Dozens of Oak Park teachers lined up in an auditorium Monday, waiting to take their first step toward getting a wired classroom.

The 45 teachers came from every school in the Oak Park Unified School District. Lined up on a table in the front of the room, 45 MacBooks sat swaddled in baby blankets.

"Welcome to laptop adoption day," shouted Jane Mintz, the district's director of educational technology.

Teachers cheered and applauded in response. Many have desktop computers in their classrooms now. Those are used daily for e-mail or creating documents, they said, but not to interact with students. That's expected to change.

Monday's laptop adoption and training session was the kickoff to the district's 21st Century Classroom initiative. The program was designed to change the way Oak Park students are taught and was paid for using funds from Measure C6.

District voters approved the $17.5 million bond measure for new equipment, technology and furniture last year.

It will cost property owners $24 a year per $100,000 of assessed value.

This year, the district will wire 43 model 21st Century classrooms, which will all be equipped with interactive smart board and document cameras when school starts Aug. 28.

All the teachers who volunteered and were accepted into the first wave of the program, including several who share classrooms, will get MacBook laptops.

"I am so excited about this," said Sharon Lavene, who teaches seventh grade at Medea Creek Middle School. "It's just a (new) way of reaching kids."

Lavene sat alongside her colleagues and listened Monday as two representatives from Apple introduced them to their computers. Later this summer, teachers will go through a second round of training to learn to use the smart board technology.

Mintz said teachers will learn how to use the equipment as interactive tools in the classroom, not just updated equipment that's used in the same old way.

For example, a smart board can record a teacher working on a new math problem with a class.

Then later, the teacher can post that video to the classroom Web site for students to refer to at home.

Or the document camera could pick up an essay written in a student's notebook. Then, the class could use the smart board to underline key words or make changes.

"Kids have changed a lot, and instruction hasn't changed," Mintz said. "School can't become a six-hour vacation from their world."