To encourage the use of computers among its employees, the Neenah, Wis., Joint School District is offering teachers a rebate of up to $1,000 toward the purchase of a home computer.

The local school board approved $150,000 for the program on Nov. 17. The rebate is open to all full-time district employees, including custodians and food-service workers.

The school district will reimburse employees for half the computer’s cost up to $1,000.

“I’d like to think that this is a thank-you and a pat-on-the-back sort of a way for the Board of Education to show its recognition that [school employees] do spend a lot money out of their own pocket,” said board President David Ellis.

School district officials hope that if employees become proficient with a home computer, those skills will carry over to the workplace.

Superintendent Richard Carlson said the school board might consider extending the program if it proves popular.

The Spirit Lake, Iowa, school district’s electric bills soon will be blowing in the wind. By the middle of next year, the district plans to have its electricity supplied entirely by two wind-energy generators.

The district installed one 240-kilowatt wind turbine in 1993 to power the elementary school, with enough electricity left over for 188 homes. Officials are adding a second, larger generator next year.

Superintendent Harold Overman said the first turbine already has paid for itself, and he said the power savings over the next five years would be enough to equip a computer lab.

“In my 28 years, it’s the single most popular thing I’ve done,” Overman said. “It’s a nice looking thing on the horizon. People are proud of it. They know that it’s returning finances to them. It’s a no-loser.”

The second unit, which will cost about $550,000, will be 500 kilowatts. Bids will be opened Dec. 14, and the district hopes to have it up and running by next July. Officials said they are working with Alliant Energy to buy the excess power.

“It’s just amazing that everyone isn’t doing this,” Overman said.

A laser pointer has resulted in an in-school suspension for a 12-year-old Dubuque, Iowa, girl, because school officials said the devices–which emit a tiny red beam of light–are treated as though they are weapons. Like many school districts, Dubuque is cracking down on laser pointers, confiscating them when it can and noting they are a disruption in class and potentially dangerous.

“We’ve noticed it this school year,” said Ed Mulholland, a Hempstead High School assistant principal. “It’s become a fad.”

The battery-powered pointers contain a small, but powerful laser diode. The diode emits a red light that travels as far as 300 feet. The light helps lecturers point to information on a screen, chart, or blackboard.

Laser pointers are available at office supply stores from key-chain versions that sell for about $12 to fancier versions built into pens that sell for $80 or more.

The American Academy of Ophthalmology has warned parents that laser pointers can be more intense than the sun’s light. Aiming pointers at the eye can be more damaging than staring into the sun.

Dubuque Superintendent Joel Morris said there is no district policy about laser pointers.

But, he said, “We have been dealing with them as if they were a weapon.”

Bringing a laser pointer to school usually results in confiscation, he said. But if they’re used threateningly, he said, that can lead to an in-school suspension.

Wendy Balser’s 12-year-old daughter, Kambrie, brought a low-powered laser pointer to school and was given a three-day in-school suspension.

“It was definitely a shock to hear it was considered a weapon,” Balser said. “If you shine it into an eye for a prolonged period of time it could cause damage. But we all know that when you put a pencil in an eye it can cause damage, too.”

The CEO Forum on Education and Technology, a partnership of 21 business and education leaders, has released an updated version of its School Technology and Readiness (STaR) Chart. Terry Crane, president of Jostens Learning Corp. and this year’s forum leader, said the revised chart stresses professional development standards for teachers.

“It is crucial that we adequately prepare teachers so that they may prepare our students for the ever-expanding technological world that awaits them outside their school walls,” Crane said. These efforts are particularly important now, she added, because public schools are expected to hire at least 200,000 new K-12 teachers in the next decade.

The STaR Chart, first released last fall, is a tool for educators to measure the integration of technology in their schools. This year’s emphasis on professional development in part reflects the fact that money allocated to training in most school district budgets falls far short of the 30 percent of overall technology funding recommended by the U.S. Department of Education.

At the presentation of the new STaR Chart Oct. 29, Crane urged school systems and schools of education to take the following steps to improve professional development:

1) Require mastery of the use of technology in the classroom for licensing and certification of new teachers;

2) Require technology skills for current teachers to keep their licenses;

3) Encourage and reward technology integration and innovation in performance reviews for teachers, administrators, and professors at schools of edu- cation; and

4) Create new incentives for schools, districts, and classroom teachers to integrate technology into the curriculum.

Privacy protection law could make student access more difficult

A new federal law that has yet to take effect is already shaping children’s online experience on such web sites as Time Warner’s Sports Illustrated for Kids and Disney Online, according to the New York Times.

The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) quietly entered the books as part of the omnibus budget bill that was signed into law Oct. 21. (The privacy protection statute is not to be confused with the similar-sounding Child Online Protection Act — COPA — a law being challenged in federal court as the successor to the Communications Decency Act, which was struck down by the Supreme Court.

COPPA is designed to protect children’s safety by requiring commercial web sites to get permission from parents before collecting personal information from children under 13. But critics are worried that such requirements could stifle the very quality that makes the internet so compelling: its ability to transmit information instantly.

Others wonder if the law will have unintended consequences, pushing children into sites meant for more mature audiences, simply because of the bother involved in getting their parents’ permission to view sites intended for them.

Julie T. Richer, president of Able Minds Inc., the San-Francisco-based company that publishes the children’s site CyberKids, told the Times, “The government is making it harder for kids to get into web sites specially targeted for them. So where are they going to go? Adult sites.”