Deer Park fifth-graders get laptops

Brian Kennedy used to be a casual computer user, tinkering around on his family's desktop PC at home just like many other 10-year-olds.

But now he's recording podcasts, completing online quizzes and navigating class websites for research.

"In my class we're making podcasts, which are little videos that bring our stories to life," Brian said. "We go to websites that help with our educational purposes like spelling and math."

In early November, Brian and 339 other fifth-grade students at the John F. Kennedy Intermediate School received MacBook laptops from the Deer Park school district.

The laptop program is part of the Kristin Green Apple of Our Eye Initiative, named for alumna Kristin Green, who worked at the Apple store in Huntington and died in August in a Pennsylvania car accident.

"When the tragedy with Kristin happened, the board of education thought [the laptop initiative] was a perfect opportunity to pay tribute to Kristin," said Jared Bloom, district administrator of instructional technology and English.

"We turned a total negative to a total positive," Kristin Green's father, Michael, said Friday.

Green, 20, died Aug. 24 after the car she was riding in crashed on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. She and three Apple store co-workers were heading from Long Island to Hershey Park when the driver fell asleep. The other three occupants, including the driver, were injured but survived.

Green was a graduate of the Kennedy School and Deer Park High School's 2007 class.

"She was an integral part of the Apple store in Huntington, which is our local Apple store," said Kennedy School Principal Susan Bronner. "The board of education thought it fitting since we were so embedded with Apple, we would dedicate the initiative to her this year."

Bronner was referring to an existing educational program through Apple, one that many schools have. The school decided to rename its program after Green following her death.

Brian Kennedy's mother, Meryl, said her son has passed along his newly acquired skills to the rest of his family. "He's teaching me and my husband," said the stay-at-home mother from Deer Park. "It's been an amazing experience."

The district will continue buying laptops for every fifth-grade class at the school at an estimated yearly cost of $110,000.

Michael Green and his son Sean, 18, a freshman at Pace University, visited the Kennedy School the day the laptops were distributed. Michael Green said: "You should have seen the joy in their faces."