Crooms Academy of Information Technology
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| Principal | Dr. Connie E. Collins |
| School type | Public, Magnet |
| Religious affiliation | None |
| Founded | 1926, 2002 in present form |
| Location | Sanford, Florida |
| Enrollment | ~550 |
| Faculty | Not Available |
| Sports teams | Panthers |
| Mascot | Panther |
| School colors | Orange & Maroon |
| Website Location | http://www.cait.scps.k12.fl.us |
Crooms Academy of Information Technology (CAIT), locally called Crooms, is a technology magnet school located in Sanford, Florida.
Widely known for being one of the few schools in the U.S. that issues laptops to every student, Crooms is much smaller than normal high schools, having a little more than 500 students.
[edit] History
Crooms Academy was originally founded by Professor Crooms as the county's first high school for Black students. In 1970 however, Crooms lost its identity and became a school for students with behavior problems, and even for pregnant teenagers. Soon, it became a school for students who struggled academically.
In 1973, the original building burned down and because of neglect, the other buildings deteriorated. In 2000, the school was rebuilt into a school for information technology, and it still is.
[edit] The Buildings
The campus itself consists of a two story building consisting mostly of classrooms and computer labs (Building 1), a gym (Building 3), and a cafetorium (a combination of a cafeteria and an auditorium)(Building 2). The cafetorium building also houses four classrooms and a computer lab. The small size of the campus allows for a capacity of approximately 600 students.
[edit] The Technology
Dell is the number one supplier of the technology at Crooms. Each student is issued a laptop based on grade and condition of previously issued laptops.
Being a small, technology based school, it has many locations that other hight schools do not have. Because of the constant need to repair the students' laptops, the school has a repair location officially called Laptop Centeral, which is commonly called the Sickbay. While a student's laptop is in the Sickbay, there is usually a desktop computer for the student to use to do his work. Also, the school library is more technology based, with charging stations for the laptops, several IMacs, and only a few shelves of books and magazines. Because of this, it is called the Cyber Center.
Students also usually pay an insurance fee and a user fee to help cover the costs of upkeeping the laptops. The combined costs are usually around $100.
Freshmen in the school are issued Dell Latitude D600 Series Laptops featuring the Intel Pentium M (Banias) Processor@ 1.4GHz and Dell 1350BG Wireless Cards.
Sophomores receive a Dell Latitude D600 Series featuring Intel Centrino Mobile Technology with the Pentium M (Banias) Processor@ 1.3GHz and an IntelPRO 2100B Wireless Card. (Some Sophomores received new machines depending on how well their laptops were the previous year.)
Juniors receive new laptops that are ordered every year, 2006-2007's Juniors receive the Dell Latitude D620 Series Laptops with a 14.1 Inch Widescreen WXGA+ Display and Intel Core Duo Mobile Technology. The specs for these are the Intel Core Duo T2300(Yonah) @ 1.66(x2) GHz Processor and the IntelPRO Wireless 3495ABG Mini PCI-E WLAN Card.
Seniors (and select sophomores) receive Dell Latitude D610 Series Laptops Featuring the 2nd Generation of Intel Pentium M Processors(Dothan2 "Sonoma")@1.86GHz and Dell Wireless 1370BG Wireless cards similar to the 1350BG series.
All PC's across the board have 512MB of memory (The D610's with DDR2-400 and the D620's with DDR2-667) and Microsoft Windows XP Professional.
The Crooms Tech Team has purchased, along with these laptops, InfoCase Casemates to help protect the laptops. Accidental damage to the laptops is usually covered by the insurance fee but extensive or intentional damage may result in an additional charge or loss of laptop privileges.
The school also uses SMARTBoards in most of the classrooms. The SMARTBoards act like regular whiteboards except there is no ink or marker waste, things "written" on the board can be saved to the computer, and it is easy for students to use. A standard projector connected to a computer shows the image on the board. It usually has 4 pens (Black, Blue, Red, and Green) for students to write with and an eraser tool. The SMARTBoard is connected via a USB port to the computer.
Many students who are technologically savvy have shown their skills in various ways, some make programs, others build computers, and some have created websites.
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