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Massachusetts Universities To Require Laptops
karmma writes: "The Boston Globe has published this article that says that Massachusetts will become one of the first states to require the purchase and use of laptop computers. While several private universities have already adopted this practice, this program will be among the first at publicly funding such a program. Full and partial vouchers will be provided to low income students, and educational programs and infrastructure will be established." Actually, Northern Michigan University, a public university in Marquette, Mich., started doing this with laptops a couple of years back. Having spent some time there, it's pretty cool how it works -- it means a lot more integration of electronic material in the classroom, from what I saw.
East Carolina University and the even-more-(in)famous University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (both public-funded universities) have both started requiring Laptops for undergrads... possibly a whole year back already, in fact.
Personally, I think it's a cop-out by the universities. If they want every student to have a computer, they should provide every student a computer, or make them available at a REAL discount through the university system. Making students buy laptops with their own money or financial aid, in addition to tuition, board, beer, etc, can be a hefty financial hit for lots of students.
NCSU doesn't require students to buy computers -- yet, at least. It still has enough lab machines to meet the demand. Of course, lots of students buy computers on their own, and that helps alleviate the demand. But requiring machines for everyone? Waste of the student's money, in my humble opinion. Are they next going to require them to purchase Visual Studio for programming classes, or Photoshop for art classes? These are resources the school (and the students' tuition) should be providing up-front.
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
I'd be surprised if the Amherst campus had much say in proposing this one. Most students here already have a computer, I don't see the need for a school to require everyone to adopt some standard. Why do schools always require laptops? They're more expensive and harder to type on. Also, our connection is saturated with Napster traffic all the time. They'd better buy a bigger pipe if they're going to make everyone get a computer.
This just doesn't seem to fit in with what the school has done traditionally. UMass is a very cheap school, with cheap students. The state has been cutting funding to UMass lately.. I don't know if they'd pay a lot more for a new program such as this.
Just my two cents, as a bitter old student.. one thing's for sure, they'd better not require me to get a laptop.
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Wow, they are still arguing that line? I've heard it before:
"Og, if we use speech, then others may hear what we are saying! In my day, hand signals were better."
"If we teach all the kids how to write, they will never develop their memory! It was a lot better when I was younger, and we could remember whole epics."
"If the people stop believing in the gods, then everyone will be immoral! It was a lot better in my day, when people had proper respect for the religion of their elders!"
"If we have a democracy, then people will loose their responsibility, and just vote themselves benefits! It was a lot better when we had a king, who could act in the state's best interests."
"If we teach that we came from animals, then people will act like animals! It was a lot better in my day, when it was something special to be a human..."
"Slide rules are cheating! In my day, we did long division by hand, and quickly!"
"Calculators are cheating! If a kid doesn't learn the slide rule, then he'll never get a good grasp on logarithms!!!"
Anyway, you can probably come up with your own list. I've heard it so many times, I'd like to give it a name, like "Flibbert", so, when I hear it, I can just say, "Oh, you're just being a Flibbert!", and they can say, "Well, you're just being a knee-jerk AntiFlibbert!", and someone else would say, "You know, you are both right...", and me and the Flibbert can just say "Syntha-Flibbert!" And so on...
(Sorry, drifted off into Marxist Thesis-Antithesis-Synthethis for a second there...)
(the wonderful people behind technogenesis) have always required computer for its students, but after my class, it was mandatory for those computers to be school-issue laptops. now, most of the classes that the freshmen and sophomores take DO require the use of their laptops and alot of their curriculum is web-based, but that doesn't stop just about everyone from playing quake, ut, minesweeper, solitaire, etc. i feel that's highly disrespectful, and hey, maybe i'm just annoyed that i take all my notes by hand, but i feel that having to take care of a laptop distracts me from class... i hate being in a humanities class where i'm trying to pay attention but the people around me are jiggling and clicking like mad. some professors do something about it, others think they're just being eager in their note-taking. erf.
computers in the classroom aren't a panacea [sp].
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Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Seriously, though, this is a good thing, if only because it gives me an excuse to buy a laptop. Now I'm going to unabashedly troll and ask for opinions here: Windows laptop or Mac laptop? Windows laptop hardware tends to be kind of crappy, but a Mac laptop is, well, a Mac at the core... But it does have OS X, which I have seen and really looks pretty nice. Suggestions?
