MT. VERNON — District 80 third through eighth graders will have the latest technology at their fingertips by next school year.

Mt. Vernon City Schools received $658,500 from the Illinois State Board of Education’s Children’s Low-cost Laptop Program, which will help fund infrastructure and the purchase of Windows or Android-based devices for every third- through eighth-grade student as well as 60 teachers.

The grant is the largest competitive grant awarded as part of the program, said District 80 Superintendent Kevin Settle.

“It’s really exciting, because when we wrote for this, we decided to write for a very comprehensive grant,” Settle said. “We wanted to put a laptop on the desk of every third- through eighth-grade student in the district. We felt that if we were going to do it, that’s how we wanted to do it. ... It’s quite rewarding with all the efforts that went into it, because ... there were a lot of requirements that we had to document before we could even be considered for the grant.”

Settle said the district had to demonstrate its capacity to operate grant programs and all administrators, teachers and students in third through eighth grade completed online surveys.

Assistant Superintendent Tyler Brown said three regions were considered for the grant — Chicago, the collar counties and down state. He said of the down state region, the next highest grant of about $200,000 went to Palatine, a school district he said is 10 times the size of District 80.

The district will purchase more than 1,000 laptops or mobile devices for students, as well as three mobile labs for kindergartners through second graders. Settle said the use of the computers will likely operate like textbook rental, where students will pay a small insurance fee and then be able to take the computer home.

District 80’s current wireless Internet infrastructure supports about 50 devices per building, but it will be updated to support “thousands” of machines simultaneously, Settle said.

Settle said at April’s Board of Education meeting, he will ask the board to hire a technology coach for the district to help integrate the computers into the educational process.

Brown said he believes the laptop program has the ability of revolutionizing the educational process.

“They are learning differently,” he said. “They’ve never been alive when technology wasn’t a part of everyday life.”

Several classrooms have piloted using laptops, including Kevin McGreer’s class at the Primary Center and Letha Sieveking at Casey Middle School.

On Wednesday, McGreer’s students used their small Dell laptops to add and subtract, to figure out times of the day and to follow along with McGreer’s instructions on the classroom’s SmartBoard.

Sieveking said in a press release that her students have shown a lot of interest in the technology.

“The extra opportunities to review material help with confidence and learning,” she said. “Students have great motivation to do a task when technology is a part of it. Increased engagement equals increased learning.”

To brainstorm how the computers could be integrated into the educational process, Brown said District 80 created an Instructional Change Team.

“We’ve had a lot of tech grants in the past that were essentially deployment grants,” Brown said. “This grant is not that. This is money for infrastructure and computers, and the training is on how you utilize the computers for student learning. Now, how do you change the way you teach? That’s the focus. ... It’s our teachers who will make it a success.”