II. Find an up-to-date Russian article on the topic discussed, render it into English and say if much has changed in the American educational system by now.

The Modern Student: Batteries Not Included

Lasers, and Pagers, and Cells – Oh my!

Rohnert park, California, 60 miles north of San Francisco, is mostly white and middle class, but it is no Lake Wobegon. At the local high school, most of the high students are academically average. SAT scores hover around 1025, and the dropout rate is low.

Some of the sports teams shine, while others struggle. The homecoming dance in the fall and the prom in the spring are the year's two social high points.

And like their counterparts around the country, the 2,000 students at the school, Rancho Cotate, are no strangers to electronic devices. That makes it as good a place as any to see what kind of gadgets the thoroughly modern high school student is using these days.

When the Ranch, as the school is called, reopens this fall, students will arrive with electronic paraphernalia aplenty, their backpacks heavy with cell phones, pagers, CD players and custom-burned CD's, as well as graphing calculators and the occasional Palm organizer and laptop computer.

The gadgetry falls into two categories. First, there are the learning aids. Those include graphing calculators for science and math, electronic translators for foreign language classes and electronic spelling checkers and synonym dictionaries for English assignments.

Some teachers like at least some of the gadgets, while others are skeptical, but they do not prohibit them.

Betsey Moses, a 44-year-old Spanish teacher, for instance, is of two minds about the pocket translators she sees scattered among her students.

Ms. Moses said she often saw students type in a word and get translations that were literally correct, yet wrong for the context. When she had students write about what they did during their spring vacation last year, out came the translators.

When the students looked for Spanish words to describe their spring break, Ms. Moses said, ''they found a word for 'break your leg.' '' She added, ''Then they looked up 'spring,' and it didn't help them with that, either.''

Ms. Moses said she considered the translators a gimmick, hardly worth the $50 -- or even $100 -- the students spend on each one. Instead, she recommends a good Spanish dictionary and a strong understanding of idiomatic usage. ''They don't know that they've been ripped off,'' she said, ''and they'll defend using the translators.''

By way of rejoinder, Ms. Moses said, she offers her students examples of how the misuse of a word can end up making the speaker look silly. ''The last thing high school kids want is to look stupid in front of their peers when it's not on purpose,'' she said.

Graphing calculators, which can run small computer programs and draw the graph represented by a complex equation in an instant, continue to find their way into classrooms, and teachers at the Ranch are mixed in their opinions.

Barbara Utter, 48, a math teacher who has taught at the school for 17 years, generally encourages the use of graphing calculators because of the power they put into the students' hands.

But Drew Kempiak, 28, a science teacher, isn't so convinced of their utility. Often, he said, students have no idea how to use many of their calculators' features.

A typical conversation with a student, Mr. Kempiak said, goes as follows:

Mr. Kempiak, pointing to a ''1 divided by X'' button: ''What does this button do?''

Student: ''I don't know.''

Mr. Kempiak: ''Why do you have this calculator, then?''

Student: ''It's what my mom told me to get.''

John Vogt, 42, a biology teacher, said he did not allow students to use calculators at the beginning of the year.

''I want to make sure the kids know how to do some of these calculations by themselves first,'' he said. ''Believe it or not, there are high school kids who don't know how to do simple things like convert decimals to fractions.''

Graphing calculators often do double duty as game machines, and students can be wily when it comes to using them to play. Mr. Vogt said he could spot a student using a calculator for a game. ''I can tell when they're using them to do math because I see them punching in their data,'' he said. ''But if I just see them pushing buttons, I know they're playing a game.''

The diversions offered by other devices are less easily disguised. They fall squarely into the other category of electronic devices: extracurricular.

No class hour would be complete without the distraction of cell phones and pagers. Teachers at the Ranch say more students are carrying cell phones, although pagers are still the most common communications device. By some teachers' estimates, one student in three carries a pager, and one in seven has a cell phone.

Both types of devices are officially banned at the school, in accordance with California's education code. But teachers and administrators at the Ranch have long since given up on enforcing the ban, and some have even found the cell phones useful.

Bernadette Tucker, 33, who teaches English and journalism, said the phone in her classroom broke four months ago. When her journalism classes met, she said, the students needed a phone to get information for their articles. ''We used the kids' cell phones to make calls,'' she said.

