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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?
Actually, this has been discussed here long ago, but iBooks have a really good bang-for-the-buck ratio...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
About time school kids had more apples.
Omnis amans amens
All I have are 20 pounds-worth of big old books. Then again, though.. where I live, we might be expected to use bookcovers, since they are "iBooks"... *mutters about small country towns*
That's like an apple a day, every day, for a long time! The dentists'll go out of buisness soon enough...
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
... Maine saves $1 million dollars on removal of all trash cans from their classrooms.
What happens come upgrade time? While there was a surplus when the program started, most states now have a deficit. Some of the schools in my state have resorted to turning off all hall lights to save money. Granted, Maine is better off than S.C., but the money has to come from somewhere.
Why would you ask us to post the article for you if you can't read it anyway ? Tsk tsk, trolls these days...
beauty is only a light switch away
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 just love the new and inventive was that the govnernment figures out to give away gifts (or exchange them for votes) with our tax dollars!
... always followed by a dictatorship."
I don't care how "successful" it is, it's nothing more than stealing when they take one person's money to buy gifts for others.
If my kids were ever eligible for such a program (they wouldn't be... they are homeschooled), I would refuse to take it. Beware governments bearing gifts.
dochood
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy collapses over loose fiscal policy
de Tocqueville
I'm sure everyone would prefer to read the article here since it doesn't require a username or password.
we'd end up having a bunch of kids with 3rd degree burns on thier laps.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Does anyone think that if you had $37 *million dollars* to spend on education, then there might be better things to spend it on than ibooks? Like some more teachers, perhaps? Or a library? Each ibook is going to have a finite life and a cost of ownership so they'll have to keep spending money hand over fist just to keep them running. Kids have learnt just fine without a laptop in the past: just because we *can* educate with a PC doesn't necessarily mean we *should*. Ric
My heart still isn't warm. Did I miss something?
Now, if the kids had wired up a Beowulf cluster of these... then I think the ol' ticker would simmer a bit.
just think howit would have been if the state had given out top-of-the-line PC Laptops. Sure, the grades would be through the roof, but every once in a while, you'd get a failure.
OK attendance is up - at least until they have to give the machines back at the end of the year.
But really shouldn't the money have been spent on basic infrastructure like paper books, new ceilings and full time staff ?
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --Albert Einstein
and kids are more excited, it does not necessarily mean that they are learning any more than they were before. Wouldn't the money be better spent if Maine used it to attract more/better teachers with higher salaries?
This is actually really good news. Finally something that seems to be working for school districts and getting kids more instred in learning. Secondly it helps to have a new generation of kids who can be more *nix awair (OS X still has that *nix terminal) and more importantly can learn to grow up without needing Microsoft to do all their work. Is having Apple except for Microsoft better. I would think so just because if they really get interested in using the system in more "geeky" ways. They will learn some of the *nix commands and be more willing to use Linux and other *nix systems in the future without having it has to be MS or it is out of date mantality,
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
... and the other success is that wide open wireless networks were installed at every school in maine. yay.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Heck, I swear if you taught a kid some assembly on an X86, and they found it remotely fun, they will be hacking out FFT algorithms under three monthes.
This afinity of kids with technology is amazing. It is a wonder why most of them don't apply it to piano lessons, though.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I am a born and raised Mainer, thus I must:
beginRant() {
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.
}
Thank you for your time.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
For those of you who don't want to register:
FREEPORT, Me., March 4 -- Attendance is up. Detentions are down. Just six months after Maine began a controversial program to provide laptop computers to every seventh grader in the state, educators are impressed by how quickly students and teachers have adapted to laptop technology.
In a language arts class at Freeport Middle School, for example, muted howls could be heard recently as students researched projects related to Arctic stories, including "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London. Following Internet tracks created by their teacher, Janice Murphy, some students, inspired by the story, were researching wolves.
"Look," said Doug Hoover, 13, double-clicking on a wolf site. "Here's a picture of the sound waves the wolf makes when it howls."
