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Maine Laptop Program a Success
Myoglobinologist writes "The New York Times has an article about how the State of Maine purchased $37 million worth of iBooks from Apple. The article states that the kids have adapted quickly to the laptops, attendance is up, and there is even heart-warming testimony from some politicians that were opposed to the project." We've done several previous stories about this initiative (they were originally considering custom-designed thin client machines - probably a good idea to go with off-the-shelf systems), and it's interesting to see how it has panned out.
Until the laptops are considered mundane, perhaps.
Do you like German cars?
A little more tempting than milk money.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
there were lots of studies about factory workers and those that were given some attention liked their job more. put windows into the factory and morale goes up, production goes up. treat people nicely, and they'll feel good about themselves. nice to see the old tried and true is still being shown today.
btw. i can't read the article, the link only went to NYT front page, and the link from there didn't give me an article. anyone willing to help a guy actually read the article ??? hint hint.
I am a born and raised Mainer, thus I must:
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Maine's education system is in terrible shape. Many schools are too small, many teachers are underpaid, and there's little funding for books and repairs for any of the counties here.
Gov. King was not a bad Governer, but his insistance that the state pay money so that middle schoolers could have laptops even stupified my liberal mind.
Those students do not need laptops! They need good teachers! They need nutritious food programs! They need cultural programs! I've spoken with many students who could care less about their laptops. They're in frickin' middle school. Their homework is algebra, not write a ten page research paper.
This was simply a program put in place to show that the state cared about it's education and pretend that their children weren't tools because they could use a laptop, basically a 'I don't know what to do so let's buy something exciting' move.
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Thank you for your time.
"I only speak the truth"
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I've looked at this quite a bit. This is probably one of the largest wastes of money that this state has ever put out. While out school children are given laptops, the school buildings are falling down, the teachers aren't trained on how to use (let alone teach the use of) the computers, and the state's credit rating has now tanked. On top of it all, ex-Govenor King got us into a contract with Apple that has high fees if we back out within 5 years - without the support of the mojority of the people of Maine. Oh, and now I'm hearing from the parents of the students that their kids aren't even allowed to bring the ocmputers home. Why didn't they just upgrade the computer labs with nice cheap desktops? It would have been just as effective.
Addlepated - punk & metal
The laptop program might be working in pockets in Maine, but it's akin to putting a new paint job on a delapitated vehicle that doesn't run. Maine's educational system is broken, and has been for quite some time; test scores are low, there isn't a standardized method of assesing performance of students throughout the state (don't tell me about the Maine Educational Assesment exams - they're fundamentally broken), and teacher pay and morale is low in almost all schools. Angus King, the previous governer, left the state holding the bag for the $37 mil proce tag, not to mention training for teachers, and a new curriculum to support the laptops. The state's education program is in dire need of funds for basics, such as books, buildings that aren't falling down around the students, competent teachers, etc. The news here in Maine for a while now has been how to get out of this laptop contract as cheap as possible. I'll give credit to Seymor Papert, and folks who would like to implement similar ideas, but until the most basic needs of students are met, laptops shouldn't be integrated into the curriculum.
I've spoken with a few teachers who deal with the laptops on a daily basis, and it's clear to them that the support network for the hardware itself is severly lacking. The issue of what to actually *use* the systems for seems to have been overlooked.
Bottom line: the money could have been better spent elsewhere. It's a valiant and forward-thinking idea, but not very pragmatic at the moment.
Being from Maine, I can assure you that we no longer have a surplus in the budget. Just this morning I was watching a story on how 110 jobs have to be cut from one school district. Thought it was a bad idea then. Still do.
Upgrade time? Why would anyone *need* to upgrade a modern computer (with the exception of gamers)?
The only reason I have a fast PC is that some of the software projects I work on take a while to compile. I wouldn't expect school kids to be working on projects of that size.
Some of the most educational software is *much* less bloated than most of the stuff on Average Joe's PC.
