Learning to Be Wired

September 18, 2001

The laptops have names like Snickers, Nelly, Fraggle, Goku and Blue Sister 2. They’re encased in industrial-strength green plastic, the same kind that’s used in the manufacture of football helmets. On this fine spring afternoon, they’re sitting on a corner table in a classroom at Lowell School, an independent pre-primary and primary school in Washington near the border with Silver Spring, waiting for the fourth-graders to burst in and claim them for their own.