Here and at the 239 middle schools around the state, students, teachers and parents say they are finding unexpected benefits.
No one seems more surprised by the early success of the program than Angus King, the state's former governor. When he announced the plan in the summer of 2000, motivated by a $50 million budget surplus and a pressing need to attract new business to Maine, Mr. King was stunned by the vehemence of objections.
The statewide effort, the first of its kind in the nation, "was more controversial than abortion, gay rights or even clear cutting," Mr. King said. "People hated it. They thought it was extravagant; they thought the kids wouldn't take care of the computers."
An early opponent was Chellie Pingree, then the State Senate majority leader and soon to be the president of Common Cause, a government watchdog group based in Washington. "It was about the allocation of resources," Ms. Pingree said. "We were struggling with construction issues: schools needed to be built; there were leaky roofs and not enough books."
Though she now sees the program as a success, others still say it is misguided.
"The state was flush at the time the laptop program was inaugurated, when it should have been providing for the rainy day that we're living with today," said Sumner Lipton, a lawyer in Augusta and a former state legislator. "There's a certain degree of irony in giving all the seventh graders laptops in a day when we're talking about cutting state employees back to four-day work weeks."
Before the program began, legislators trimmed its cost and scope. Envisioned as a $50 million effort that would let seventh graders take the computers with them through graduation, the plan was limited to seventh and eighth graders.
Laptops will follow their users to eighth grade next year, while seventh graders will get new iBooks, for a total of 33,000. When students leave the eighth grade, they will turn them in.
The cost of the four-year program is $37.5 million, which includes leasing the laptops, installing wireless ports throughout schools so students are always connected to the Internet and training teachers. It translates to about $300 per user a year, said Tony Sprague, project manager of the laptop program, the Maine Learning Technology Initiative.
To bolster the program, Mr. King sought support from beyond the state government. The author Stephen King (who is not related to Angus King) toured the Freeport school and offered to teach an online writing course. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated $1 million for more teacher training. The technology giant EDS pledged $400 million in software for Maine schools, the biggest gift the state has ever received.
Educators say that problems have been minimal, with little breakage, theft or loss. The rewards, teachers say, have been impressive.
"These laptops are changing the way learning happens and the way teaching happens," said Chris Toy, principal of Freeport Middle School. Such a transformation, Mr. Toy said, can happen only when each student has a computer. "We don't have a pencil lab or put eight pencils in the middle of the room and have kids take turns using them, Computers are tools, and when every child in every school has one, it levels the playing field."
Though an estimated 90 percent of the homes in Freeport, near Portland, have computers, the laptops go home with the students at night. "We needed to make sure that level playing field is extended to the home," Mr. Toy said. "Now, no one's computer is better or faster."
That sense of equality is felt keenly in the state's poor and remote schools. At the tiny elementary school in Pembroke, about 240 miles northeast of Portland in Washington County in the Down East region, children and teachers seem to be using the laptops as effectively as those in more affluent areas, the principal, Paula Smith, said. Washington County is the state's poorest, and Ms. Smith estimated that perhaps 35 percent of her students had a computer at home.
As at other schools, she said, seventh graders seem more focused and less mischievous. Last year, Ms. Smith said she handed out about 30 detentions to Pembroke's seventh and eighth graders. This year, there have been two.
Parents also welcome the program.
"When the plan was announced, a lot of people thought the money should have been put into buildings," said Alison Bennie, the mother of a seventh grader in Topsham, next to Brunswick near Portland. "My husband and I both work at Bowdoin College, and we see the rate of students bringing their own computers to campus. It's virtually 100 percent. So the sooner kids learn the language, the more adept they will be at computers in high school and beyond."
Ms. Bennie's point is critical. By some measures, Maine's public schools are considered quite good: the National Center for Education Statistics ranks Maine as having one of the highest high school graduation rates in the country. But when it comes to students going on to college, Maine ranks low in the region. And in term of Ph.D.s earned in the state, Maine ranks dead last among states and Puerto Rico, according to a recent report from the National Science Foundation.
