Now all the students will get the same experience when school starts this fall.

Over the summer, every classroom and the library at Middletown Elementary were outfitted with an interactive whiteboard.

The boards, which are interactive displays that work with a computer and projector, cost about $2,000 each. The Jefferson County Public School District gave the school one last year, and several more were funded by the Parent Teacher Association. The school now has 25.

Principal Patty Salyer said the school raised the money over the past three years through fundraisers such as library books sales and students selling coupon books.

She said it was an important investment to make to prepare students for the technological futures they face in school and beyond.

Many students at Middletown Elementary eventually matriculate to Eastern High School, which is a magnet school for science and technology.

“I want our kids to be ready to go to the next level,” she said.

Also, she said, keeping classrooms updated at an older school like Middletown Elementary, which is more than 100 years old, is important to remain competitive with new schools like nearby Stopher Elementary, which are built with the latest technology.

Jefferson County Public Schools has offered training for teachers for how to integrate interactive whiteboards into the classroom. Some schools have them in all their classrooms while others have only a few.

Kemp and Jenny Gallahue, a fourth-grade reading and writing teacher, received district training and have helped introduce the whiteboards into Middletown Elementary's classrooms.

Kemp said that once they were exposed to the whiteboards they immediately became passionate about their ability to engage students. “Kids want to try this.”

To demonstrate how the boards can work, she brought up a lesson that will appear in her classroom on the food system.

She showed how students could move pictures of the sun, plants and insects into a sequence, and write answers below questions. There's a math suite too, with graphs and geometry, and as kids get older, they can use the system's more sophisticated programs, like a simulated dissection of a frog.

Gallahue said the board interactivity appeals to a variety of learning styles. It especially attracts a generation that has grown up with video and computer games, she said.

Kemp said last year, when she first began using the board, she tried to create an algebra lesson for it. It didn't work. She said one of her students, Zach Jones, a rising fifth-grader, came forth and made it for her.