School administrators typically worry that their students will bring distracting iPods and laptops to school, but one Arkansas school district has welcomed them. Some of the students spend as many as three hours each day commuting from rural Grapevine to school in Sheridan, south of Little Rock. Now they can use that time to learn science and math thanks to a bus with a wireless Internet connection and Billy G. Hudson, a biochemist at Vanderbilt University and a Grapevine native, who conceived the project.
“I just had the concept of one-room schoolhouses in my head, and then I rode the bus and I saw kindergarten through 12 on a bus with nothing to do, and the bus driver had absolute control on their lives for an hour and a half each way,” Mr. Hudson said in an interview. “I thought, well, this is a schoolhouse.”
Vanderbilt donated 15 laptops, which a group of sixth through 12th graders began using on April 10, and shared the remaining equipment costs with the school. Right now, the school controls what students put on their laptops or iPods, but students who complete the initial three-year program will get to keep the technology. Mr. Hudson’s currently seeking funds to strengthen and expand his program.
“Vanderbilt has an outreach center, but it’s been inner city,” Mr. Hudson said. “This is taking it to rural America.”