Improved college attendance five years from now would be a measure of the program's success, but for now, educators are collecting all the information they can and are awaiting year-end test scores. In other parts of the country, smaller programs have had a significant effect: In Henrico County, Va., where 24,000 students in grades 6 through 12, have laptops, test scores have risen and dropout rates have fallen.
But many Maine educators worry less about how success will be measured than about what will happen when they tell ninth graders in 2004 to surrender their iBooks.
"Because I see their skills building, the biggest concern is what will happen when they enter high school and lose their laptops," said Diane Parent, the principal of the middle school in Caribou, more than 300 miles northeast of Portland in remote Aroostock County.
Teachers are crossing their fingers that schools will be able to secure funds to ensure that laptops stay with students through high school, as they do in Henrico County, Va.
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
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
It's kind of like giving them a set of dental tools. Teach the basics! I dont' want my children using a computer until they are (at least) teenagers.
love is just extroverted narcissism
But you can get thin client machines with COTS systems! Check out the linux terminal server project
You can use it with laptops.
It can be a HUGE cost-saver. Schools have shown time and again that students can be very quick to adapt to new environments/OSes. I hope some advocacy group takes up the cause to get schools to consider this option.
Here's an idea... Keep the laptop program, as it seems to be improving the system, and start funneling money away from some of the sports programs for a change. Three years' worth of my junior high and high school experience was hobbled by austerity budgets. Art students were forced to buy all of their own materials, books had to be shared, busing was cut back, and the music program was forced to fund itself. In the meantime, the sports programs, who were not exactly cranking out championship teams, flourished. They got new equipment, more trainers, upgraded facilities, and even a new team bus. At some point, we need to get that spending ratio back in balance. Kids are there to learn. Though I think sports are important for a well rounded development, I think the emphasis on and rewards for them are too great. The current state of education marginalizes anyone who doesn't want to be "Like Mike". The laptop program in Maine is an excellent way to level the playing field and raise the bar at the same time, if I may mix my metaphors and sling a few puns... I will now climb down off of my stump and allow the flaming and trolling over the fact that they were Macs to begin... LLLLLLET'S GET READY TO RRRRRRUMBLLLLLLLE!
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
It's a computer. This plan has them using computers at school, and many of them will use one at work.
What's the problem there?
Teach them the abilities to adapt to conditions that aren't always identical and you have them all the stronger for the real world.
While you're at it flooding a school with kids who only know MS software, best make sure they only eat at McDonalds, only watch the most popular television shows, read the most popular books and only wear the most common clothes. After all, what's the chance they'll grow up choosing what they wish to do.
BILLY: dude, where rz u, uve a .edu hostmaks. r u 1337 h4x0r???????????
SHOOTER: no man like im at school
BILLY: school??? wuz??
SHOOTER: ummmm.............. im here for the connection iz sweet =D
BILLY: whut????????
SHOOTER: oh um that girls coming u no the one i said had implamtsn earlier!!11
BILLY: rofflez!!
SHOOTER: i think shes pi
*** NO CARRIER
Do you like German cars?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Did you speak to my mother lately?
Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
The pupils gave the teacher an apple. Looks like it's the other way round now.
As a tool in education modern computers (such as the iBook) have a lot to offer children, and can be used to enhance learning in virtually every subject. However, the one area where they might not be the best thing is in computer education itself. A modern computer is an incredibly complex beast with layers of software and hardware which abstract from the basic concepts.
When I was at school we had a simple Z80 based microboard on which we were taught the basic principles of digital electronics. By the time I went to university I already understood the basic concepts of how computers work and how software and hardware interact. The computer was a understandable as a complete system. I worry that future generations will not have such a complete view of the computer. Without it how can we expect innovative developments to arise.
-- "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!"
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.
Uhm... how about anything that gets average kids closer to technology is good?
Until they are mutant cyborgs with lasers mounted on them.
And anyway... its you adults that need the "nutritious food programs", you're the fat ones. Well except for Cartman. OMG!
