By Katie Pesznecker, Anchorage Daily News

The books are open at Wendler Middle School -- MacBooks, that is.

Sixty seventh-graders there have received free-to-use laptops. They can't take them home, yet. But they haul them around between classes, use them for note-taking and other assignments, and tap into wireless Internet for easy research and browsing.

The theory: Give children constant access to technology and they will read more often, learn better and have fun doing it. Wendler is one of 48 Alaska schools in 18 school districts trying this techie approach. The project is run by the Association of Alaska School Boards and mostly paid for by a grant from the state Legislature.

It's too soon to say if it will make a difference. For now, the kids are just stoked to have the laptops, teachers are enthusiastic and Wendler principal Joel Roylance thinks this experiment is a glimpse of the future of public education.

"I have no doubt," he said. "These students are comfortable with technology. At home, the television is on, the phone's on their ear and they have the laptop open. Then they'll take the PDA and use that at the same time. It's just seamless for these kids. They've grown up around it. They're used to it. They're not afraid of it."

Equipping middle-schoolers with laptops isn't a new strategy. It's happened around the country and got a boost in 2002 when all middle school students and teachers in Maine got laptops from the One-to-One program by Apple.

A study of the first two years of that project showed promising results: Four of five teachers said students were more tuned in, did better work and were more prepared for state tests; seven of 10 kids said the computers helped them get organized and work faster.

That sold Andrew Halcro, a former Alaska state representative and candidate in the 2006 gubernatorial election. On the campaign trail, Halcro said his education plan included assigning a laptop to each of Alaska's 20,000 middle school students.

Halcro talked to Maine officials familiar with the program, who reported improved test scores from their students.

But that isn't the only goal, Halcro said in a post-election interview. Middle school can be a tough, tenuous time, when many kids mentally check out from school.

Maine officials saw the laptops help battle some of that, Halcro said. Online message boards for classes actually had students talking and interacting more with one another and with their teachers.

"It does help kids get engaged and maybe reduce the dropout rate," Halcro said. "You could spread out from there. It's all about hooking kids on learning. ... Giving a student a textbook isn't even reality any more. Give them some tools."

The laptop projects landed on the radar of the Association of Alaska School Boards. Officials saw it as a way to "level the playing field" by helping schools that might be technologically lagging, said Bruce Johnson, director of AASB's Quality Schools, Quality Students program.

The group invited an Apple Computers vice president to talk about the program at AASB's fall 2005 convention.

"He just ignited us," Johnson said. "We had school board presidents from across the state asking us, how can we get started down this pathway?"

Now each of the 48 schools involved have their laptops. Most are in rural districts. One school in Juneau and one school in Fairbanks are participating. And in Anchorage, it's Wendler.

The Wendler students got their laptops a week before winter break. Each kid uses the same one every day for English, social studies, math and science classes.

They'll now take notes for science and math class using a program called NoteTaker, doing away with composition notebooks. Teachers will grade their assignments electronically. Math software like the Appleworks Drawing Program and Geometer Sketchpad will "help students visualize mathematical concepts," teacher Kehle Middleton said.

In social studies, the students have watched online videos about Mexico and South America and used Microsoft Word to import photos that match up with vocabulary words.

English teacher Holly MacInnis will have her students make family trees using a genealogical program that lets them add video, photos and Web links.

At first, though, the students just learned how to run the machines -- everything from basic laptop care to battery charging to making and saving files.

For some, it's review. They have computers at home and know how to use them.

Others, like Ryan Sherwin, don't have computers at home. But he said figuring out the new laptops "is pretty easy," as he's used computers before.

The difference now, Ryan said, is how often he'll get to use a computer. Before the laptops arrived, computer use "was, like, during lunch, and that's it," the 12-year-old said.

Now he's got one for most of his school day, during all his core academic classes.

"We've made a podcast already, took a bunch of photos with our laptops -- there's a camera on it," Ryan said. "We started saving files and creating files for all of our core classes."

The teachers like the laptops because they allow for flexibility in each student's academic day.

"Handing the students a single textbook and saying, 'Here, read this and answer the questions,' is unfair to those higher and lower students," said MacInnis in an e-mail. "Because students are using technology, they are excited to go beyond what's required. They aren't handed more worksheets. ... Instead, they can truly extend themselves into higher levels of thinking."

Skeptics say that students can also goof off and go nuts with Internet surfing, downloading games and music, or wasting time on sites like MySpace.

But Roylance, the principal, is confident that won't happen. MySpace, for example, is just one of many similar socializing sites that's blocked by the district. And the kids know there are strict rules about storing any non-school-related files and that breaking those rules will mean bye-bye laptop, he said.

There are other ways the project could go bad.

If teachers don't know what they're doing, neither will the kids. So they had to go through a lot of training.

There's also the question of money. In Wendler's case, the Association of Alaska School Boards got funding from the state for two-thirds of the bill -- $5 million for the whole state, they say. Participating school districts pick up the rest.

Funding isn't guaranteed for next year, but Johnson, with the Association of Alaska School Boards, said he's confident the project will roll on when lawmakers see success.

"We believe and told the Legislature that this is just the very beginning," Johnson said. "We told them, give us $5 million and we'll prove to you that districts will use these resources responsibly ... and we can start showing you some results."

During the gubernatorial campaign, Halcro heard from one teacher who criticized his laptop plan because she felt the money school districts put out would be better spent lowering class sizes.

It's all part of improving education, and if schools see results from the laptop use, it should be expanded, Halcro said.

Roylance said he'd support expanding the program if he saw proof that access to the laptops helped kids do better on tests.

"If I can't do that, I've wasted my time," Roylance said. "But I do think it's already working. They're going to go into the workplace with some base-level computer skills, and that's valuable."