450MHz, with a 10mb NIC is perfectly useable today. Just as useable as it was 4 years ago. And I'm talking about x86 systems here, not G3/G4s.
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Hmm, I bet that "free" information cost a newspaper buyer at least 50 cents U.S. in New York. Just because you come in on a web browser doesn't mean that information is just "free".
But also, the registration is free, but that helps them get demographics to help get advertising which is how newspapers have operated since the beginning of time or at least modern times.
Just remember that advertising has paid for the newspaper and magazine industry, not subscribers or daily buyers. Their payments probably don't even cover the cost of paper.
Yeah well after all the fluff let's see the real stats.
Test scores are up 20% right? the students are learning at a faster rate? more? better? ratio of students failing to succeeding is getting better?
what other gains on the children are there? Reading higher? Math higher?
funny how the "sucess" is very thin on any real details or statistics that make it a sucess and not just a PR job.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Try to sell the equivalent P3 for that amount. It won't happen.
Keeping
I dont' want my children using a computer until they are (at least) teenagers.
so you want to raise very stupid children? this idea of yours is the stupidest I have ever heard.
I started my daughter (now 11) on computers at 18 months of age. I wrote a simple mouse program so she could click on familiar objects and the computer would say with recorded speech what it was. she loved this, and eventually found my invisible spot that quit the program. so I started her on a kids paint program to understand selecting tools, and it continues to this day where she is better at using the computer than the CS teacher in the local high school. She was tought programming with logo (by me) then I started her on basic for advanced ideas. This year I am starting her on perl and perl::GTK to introduce using GUI's before dropping her into C later if she wants to continue it.
My 11 year old has a better understanding about computers, operating systems and computing than 90% of the population. she has an advantage that will be with her forever, even when she becomes a Vetranarian (that's what she said she wants to be)
So if you want to breed residents for the trailer parks and slums feel free to. I take my spare time to teach my child Computer Science, Physics, Astronomy, and even play her games with her (Go ahead and laugh, but I'll bet $20.00 that none of you laughing can keep up with her or me on Dance Dance Revolution Max!)
My child is ahead of every other child in her district and is happy, she play's like a kid and has a kids life.... it's that daddy, instead of lying around like a lump on saturdays and sundays watching worthless things like football, basketball or car racing. He spends 3 hours with his child teaching, and 8-12 hours playing (you gotta keep up on the house and spouse/GF also)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I don't know - Maine is pretty sparsely populated. Our biggest city - Portland - has about 60,000 people at the most. Bangor (#2) has about 40,000. That's pretty much it. It's a pretty big state, so there's plenty of room for people to spread out. We've even got little towns that don't have real names, just a code. Ever met someone from TWP-24? Nice place.
njord
I lived in North Dakota for five years courtesy of Uncle Sam, and I have a lot of friends from there (who were actually born there, I mean, rather than being sent there to defend America's borders against ... I dunno, the Canadians, I guess.) Of course, we all live in Denver now, so make of that what you will. ;)
In any case, ND is reasonably wired. In Minot, which is kind of the archetype of Small Town USA, we got a commercial ISP in 1994, which was about the same time they were springing up all over the place. A couple of years later, there were several local ISP's there, with reasonable competition and good prices. These days, broadband is available for about the same price as everywhere else.
A lot of rural people are really happy to have the Internet. The isolation of a place like that -- especially during the Godawful winter -- can be difficult to imagine if you haven't experienced it. Being able to get online can make it a lot more tolerable. In general, largely for this reason, I think rural America got wired a lot faster than many people imagine.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
They say this will benefit underprivileged kids. Don't even get me started on that. These kids don't need to be in school, they need to learn how to fix an outboard motor. Not that I want people to stay in poverty, it's just that the best way out of poverty is learn a skill that everyone needs and not a lot of people have -- and you're not going to do that by wasting 12 years of your life in school.
