in grades 9-12. Saint Mary’s School is located on a scenic and historic 23-acre campus in the heart of the state capitol in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, home to state government, high-tech industry and higher education. For more information, please visit www.saint-marys.edu .
About Lenovo Lenovo (HKSE: 992)(ADR: LNVGY) is the world’s most innovative personal computing company, with a business model built on innovation, operational excellence, customer satisfaction and a focus on investment in emerging markets. Formed by Lenovo Group’s acquisition of the former IBM Personal Computing Division, the company develops, manufactures and markets reliable, high-quality, secure, and easy-to-use technology products and services worldwide. Lenovo has major research centers in Yamato, Japan; Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China; and Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information, see www.lenovo.com .
Lenovo, ThinkPad and ThinkVantage are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lenovo.
Notes 1. Internet access required, not included.
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