My roommate has an older (maybe 2 years) G3 Powerbook - it's 292mhz or something wierd like that. I installed LinuxPPC on it and it kicks ass. With the two included batteries you can get 8-10 hours of constant usage on in, and LinuxPPC is pretty nice. Everything is completely supported - sound, modem, ethernet, video, power management, etc...
If you want to run Linux on a laptop, I suggest a Powerbook.
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I'm a UMass student. They would most likely support either Windows or MacOS. They allow you to use almost anything you want (there are many linux people here) but there is a very limited set of applications the helpdesk supports (Netscape or IE for web, Eudora, Netscape, OE or PINE for e-mail, etc)
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When my brother went to UVM he had to buy a computer. It was $3000 dollar IBM microchannel 386 which he paid for over his 4 years there. When he graduated it was so slow it was next to useless.
When I was at UMass we could use the Engineering computer lab which was chock full of fine 486s and dot matrix printers..We could use them 24x7 by getting a key from the dept.
I don't see how requiring computers helps anything.
This seems to me like a giant step backwards. The idea of physically carting around your data in a bulky laptop from dorm to class to lab is ridiculous... Data like this should be accessible from anywhere from any machine as long as the correct security credentials are supplied...
This also means that all students will have to purchase licenses for each software package they ever want to learn. What if I want to go to a lab and try my hand at AutoCAD 2000? In a typical university, just go to the CAD lab and try it out. Now you'd have to go out and buy a copy for your own laptop.
The support logistics also seem like a nightmare. For example, where will a student turn when they attempt to install a parallel-port zip drive to their laptop and it blue-screens during the next boot, making all of their data inaccessible? (We had a real problem where I work with that. For some reason, external parallel-port zip drives and NT 4 just don't get along very well... Loads of BSOD problems after a reboot after an install. We finally had to ban the things...)
...that I could've had a sponsored laptop when I went to univiersity...
:)
Life would have been much easier then...
...or I would've just played more video games.
BlackNova Traders
Recall the time limited textbook issue?
Seriously, if I were an undergrad again, (Lord have mercy), I would not like being required to obtain two grand's worth of easily stolen gear when there are other, better ways to use comptuer technology in education.
Not every topic requires computing, let alone mobile computing, shakedowns like this open the path for time limited textbooks, and desk top computers are not as easily stolen.
Blind technophilia is not leading edge.
I recently went to a DELL meeting that said that everyone at UT will eventually have to buy 1 particular model of their DELL laptop or 1 model of their desktop. It's part of their tuition according to DELL. The reasoning is that the tech guys will know exactly what is wrong with them and they could fix them when there is a complaint. This is the best part, they all link up to DELL's portal to buy College Supplies. I believe this is in plans for next year.
I have a writing problem caused by joint and motor control wierdness, and use a laptop for all my lectures. And it is nightmarish. Having to make sure the batteries are charged, switching batteries in the middle of lectures, having to work out how on earth to get greek stuff out of the keyboard, etc. etc. etc.
And have you ever tried doing matrices outside of TeX? *shiver*
Desktop computers are a _much_ better idea. I also like the idea of lectures by video conferencing, although you may find a lot of students just spool morning lectures onto HD to delete^H^H^H^H^H^Hread later :)
I have to question how far vouchers and public funding will go. Even crappy laptops are far more expensive than their desktop counterparts.
Somehow, this feels like yet another nail in the coffin for education of the monetarily-challenged.
Tuition is stupidly expensive, books are stupidly expensive, and these prices go up more and more each year, faster than inflation...
A friend of mine is at a technical college where most people have a laptop, since there are Ethernet plugs everywhere in the lecture rooms.
While there are advantages to this, most students only use the permanent Internet connection for extended ICQ chats during lectures, and for trading MP3s.
The advantage of being able to try out example applications "life" (i. e. during the lecture) does not outweigh all the distractions that a laptop offers...
Incoming freshmen at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill are required to own a laptop beginning this year. Known as the Carolina Computing Initiative, the idea is to get laptops into the classroom and promote a greater "intellectual climate" (their words, not mine). However, there are a number of flaws with the program and I'm not so sure I agree with it. First of all, the program specifically states that students have PC's running Windows and certain other software, such as MS Office.