Now there are people who really do want to be in school; I wanted to be a biologist, so I went the traditional route of going to high school, college, and so on. But I've known people who never went to high school and have made more of a "difference" then I probably ever will, and some of the most "educated" people I've ever met were homeschooled. School should be just one career choice, not something everyone should be forced to do. And laptops are the same way. You see, the need for computer access and the need for school are independent. You can't just lump every kid in school, give them a laptop, and say "This will empower them". Some kids want to go to school and don't need laptops, some kids don't want school but need to use computers, some want both and some want neither. If Angus wanted to really make more people happy, he should have bought as many computers as he could: desktops, just enough power to surf the web quickly, maybe a few more powerful computers to use for graphics or programming. Put them in a school, and give kids priority, but make them accessible for all. I'm not going to go into all the more crucial things the governor could have done with all that money, but even as it stands, it looks more like some gimmicky thing a company would come up with at a Pop!Tech conference (which Angus actually attended, although it didn't inspire his laptop program).
I think the posts about PEN and PAPER being superior learning tools over a laptop and this techno phobia of calculators doing work and spell check replacing spelling bees is ridiculose.
The modern world is slowly becoming more and more computer driven. Why are we trying to keep our learning process stuck in past times ? When you tally figures at work your telling me you don't check it with a calculator ? When solving engineering problems you don't use a computer ? When you write a report you don't use spell check ? All a calculator/copmuter does is provide a different sort of scratch paper and error checking tool. One that is far less subject to human error. Computers are better at general computing and mundane detail checking than we are so why is there such a problem with relying on them to do perform these calculations ? For math the only place left where manual calculation is a matter of importance is in the class room ( and at some theoretical extremes ) and its time to stop it from being so idealized there as well. There is a point of over reliance and a point at which you need to understand how a computer does what it does but for everyday life these instances are few and far between and last time I checked thats what school was about... preparing you for the real world. Well folks the real world has computers and knowledge of them and use of them is fast becoming a dividing line between the haves and have nots in our society. The way we are going I say give it a decade or two and not knowing how to use a computer is going to be moraly equivalent to not being able to read/write today. This is already the case in tech industries. The sooner schools refelct this reality the better, primary schooling is lagging terribly behind.
This is a wonderful program IF they can sustain it and keep the technology relavent and continue to integrate it as a tool and not as a solution. So far most programs seeking to get computers into schools have used the computer as a solution in and of itself, not as a tool. And largely they couldn't be utilized as a tool becasue they were not universaly available. This is one of the few isntances where I have heard of computers being universally integrated and there for able to be depended upon as a tool available to students instead of as a luxury only partially available. Hopefully the success they have enjoyed will lead to sustained support of the program that will be needed to keep it susccesfull. Most other computing programs to date have not met with anywhere near the success enjoyed here and thus quickly become white whale programs that are rarely sustained ( nor should they have been ) thus creating the numerous antiquated ghost labs or sole classroom computer found in many schools from various feeble attempts to integrate computers and the educational progress.
For computers to work in the educational environment they are going to have to replace books as the primary interface for transfer of knowledge in classrooms. This is not to say replace entirely, but they have to become a fundamental method of transfering knowledge instead of an oddball method and they can't do that until you have universal access such as provided by giving ALL students a laptop or some similar form of versatile mobile technology for disiminating information in a digital medium. In this they are competing largely with books and there is the old saying " this town aint big enough for the both of em ". I think eventually it will come down to an either or decision and long term there is little doubt in my mind of the winner. In the short term there will be co-existence while the technology matures enough to take over more permanently. As the tech gets more mobile and can compete with books for legibility and versatility you will see books being abandoned but not until then and likley they will hang on regardless.. ie handwritting hasn't gone away since the inception of the printing press but its domain or use has continually shrunk ever since I forsee something similar happening with the printed page.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated $1 million for more teacher training.
Heh. That should have been part of the DOJ settlement.
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