Elverado High School Upgrades Computer Labs

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[ The "No Child Left Behind" program enacted by President Bush has received a lot of criticism on a national level, but Elkville has only to say, "Thank you."

Elverado High School was one of sixteen schools to receive grants in Illinois through the "No Child Left Behind" program. The federal government passes money out to the states who then receive applications from schools for the grant money.

With the hopes of raising computer literacy when they applied for the money, Elverado received $201,000 for technical upgrades and training. The grant requires that 25% of the money be spent toward training the staff to implement the new tools, such as operation or blogging in the classroom.

The remainder of the money is to be spent on various gadgets for the classrooms like cameras, camcorders, projectors, smart-boards and upgrading the computer labs. The school refurbished the current computer labs with fifty new computers, as well as purchasing fifty more computers for use elsewhere in the school. Half of the computer purchased are laptops.

Principal Charley Cass said the school plans to start a student made encyclopedia named Falconpedia. Instead of adding new classes for the new equipment, the principal hopes to raise the bar of the current curriculum and improve computer literacy among students.

Elverado is waiting on the disbursement of the money, but has already received several of the computers. The new computers and labs will be ready to go for the 2008-2009 school year when it starts on Monday.