I'm not even going to start on why this is a bad idea. Another sore spot is that the university partnered with IBM to give students a "great deal" on a pretty well loaded thinkpad, which have been having problems since just about day one.
My biggest problem with the whole thing is that they are forcing a computer platform on students. Sure, the 10% of businees/econ kiddies we have here may love their stinkpad with Excel. But what about graphic design students? Of course we want our macs, with big huge monitors and optical mice. What about CS students? Is windows the best platform to learn programming? When I took CS classes, I did all my development on a my linux machine. The point of my little epistle here is that forcing a single scheme on students is a very bad idea, especially in public universities that are supported by your taxes.
My other computer is your Windows box
Was my first linux box... and it kicked for the time... It had a MACH32 video card - and X just seemed to love it.
All in all it was a solid Slackware system...
BlackNova Traders
The point is that the University of Massachusetts system is going to do this, not just one campus.
I don't know about Mass, but in NC, there is one university called The University of North Carolina (the one in Chapel Hill), several others that go by The University of North Carolina - City X (Wilmington, Charlotte, Greensboro, etc.) and others that do not bow to the wishes of UNC-CH (NCSU, ECU, etc.)
OTOH, there is a University of North Carolina system of 16 campuses, of which UNC-CH is but one campus.
There's the difference... statewide school system vs. one college.
Eric
...well, my 486 laptop plays an excellent game of Scorched earth running DR Dos... which would run just as well on a 286...
What a game... we still have scorched earth group games... I just wish Xscorch was half the game that scorched earth was.
BlackNova Traders
The University of Oklahoma's College of Engineering has required all newly-enrolling students to purchase laptop computers since the fall 1998 semester. I was part of a small test group at OU when I was a freshman in the fall of 1997. At that time, a few classes were offered in "laptop" versions that attempted to make use of the laptops. Several buildings were outfitted with wireless networks so that you could connect to the campus network and the Internet in many places in and around those buildings. I believe this network has been expanding to more buildings across the campus, but I don't know to what degree. The program initially met with a varying degree of success; it was cool to have class materials online and deliverable to your web browser, but it was also too easy (and tempting) to goof off. This was, in fact, how I discovered Slashdot. Adoption of the laptop program has been somewhat slow from my point of view; the College of Engineering has not introduced laptop sections of upper-level CS classes fast enough for me to benefit.
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
College is already expensive enough without saddling an additional burden on students. There's so much theft already in dorms, this will onloy makeit worse. And for what? So the school doesn't have to provide computer labs? More likely just to impress people that massachusetts has a gud education system. Well hey, its not all that bad, I mean, we're not kentucky. Maine wants to do this for high school students and I think its an equally dumb idea.
Good education comes from commitment from students, professors, and administration - not arbitrary political requirements smoothed over with assistance from public funds.
Microsoft must love this..I am sure that each of these laptops has paid the appropriate microsoft tax. I wonder if Umass students are also required to run winders. It wouldn't surprise me.
Governor Celluci is terrible. I voted for Weld, even though he pissed me off at times I thought he had a good head on his shoulders - Celluci does not. I wish Weld would come back.
In the IT University , part of KTH (Royal Technical University) in Stockholm, Sweden, students pay a low motnhly fee for their laptops that they use all over the university buildings with their integrated wireless LANs. Of course, like most universities in Europe, this is a public university, meaning that you don't need to pay for the courses. To be accurate, in some EU countries students pay a little annual fee for their studies in public universities (ex. Spain: about 500 $ a year), but in Sweden that is completely free. In fact, the Swedish government pays the students about 250 $/month for beeing students.
I'm a CS major at the University Of Massachusetts Lowell. I don't want a laptop. Cheap models are heavy, slow, and heat up too much to be used safely on my lap. Expensive models aren't much lighter and still aren't as powerful my desktop machines. Battery life sucks. All but the tough-to-come-by Transmeta laptops will still burn my lap if I do something CPU intensive like a compile or DSP simulation.
Not only do I not want a laptop - I don't need one. Notetaking works just fine on a hundred dollar handheld or five dollar notebook. A good calculator like the TI-89 or HP-48g covers most of the mathmatic stuff, costs only around a hundred bucks, and is small and light enough to keep in my backpack at all time. I can't think of any tasks I can't do on the handheld or calculator that can't wait until I get back to my desktop PC or a computer lab.