Interactive Visual Medical Dictionary
While the chances of getting a job working on a Mac are slimmer than those of working with Windows, I have noticed something: My experience has been that people who learned on Macs tend to function well on both systems, while the people I know who started in Windows can only work efficiently in Windows. Market share is not the only guage of how useful something is. There was a point in history where the vast majority of humans thought the Earth was flat. Since both OSs have many of the same features, it shouldn't be hard to discuss them simultaneously. Since the GUI desktop metaphor hasn't really changed too much in 20 years, if you teach the metaphor, kids can be functional on any system.How does the saying go? Teach someone how to use taskbar shortcuts and you'll feed them for a day... Teach someone to navigate directories, and you'll feed them for a lifetime.
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
The problem with technology in education is that the technology often duplicates what is already being taught with textbooks (and taught pretty well).
If the laptops could displace the purchase of expensive textbooks, it might put a dent in the $37m price tag
The private sector spends on technology to increase productivity and decrease costs.
will be turned into nerdy geeks. It is well known that geeks don't reproduce. Biological existence of Maine is in question. Are they nuts?
State of Maine purchased $37 million worth of iBooks from Apple
Just 4 days later, Apple offered the same laptop with double the memory, 100MHz faster CPU, AND a SuperDrive for $100 less
Although Alexis de Tocqueville studied the American Democracy in the early years, that quote should be attributed to Alexander Tyler.
p.
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.
idea #1 -- why not distributed thinking ? sure i don't think i'ts ever been done before, but just mabye --- if a large enough pool of shared-minds were together, they could accomplish things that us think-for-yourself people coudln't even dream of. that of course is fantasy and'l never happen, of course
:( ] to disk, or make any changes on the old Amiga2000.
idea #2 -- i'm not sure about you, but thanks to my introduction to computers at an early age, i'm a little better off intellectually, i think. I would have been a lot more, i think, had my parents not been paranoid that i'd break something and never let me save anything [even saved games
but being a Computer Science major i had to start somewhere. but still i don't think your problem is with computers/personal computers in general as much as it is with *modern* computers/personal computers. why not give the little ones an 8 bit system? with a command line? where you could browse through the source if something goes wrong to correct it? i'm not saying the BASIC of the Apple//e and Commadore64 were great, but im sure someone could come up with some descent ideas in regards to making a cheap premodern system to make youngins use and hone their problem solving skillz and mabye end up letting them hack, just a little bit...
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
On math you get an A. On reading comprehension, you get a C. :) The article said $300 per year and it's a four-year program.
Maybe all the residents have a good reason to dislike Macintosh computers, now that they've all had hands-on-experience.
Maybe, a lot of people are doing the switch! Buying up iMac's and PowerBooks like duct tape and bottled water.
> nutritious food programs!
There must be some sort of disconnect here. It amazes me that this is expected of the public school system in the US. Why should the school feed the students? Just how poor do you have to be that you can't give your kid breakfast in morning before the bus comes?
My sister lives in Texas, and her step kids get breakfast at school, the mentality is that it's free and it is encouraged for everyone to take advantage so that those who really need the welfare don't suffer a social stigma. What other bloat is in the system, that could be re-tooled to address the quality of the education?
www.jmagar.com
-
Learning to use computers in school is a great idea. As long as computers have been in general circulation, schools have had a number of them to teach students general proficiency.
Students need good teachers and books for a good general education. All students should take a few computer classes. Nowadays, everyone needs to know word processing, spreadsheets, maybe even a little coding. Additional exposure is up to the student.
This "one computer per student" idea came about in the 90's when people realized that IT professionals were doing pretty well. It's not for everyone. Students shouldn't be taught that the solution to everything is their iBook. The pen and a sharp mind are more powerful tools.
Every school should have a well equipped computer lab, a well stocked library, science labs, etc.
Nothing wrong with Socialism, except it is very inefficent in large populations. It seems to ignore the human factor.
