Laptops in Every Backpack

Scott Sawyer writes: "Check out Wired to see that Maine is going to put a laptop in every 7th graders school bag. I remember when we had to go to another room to work on the Tandy, TRS-80's." We did a story about Laptops in Education a few months ago that had more information about this Maine proposal that's now a reality.

Comments

Yeah!

[Alex Belits]

Don't spend money on revmping the curriculum so Physics won't be put after Chemistry (what makes just as much sense as installing XF86 before libc). Don't spend money on getting better teachers (now you can't get an educated person to become a teacher because salaries are beyond "poor" and closer to "insulting"). Don't do anything that forces students to study (it's more important to make them think that they live in a "free country" and have no duties whatsoever). Don't keep companies' interests and religious propaganda out of school. Don't even start a program that empahsized learning of technology (heck, a bunch of high school kids making a beowulf cluster out of old p150's just to find out what those Slashdot trolls are talking about would be better than what kids are learning now). Get a bunch of laptops, pay some Dell, Gateway, Sony or even Compaq a shitload of money, pay Microsoft more money, give laptops to unprepared kids, teach them "technology" like pointing and clicking through menus, and be afraid of those kids actually using those things for something you don't understand. And expect that when kids will finish school they will have detailed knowledge of every button, menu and dialog box of the obsolete by that time version of Microsoft Word.