Furthermore, the availability of portable computers in the classroom will make it possible for professors to assign proprietary e-textbooks that can't be loaned out or resold. I'll pass on those, thank you very much.
School-sponsered laptops? I wonder if this is going to work like textbooks...
"Buy a "school-sponsered" laptop, a blazing pentium 166 w/32MB of RAM for only $3000! But don't worry, the school will buy it back from you for a whopping $50 when you graduate. No, you can't bring your own, because the SCHOOL only supports Windows 95, and of course you'll need to buy a school copy of Microsoft Visual Basic for $1,300 for the advanced programming course, but again, you can sell it back at the end of the year. Provided you can return the shrinkwrapped package. For $50."
End of lesson. You may press the button.
If you read the article, you would see that (in the third paragraph) it claims that 30-some *private* universities including Dartmouth already have this requirement. RTLinkL.
Eric
Locally, we have a high school and junior high that both issue laptops to students to use in their studies. I remember when we couldn't use calculators in school, and now laptops are becoming standard issue...
Like so many other things with technology, this is a double-edged sword. It's great that more people are becoming comfortable with computers, but there are several problems as well. The biggest problem I see is that the curriculum will probably be OS centric, and the OS will likely be Windoze. This gives Microsoft an unfair advantage and headstart. I wish I had the time to develop a linux distro that was education-centric. Something that would allow for easy encrytped distribution/sending of homework assignments (128-bit encrytped wireless NICS, ex.), basic firewalling when the laptop is in a classroom (handled by the local basestation for the RF NICS), and software that was tailored to a learning environment. At the very least the curriculum should support Windows, Linux and Mac OS's so that the students can use what they feel most comfortable with.
I also worry that this may make the students lazy. If you've got spell checkers, thesauruses, and other tools handy on the laptop that might encourage more of a reliance on the technology and less reliance on independant thought. Also, if the laptops are provided by the school, or partially funded by the school, does this mean that the information stored on them is the schools property as well? Will this make it easier to invade students' rights?
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Here at Miami University, there's not an actual "admissions requirement" of a desktop/laptop, let alone a particular OS.
However, I've found that I can't really get rid of my MS Windows partition simply because the classes use so much Microsoft centric software.
My programming classes require Visual Studio, my communications class needs Power Point, etc, etc.
While there is no "required" OS, I find that I still have to use the products the school chooses, or face inconveniences and incompatibilites. Ack.
Things UMass Lowell needs before taking on such a lavish venture:
UMass Lowell doesn't even run the campus network in an ethical and sane manner (pulling connections for groundless abuse complaints before conferring with the alleged abuser), I sure as hell won't trust them with any computer I use. This is all gee-whiz stuff; they hope that this laptop computer craze will mask all the other problems.
Unfortunately, people like me who live off campus are left out in the cold :(. :)
Unless college life has changed significantly since I was kicked out of Ferris State, off-campus life beats the hell out of a free PC+dorm room anyday
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Indeed. I was one of the lucky ones to get a terminal port in my room when I was at University (UKC), and I connected up my Amiga. They were quite happy for me to do that, but they wouldn't support it. Of course, that was in days gone by, and the Amiga was effectively being used as a dumb terminal, eventually connected to the LAN via some proprietary hardware. I don't know if they'd allow a direct TCP/IP connection to their LAN (which these days is much bigger).
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
-Pencils
-Notebooks
-Dry erase board
-fun tac
-Intel® Pentium® III Processor 700MHz with Intel® SpeedStep(TM) Technology,64MB SDRAM,10GB,2x AGP ATI Mobility-M1 w/8MB SGRAM
Nova Scotia, Canada, Acadia University, Wolfville.
The Acadia Advantage. Tuition goes up a bit, but every student gets a school laptop loaded with the stuff they need. Classes use the network, and the computer, for various activities. For example:
Math: There's a program called Maple which is an excellent problem solver for nearly every type of math.
Physics: Course information, and lab software is on the network.
Computer Science: Take a wild guess.
Also, CS students get Slackware put on the lap top as well... apparently our C classes will be in Linux.