Most of my Christian friends seem to forget that the early Christians where basically socialists(look in the book of Acts)
Certain things in government need to be run in this way, but my preference is for as little as possible.
So a bunch of kids get new computers to use, but what about competent teachers to teach the kids how to use these machines? Even more fundamentally, learning to use a computer is a great skill, but if you can't read or write, its value is greatly diminished. Maybe I am just being cynical, but I imagine that many of these kids sit in class all day, with the computer on, playing whatever free games came with the iBook or sending instant messages to each.
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Too often, some of the parents don't care, so their little gem ends up making trouble in the class, and the teacher has to spend more time trying to get the class under control, instead of actually teaching. And too many parents don't monitor their kids to make sure that their kids are doing the homework, and are not helping them to understand it.
Most private schools pay their teachers LESS than the public schools. Why do they take the lower paying jobs? Because the kids are better behaved, so they can actually teach. If a kid is causing trouble, they can be expelled.
-MDL
Happy meals fund terrorism
Extension conflicts cause mysterious problems and cause Macs to slow to a crawl or crash unexpectedly.
When the machine crashes, the hard drive won't necessarily repair itself. Soon the machine may be unbootable (I've seen this many many times).
No Jornaling File System, so data loss is prevalent.
Flimsy keyboard construction. I have seen a lot of ibooks with broken keys.
On the bright side, the kids in Maine will likely be forced to develop some tech-support skills.
Amazing magic tricks
I'm sorry, there are just some very *wrong* things being said about this program both by people who claim to be from the state and via those from "away." So to clarify a number of things that have been said elsewhere:
/rr
1: The money for this program was privately generated and tagged specically for this program.
2: No general fund tax dollars are involved in this project...that is, no money that would otherwise go to other educational goals was diverted fund this.
3: Apple absolutely loss-lead this project...there is no doubt where the future is heading and a successful project here in Maine will pay off when NY or CA rolls out the same thing.
4: There is money being spent on teacher training and on technology integration into daily education.
5: This is an issue of equity of access and equity of opportunity. As Gov. King so eloquently explained, [paraphrasing] "My family was wealthy, when I was in school my father bought an Encyclopedia Brittanica for the house. Every other student in my class had to share the dog-eared one in the school library. Did this give me an advantage, absolutely. As of this moment, every single 7th grader in the State of Maine has their own World Book Encyclopedia because there is one on every single laptop." This program is about putting the single greatest educational TOOL since the printed book in the hands of those who need it most. It is about creating a structure within which those tools can be utilized to their highest and best use. It is about, frankly, the future of education.
6: The argument that kids can not be responsible is bunk...they are the exact same arguments that were being made when the debates about whether kids should be allowed to bring their textbooks home in the '30-40's...they were wrong then and wrong now.
I, for one, am very proud of this program. A decade from now, kids having laptops as part of their education will be a non-issue...like not allowing kids to bring books home, we will wonder what all the fuss was about. Will it go smoothly at every turn, no...is it the right path to go...absolutely. Maine's motto is Dirigo..."I Lead." Welcome to the future of education.
--
I do not fear computers. I fear lack of them.
- Isaac Asimov
[I have posted this generally, but repeat it here as well:]
/rr
I'm sorry, there are just some very *wrong* things being said about this program both by people who claim to be from the state and via those from "away." So to clarify a number of things that have been said elsewhere:
1: The money for this program was privately generated and tagged specically for this program.
2: No general fund tax dollars are involved in this project...that is, no money that would otherwise go to other educational goals was diverted fund this.
3: Apple absolutely loss-lead this project...there is no doubt where the future is heading and a successful project here in Maine will pay off when NY or CA rolls out the same thing.
4: There is money being spent on teacher training and on technology integration into daily education.