At the same time, Ms. Tucker said, cell phone use may be getting out of hand. She was appalled when she saw seniors calling one another during the most recent graduation ceremony.

''They did it because it's cool,'' she said. ''You can talk to your friend 50 feet away even if you're not sitting next to him or her. I was aghast at the disrespect that indicated.''

Ms. Utter said her students were not very good at hiding their pagers. ''You'd think the kids would be smart enough to put them on vibrate,'' she said. ''And if it does vibrate, they have to check it, and the moment they do, everyone wants to know who it was.''

The proliferation of pagers and cell phones has taught Ms. Utter and her colleagues to be suspicious of requests to go to the bathroom. ''Nine times out of 10 they're not going to the bathroom -- they just want to make a phone call,'' she said. ''I tell them straight out, 'I'm not that stupid.' ''

Mr. Vogt is stricter still. Pagers and cell phones that go off in his class are confiscated immediately, and parents have to reclaim them in person. ''I guess I'm just a stickler for the rules,'' he said.

Many parents, of course, want their children to carry cell phones or pagers so they can stay in touch or reach their children in an emergency.

But entertainment is the only reason to have the popular Sony Discman, and it is everywhere at the Ranch.

CD players, still far more prevalent than MP3 players, are the subject of frequent discussions by concerned teachers and staff members at the school. In general, said Mary Lee Higgins, an assistant principal, disc players are not allowed in classrooms but can be used at lunch or after school.

Ms. Utter said she did not allow CD players in her classroom under any circumstances.

Others are more lenient. ''If I'm done lecturing and presenting information, and they're studying or doing practice work,'' Mr. Kempiak said, ''I let them listen to their music because at that point it's their time. My policy is, if it does not disrupt me or any of the students in the class, then it's fine.''

Enforcing the rules can require constant vigilance. Ms. Utter said sweatshirt hoods must stay off heads at all times just in case the clothing is covering earphones. ''Then again,'' she added, ''those little ear buds are pretty easy to hide.''

But she is not easily defeated. The tip-off, she said, is the volume. ''They're not too bright,'' she said. ''They get it wired up through their shirts and up to their ears, then they play it too loud.''

Mr. Kempiak said he kept his eye on students' pockets. ''If they fidget with their pocket,'' he said, ''it means they're speeding up to go to another song, or they might be changing radio stations.''

Mr. Kempiak said several of his students not only burned their own audio CD's but also made their own game CD's. Occasionally, he said, if a good student is finished with classwork and asks to use the class computer to play a game, he allows it -- as long as the game is relatively benign.

The disparity in conduct standards has sown some animosity among the teachers. ''There's a giant spread,'' Mr. Kempiak said. ''There are teachers who don't want to enforce rules, period, all the way to teachers who would like a guard tower and barbed wire.''

Until recently, laser pointers were the preferred gadget among pranksters. ''It's the new spitball,'' Mr. Kempiak said. ''While the teacher has his back turned, you put a little red dot on him.'' Mr. Vogt likened it to the once popular practice of using small mirrors to reflect the sun into people's eyes.

During the last school year, Mr. Kempiak said, a student in his freshman physical science class directed a laser pointer through several panes of glass and into the eyes of a teacher in a classroom in an adjacent building. A laser can pose a safety risk if it is shined directly into the eye. The student was suspended.

That incident, coupled with a fad that had students putting a variety of covers on the tips of the pointers so they could project sexually suggestive shapes, led to a ban on the devices.

Walkie-talkies were just beginning to catch on at the Ranch last year when a group of students tuned in to conversations between staff members using walkie-talkies. Students' use of walkie-talkies was banned soon afterward.

Handheld organizers, like Palms or Visors, are still largely the domain of high school students who are more affluent than most of those who attend Rancho Cotate High, yet a few teachers interviewed said they were beginning to see these organizers showing up in class. The Palm is popular among students because of its wireless e-mail functions. Less expensive devices that can send messages across a cafeteria are more for the middle school crowd, Ms. Utter said.

Students in Ms. Utter's classes still pass handwritten notes. ''Pen and pencil is not a technology we'll lose,'' she said.

Katie Hafner

/The New York Times, August 10, 2000/

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