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ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Sadly, I think they're far more likely to go with the first option.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Public officials want to do anything that appears to be a magic bullet. I'd much rather subsidize teacher salaries than forced laptop purchases. Sounds like some nice deals were made under the table with some laptop manufacturers, who will now make out big time.
</rant>
Not to mention a certain company in Redmond. After all, teachers will no doubt insist that everybody have the same software. Will that software be Mathematica or Excel?
Something is rotten in the state of Massachusetts.
Actually, I probably shouldn't have said 'fad' since it is unlikely this regrettable trend will abate soon. Dell Stock (recalls notwithstanding) anybody?
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You were a moderator with 5 points. You should have read the moderator guidelines before you did any moderating
What are they going to use the laptop FOR?
If the answer is things like "Internet access" or "word processing" or "programming homework" they could just as well (and more cheaply) use desktops. The only conceivable reason to use dlaptops is so they can lug them to classes--but why would you need (or even want) a laptop in class? Imagine the shuffling around as everyone tries to find a (working) power/network outlet. The beeping and "you've got mail!" sounds around the room. The time it takes to do a shutdown when the class is over. The compatibility problems (student/student, student/teacher, student/administration, student/self).
If they want to be "interactive" why even attend classes? Just do video conferencing right to the dorms on desktops. Attendence would skyrocket.
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An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
This might not be a good thing, IFF the students stop thinking and just become LIDs (Living Input Devices).
A case study: when I was in undergraduate engineering school (1983-1987), many if not most of the students had HP-CV calculators with the engineering formula add-on pack. I had a TI-35. During one test in Circuits II, I dropped my calculator, and the keyboard came apart, scattering the keys over the floor. I re-assembled my calculator, and still managed to complete the test before anybody else in the class (and get one of the highest scores on the test.)
Why was I able to complete the test? Because I had the good fortune to have had a high school teacher who beat it into my brain to solve the equations first, then crunch the numbers. Most of my classmates just started plugging the numbers into the equations, then taking the resulting numbers and plugging them into the next set of equations, et cetera.
By actually doing the algebra, I was able to reduce out all the pi's, root-2's, and so forth, and come up with simple equations that were far more accurate than the results of the other students. And since I had to type far fewer numbers into my calculator, I was far faster than they were. Finally, since I actually saw what happened in the circuit ("Ah! so that resistor doesn't effect the output voltage, because I just cancelled it out of the equation!"), I had a deeper understanding of the theory.
My point is, that while a computer is a great tool for many things (I shan't tell you about taking my Atari 800 and monitor into my Linear algebra class to run my Gaussian Elimination program on the final....) it must not become a substitute for thinking. I fear that the students in this school won't learn to do algebra (rather they will just use Mathcad student's edition), won't learn to spel korrecktly, and not will grammer learn ("It looks like you are writing a term paper. Would you like to cut and paste some text from Encarta?").
www.eFax.com are spammers
This program has merit but this is a lot of money on something that could backfire. Here are some ways:
Here at MSU, laptops are required for engineering students in certain classes (the first of which is thermodynamics, usually taken sophomore year). And if I'm not mistaken, I think next year entering freshman engineering students will be required to have a laptop.
Some of the stuff teachers do with the machines is pretty neat. And I suppose for the non-computer literate engineering students - particularly those who have never owned a computer - they probably learn a good bit. But most of the time people are on Napster, playing video games, or talking to people.
I never really did think the integration of computers in the educational process was done the right way. It might work in mid to upper-level college courses (e.g. using Maple for calculus), but my former high school once considered requiring students to have laptops. Bad idea, I'm glad it never became a reality. We need to emphasize the traditional way of doing things now and let students explore other ways of doing them on their own (perhaps by a trip to the school computer lab).
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
I wonder what tasks require them to have normal laptops. For all of my studies, a PDA (with a keyboard, so it's a "palmtop") and a desktop machine are more than enough.
Having worked at one of the UMass campuses for a number of years, they are yet again forgetting an important factor:
Who is going to support all these people with laptops?
They don't have the staff to handle the network needs. They don't have the staff to handle all the problem reports. They don't have the staff to train the less-technically-inclined.
Glad to be out in the real world now where there is at least a budget...
rm
Sci-Fi Storm