Ed Tech Access for All

In addition to the laptops and media centers available in classrooms, every sixth-grade student at R. Frank Nims Middle School in Tallahassee, Fla., also gets connected at home — with a desktop computer, free Internet access and software.

This program, called Digital Harmony, began in August 2007 after much work by Tallahassee City Commissioner Andrew Gillum.

"We spent an entire summer on thinking through and developing the concept, the name, the actions — everything," he said. "It was a pretty intense process. Outside my full-time job, it was really all I worked on that summer."

At age 23, Gillum was the youngest person elected to the Tallahassee City Commission, and he implemented this program when he was 27 years old. Gillum, now almost 30, still plans to broaden his program. Access should not be a luxury, he said; it should be a necessity.

Big ideas

Originally, Gillum said, he was pushing the city of Tallahassee to provide broadband over power lines. However, after legislation issues prohibited further movement on that front, he said the idea was scaled down.

He and his team surveyed the community to see where they could still make a critical impact, and he said Nims Middle School came to his attention.

"It was the only failing school," he said. "We grade our schools here in Florida: F, obviously, being worst performing; D, second to worst performing; C, B and A."

It’s not good to have a failing school in your community, Gillum said, so he met with people in industry and education who could bring skills and ideas to the table. The objectives, he said, were to introduce technology, increase student focus, and assist the administration and teachers to help kids learn at Nims Middle School, where 82 percent of the children are eligible for free or reduced price lunches through the National School Lunch Program.