5: This is an issue of equity of access and equity of opportunity. As Gov. King so eloquently explained, [paraphrasing] "My family was wealthy, when I was in school my father bought an Encyclopedia Brittanica for the house. Every other student in my class had to share the dog-eared one in the school library. Did this give me an advantage, absolutely. As of this moment, every single 7th grader in the State of Maine has their own World Book Encyclopedia because there is one on every single laptop." This program is about putting the single greatest educational TOOL since the printed book in the hands of those who need it most. It is about creating a structure within which those tools can be utilized to their highest and best use. It is about, frankly, the future of education.
6: The argument that kids can not be responsible is bunk...they are the exact same arguments that were being made when the debates about whether kids should be allowed to bring their textbooks home in the '30-40's...they were wrong then and wrong now.
I, for one, am very proud of this program. A decade from now, kids having laptops as part of their education will be a non-issue...like not allowing kids to bring books home, we will wonder what all the fuss was about. Will it go smoothly at every turn, no...is it the right path to go...absolutely. Maine's motto is Dirigo..."I Lead." Welcome to the future of education.
--
I do not fear computers. I fear lack of them.
- Isaac Asimov
[Posted generally, applied specifically]
/rr
I'm sorry, there are just some very *wrong* things being said about this program both by people who claim to be from the state and via those from "away." So to clarify a number of things that have been said elsewhere:
1: The money for this program was privately generated and tagged specically for this program.
2: No general fund tax dollars are involved in this project...that is, no money that would otherwise go to other educational goals was diverted fund this.
3: Apple absolutely loss-lead this project...there is no doubt where the future is heading and a successful project here in Maine will pay off when NY or CA rolls out the same thing.
4: There is money being spent on teacher training and on technology integration into daily education.
5: This is an issue of equity of access and equity of opportunity. As Gov. King so eloquently explained, [paraphrasing] "My family was wealthy, when I was in school my father bought an Encyclopedia Brittanica for the house. Every other student in my class had to share the dog-eared one in the school library. Did this give me an advantage, absolutely. As of this moment, every single 7th grader in the State of Maine has their own World Book Encyclopedia because there is one on every single laptop." This program is about putting the single greatest educational TOOL since the printed book in the hands of those who need it most. It is about creating a structure within which those tools can be utilized to their highest and best use. It is about, frankly, the future of education.
6: The argument that kids can not be responsible is bunk...they are the exact same arguments that were being made when the debates about whether kids should be allowed to bring their textbooks home in the '30-40's...they were wrong then and wrong now.
I, for one, am very proud of this program. A decade from now, kids having laptops as part of their education will be a non-issue...like not allowing kids to bring books home, we will wonder what all the fuss was about. Will it go smoothly at every turn, no...is it the right path to go...absolutely. Maine's motto is Dirigo..."I Lead." Welcome to the future of education.
--
I do not fear computers. I fear lack of them.
- Isaac Asimov
River Oaks is a K-8 elementary school with a student population of about 800. A little over a decade ago, the new school was built, fully wired, and loaded with technology through partnerships with Apple (among others). There was one computer for every three students and a computer for every teacher.
I was a student in Oakville during River Oaks' heyday. I attended a less well-funded school in the same district, but was bused to River Oaks once a week to use their shop and kitchen facilities for classes. The school had some neat toys, there's no doubt about it--instead of paper sketches in shop class, we were using proper CAD software. We also did some work with computer controlled Lego Technics sets.
Did we actually learn any more? Nope. Was the technology overkill? Probably. I typed my papers on a Commodore 64 until my parents bought their first 386 when I was in Grade 8--but there I was, surrounded by all these shiny new Macs. (I thought that flying toasters were just the coolest thing...)
Now, River Oaks can't afford to upgrade or even maintain the technology they have in place. I imagine that other school districts face similar problems. After the 'gee whiz' wears off, what do you really need computers for in a school environment? Typing assignments. Doing research on the net. Preparing presentations.
How do you do these things? Have a few well-maintained computer labs in the school. As for those students who don't have a computer at home--they'll get by. I've been without a home computer for a month because I haven't gotten around to ordering some parts to repair my old clunker. I do my computer work on campus, and life goes on.
~Idarubicin
Sales of combat boots from local Maine footwear retailers are expected to sky-rocket.
