Students in Catholic schools all over the archdiocese returned to classrooms fitted with new and upgraded technology. Freshmen at St. Patrick High School, 5900 W. Belmont Ave., are the first high school class in the Chicago archdiocese to use iPads as an educational tool during their daily instruction. The aggressive iPad initiative will replace textbooks with iPads for the entire student body and faculty by the 2013-2014 school year. Christian Brother Konrad Diebold, St. Patrick’s president, announced the change in a letter to freshmen parents this spring. “As the world becomes more digital, students who are adept at using technology to acquire, process and apply knowledge will have the skills needed at the university level as well as those abilities that future employers will seek,” said Diebold. “The collaboration that will take place between and among the students and teachers will model the practices that highly successful companies use in developing their businesses and services.” Through Apple, St. Patrick secured a discounted pricing option of $379 for the iPad 2 which includes two years of AppleCare+. Training for faculty and students took place throughout the summer. Meanwhile, preschool through fifth-grade students who attend elementary schools that are part of the Catholic Consortium of Lake County came back to new laptop computers and expanded wireless networks, thanks to a $114,000 grant from an anonymous donor in California. “Students at Santa Maria del Popolo (Mundelein), St. Mary of the Annunciation (Mundelein), and Transfiguration (Wauconda), will benefit from the enhanced technology in many ways,” said Pat Strang, principal of both Mundelein schools, “with technology leading to expanded reading programs, improved research and writing capabilities, and exciting applications in math and science. Our students will be well prepared for the technology demands of our sister school, Frassati Catholic Academy, and for high school, college and beyond.” The new computers are housed in carts which can be transported between classrooms. Jinny Jacobson, a fourth grade teacher at St. Mary of the Annunciation, said he is excited to “integrate the laptops into her life cycles unit on Monarch butterflies. Each student will have their own computer to research the migration route of the butterflies, track the weather conditions, and plot the temperatures on a graph.” Fourth and fifth grade students will have a chance to use the computers on a daily basis, preparing them for their transition to Frassati, which initiated a one- to-one student computing program four years ago. The technology upgrades will enhance learning at all grade levels, even for the three- and four-year- old preschool students.