Parents and students with the Atlantic Community School District are set to receive instructions this week on the District’s new, 1-to-1 laptop computer initiative. Atlantic High School Technology Coordinator Roger Warne says August 6th and 8th are their “roll-out nights.” Parents and students should check their emails and student handbook for information that will be presented those evenings, as hard copies will not be available during the sessions.

Warne says registration on both nights’ starts at 6:30 p.m. at the high school. Students whose last names start with A-through-L with get their information on August 6th. The rest will receive theirs on August 8th. Attendance at one of the two sessions is mandatory. The district has prepared 450 laptop computers that will provide a dual Operating System platform, meaning they can run both Windows and Apple Macintosh programs.

MacBook Air

Students will be receiving 11-inch, light weight, MacBook Air, full-power computers. No lap tops will be allowed to leave the school those nights unless parents have signed a form indicating they assume responsibility along with their student(S) for the device’ security and any damage that may occur. Warne says parents are probably more excited to see their students receive the lap tops, because the kids are already familiar with them, but the district couldn’t make them available to all students, and that created some disparages with how they could be used.

He said teachers would have to go to a lab or roll a cart into a room, but there was no guarantee the devices would be available on a day-to-day basis. Now they can structure their programs with the device in mind, making it the most efficient way to deliver the technology.)

Warne says getting the computers into the hands of all students in the District is important, because that’s the way education is going. He says eventually there won’t be any text books, and tests and worksheets will be handled online. That allows for instant grading and feedback.

Warne says 65-percent of the schools in the State of Iowa have some type of a similar 1:1 initiative for their students. A school in Omaha was the first in the region to roll out the initiative almost 10-years ago. Other districts have followed suit as cost allowed. More information is available at www.atlanticiaschools.org.

For the second time in four months, Senator Tom Harkin and Congressman Bruce Braley have visited a central Iowa business to highlight their support for increasing the minimum wage. Their Sunday stop in Norwalk, however, comes just days after Braley — the Iowa Democratic Party’s U.S. Senate nominee — began airing an ad attacking his Republican opponent, Joni Ernst, on the issue. “My opponent has said that she opposes a federal minimum and that she thinks $7.25 an hour is just fine for Iowa’s minimum wage workers,” Braley said Sunday, “and that’s where she and I disagree.”

During the primary campaign, Ernst said she opposed a nationwide minimum wage. She said states should set the minimum wage that’s appropriate for the local cost of living in each state. Braley supports raising the federal minimum wage to 10-dollars-and-10 cents an hour and setting up “indexing” so the rate automatically goes up in the future, without the need for congressional action. “So it doesn’t become captive of a political system,” Braley says, “and that’s what’s going on right now.” Harkin says this “should be a voting issue” this fall.

“We’ve had a minimum wage since 1939 and it’s worked well in this country,” Harkin said. “So those who say there should be no minimum wage are really on the fringes of any kind of economic thought at all.” Harkin and Braley toured the La Quercia company in Norwalk, a firm that makes cured meats, like its internationally acclaimed proscuito. The company’s owner has raised the starting pay for his employees to 10-dollars-and-10 cents an hour — the wage level Harkin has been pushing as a new national minimum wage.

In April, Harkin and Braley visited Raygun, a Des Moines t-shirt business known for its provocative slogans to highlight the minimum wage. Raygun’s owner offers a starting pay rate of 13-dollars an hour to his employees.

(Radio Iowa)

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A Texas company seeking to run an underground oil pipeline through Iowa has a laborious approval process to get through before it can start digging. Energy Transfer Partners LP is behind the project, which would carry crude oil from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota to Illinois, cutting diagonally through 17 Iowa counties.

FORT MADISON, Iowa (AP) — Authorities say a 27-year-old was fatally shot by a Fort Madison police officer after he allegedly brandished a knife during a chase. The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation says officers were called to a report of a man slashing vehicle tires with a knife around 1:45 a.m. Sunday. Officers say they spotted Ryan Swearingen with the knife and chased him before Swearingen refused to drop the knife and was shot.

CLEAR LAKE, Iowa (AP) — Four people were hospitalized and six others were injured after an early morning boating accident on Clear Lake. The Mason City Globe Gazette reports that authorities were called to the northern Iowa lake shortly after 2 a.m. Sunday. The Iowa DNR and the Cerro Gordo County Sheriff’s office are investigating.

EPWORTH, Iowa (AP) — Authorities have identified the four boys killed in a crash near the eastern Iowa city of Epworth. The Dubuque Telegraph Herald says the Dubuque County Sheriff’s office released the names Sunday. Those killed were 14-year-old Sean Kenneally of Peosta; 14-year-old Mitchell Kluesner of Epworth; 14-year-old Nicholas Kramer of Dyersville; and 14-year-old Bryce Wilwert of Epworth.