This was an attempt by the Gov. to attract big businesses to Maine and bolster economic conditions. What better way to do this than to educate youths in one of the largest growing industries. I'm guessing they are hoping this will inspire more high-level jobs from students coming out the educational system in Maine as well as help make Maine more of a technology center for new business.
/. can't find it in their hearts to agree with this move then you really got to wonder.
However, when a bunch of geeks on
Your points one to three are no longer operative thanks to OS X. Haven't used a Mac in a while, have we? Extension conflicts simply don't exist -- that's a classic Mac OS thing. Journalling came in (as an option) with 10.2.3. And the machine crashes ... how often? Not very, in my experience.
I'll grant you the point about the flimsy keyboard, though.
The same students have lost the use of their middle fingers due to only having one mouse button. This is believed to be advantageous considering the typical use of the middle finger by elementary school students.
I live in Maine, on the coast - there's nothing inland.
The idea isn't to teach them about computers, but to immerse them in progress. To the average Mainer technology is a complete mystery. A favorite passtime is laughing at New Yorkers and thier cell phones -- when they're not getting drunk and lamenting about the employment problem.
Many people are living below the poverty level trying to eke a living out of industries that were essentially destroyed by unsophisticated people coping with a progressive world.
The laptop initiative has many detractors - most ask the question "How will we pay for it." The bigger issue is: If Maine doesn't get progressive pretty damned fast, how long will it be before we're the first state to declare bankruptcy? How much will this 3o-something million save in welfare money over the lifetimes of these kids?
This laptop "boondoggle" by the great Governor King a shotgun approach intended to provide a long-term "modernity" shot in the arm at the expense of short-term comfort and stability.
People will probably starve in Maine before this recession is over. Hopefully the next generation will take that hardship they grew up with, combined with a love of technology, and go further than this "lobster and tourist economy" could ever take them. Immersion is the key, and this crazy plan was the only step that a lame duck governor could mak ehappen. So he did it, and stuck the next bunch with the check.
they got it right when they set up the program...a big achievement by our former governor (Angus King--good guy!)
The program is funded from a trust fund (something like $30 million), and so is not dependant upon a yearly allocation from the general fund. There has been political discussion about raiding the laptop trust fund to fund the current state budget shortfall, but that will require legislative action--if the state gov't does nothing, the program cruises along as is.
The computers are leased, not owned, with a planned upgrade time (3 or 4 years, IIRC) built into the budget
....And now from a Student
;)
... now its real fun to go download that 200 meg file by standing on the sidewalk outside the school. Another breif point on this I want to make is that of the new iBook 'image' the supposedly secure desktop shell to make sure we do not modify the system and install games ect., every new installment of this image is broken within an hour of re-issuing.
;)
Yes I am a studen in a school with the iBook initiative,ect ect. although I am not in Maine I am in Virginia, now i bet you are wondering how i am posting so early on a school day...well im on my iBook bored in the middle of project presentations. Now on to comments
A breif history of pr0n: Yes that did happen at a wide spread effect in the first year of the initiative(last year) students were filling up thier astounding 8 gb Hdd with massive movies and pictures of pr0n. and you guessed it they intended to beat off in the middle of class while thier teacher explained why x = y^2 . This I see as completely a waste, because i enjoy my masterbation in the privacy of my own house
A Breif History of Security: The school board did not know what they were takeing on when they put laptops in the hands of teenagers, especialy my school. I remember last year at the very begining, Grades, attendance, and teacher share folders were available freely on the school's great new WiFi-network. You wouldnt even need to bee at 'l33t h4xor' to find it, being as it is readily available in a un-passworded appleshare network. It was also freely available to make your own filesharing network, and trade that pr0n you downloaded last period through an un-filtered webserver. Now though after a bit of experience they have filtered most all in-appropriate matterial, of cource changing your proxy settings to an older proxy dns name yeilds porn games and email(a major issue at my school). When Students moaned about slow speeds and inability to connect, they boosted the power of the AirPorts(apples answer to a WiFi terminal) and upped the bandwidth
A Breif History of H4x0ring: where there is a will there is a way, what better way to do that then to hand computers to teenagers and tell them not to do anything bad with them. Last year a student introduced a virus onto the network which infected the entire county, by traveling through the unsecured filesharing networks. With this he crashed entire schools, forcing our fledgeling tech support to re install OS9.1 on every book in the county. how fun.
