Launching year 3 of LIP program
 Chapin’s Laptop Immersion Program, known by the acronym LIP, launched its third year on Friday with the Class of 2012. After several training weeks, each member of Class 6 will receive a Chapin-issued laptop to use in class and in free periods throughout the school day. The program began in fall 2003; it has demonstrated enormous success in increasing students’ ownership of the usage of computers and has provided a platform for the discussion of academic honesty and responsibility.
On the first day of the LIP program, Class 6 girls practiced laptop care, picking up their laptops and returning them to the cart. Then they proceeded to the Gordon Room, which soon filled with the sounds of eager typing. The girls spent several hours with Mr. Bergen, the school’s head of technology, learning information vital to this upcoming year, including how to e-mail their homework assignments to their teachers.
Regardless of their previous computer experience, the students appeared enthusiastic. One Class 6 student looked forward to the computer practice because, she reported, “sometimes I have trouble using [my Mac].” Another student said that because she loved technology so much, “if I get to learn one thing by making an old-fashioned demonstration or a cool PowerPoint demonstration, I would pick the PowerPoint demonstration.”
The LIP program was designed to make the girls, in Mr. Bergen’s words, “incredibly tech-savvy.” Skills covered include Microsoft Word and Excel, Adobe Photoshop, and writing HTML code for Web pages. The program offers this knowledge in a meaningful way, deeper than a surface awareness. LIP provides students with significant hands-on time with the computer, so that they will be able to independently solve problems they encounter. “We want them to be always engaged in figuring things out on the computer so that it becomes what it should be: their tool for the 21st century as they become the leaders of the 21st century,” Mr. Bergen said.
The LIP program has proven to be a useful platform to discuss issues of privilege and responsibility in the use of technology. The girls learn about Internet safety, appropriate behavior to classmates, proper laptop care and file sharing. LIP veterans, who are now in Classes 7 and 8, appreciate the trust that Chapin put in them by giving them their own laptops.
“When I was in sixth grade, I would tell [my sister] about my experience every day about what we did in class,” said J.B., a Class 8 student whose younger sibling began the LIP program this year. “Now it is her turn to experience what I enjoyed two years ago.”
Click here to see more photos from the LIP launch
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