These thing Break...Alot...Apple being the sweet-hearts that they are allowed some of us to return thier defective chargers. Accept for the ones that werent broken at the time which are now SOL as it were. Screens coming off. keyboards, airport cards, hd's, power circutry. Ive seen them all fried shattered and just plain busted.
Sure it makes it easyer for us to do school work and use web resources otherwise not accessable to us. I like having these iBooks, they give me something to do when im bored in class besides sleeping.
Jonas
Yep. It's like someone bitching about Windows and saying, "Any time something goes seriously wrong, you have to drop back into DOS to fix it."
...
And the truth is, of course, that Macs have always been more reliable than Windows boxes -- back when the complaints about Macs the original poster was making were true, Windows machines suffered from constant "DLL hell" and BSOD on a daily, if not hourly basis. System 7 was far more reliable than Win 3.1, and OS X still beats the hell out of XP. Plus ca change
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
You'll have to forgive me if I take the article over your word.
You should feel lucky! 20 lbs! Why in my day...
... maybe laptops can help with this rather pressing issue of weight. They sure would've made me nervous to leave my backpack unattended, though. Maybe the computers should come with leashes, or ignition keys. Nad maybe they should bring back school lockers, perhaps in plexiglas.
No seriouslt, NYT recently had something about how certain grade schools are now evaluating textbook candidates for weight. It seems that as books have gotten fatter to cram in pointless pictures and factoids many are clearing the 1,000-page mark and students are literally suffering back injuries toting them from class to class, and home and back.
Now, like you I thought this is silly, why aren't these dumb kids planning a head a litte, just carrying the books they need and knocking off the "heavy" subjects in study hall. Well, a separate development is that these schools have eliminated student lockers, to reduce problems of drugs, weapons, and forgotten lunch meat. These were relatively affluent school districts, too (heck, they can afford new textbooks).
So
You know, when I was a kid they didn't even give us pencils.
Wrong. The people brought what they had WILLINGLY. There was no TAXING authority over the early Christians. When Annanias and Saphira (sp?) held back some of their money, they were told "Wasn't the property yours to begin with? And once sold, didn't you have the right to do what you wanted with it?" They weren't KILLED by God for not sharing, they were KILLED because they kept back some of the money, and said it was ALL of it.
I'm not anti-laptop, but I'm against the idea of wasting so much of money on this, which could be better spent on so many other things. For the amount of money spent on buying laptops, think of the number of libraries that could be opened up, with ordinary PCs and net access.
I do not think my suggestions are "one-way" - I suggested working on pen and paper, and using more logical tools which helps students do things on their own. Despite everything that you may say, you're likely to learn a lot more by ripping open a motor than desgining it or simulating its operations on a laptop.
Our program was a round success as well and the educational results were similar: test scores did rise when students were taught to their style via laptop.
Test scores hardly mean a thing! That's EXACTLY my point! Student end up looking at things objectively. Some of the brightest children I know are pathetic at taking tests, and are just amazing with their hands.
I do agree that this is just my opinion, but I know for sure that if I'd had access to fantastic knowledge at my fingertips, that knowledge would have lost a certain charm, and a certain respect that was hard-earned.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I had a laptop when I was in 7th grade. Actually, I bought a laptop when I was in 7th grade.
For two years I mowed lawns, babysat, and generally whored myself out in order to save up the $1,000k needed to buy a refurbished Pentuim 75mhz laptop.
My the end of my 7th grade year I had Linux on it and had written a very very bad BASIC compiler in C (it was something like 15k LOC).
All of this while being on a hockey and wrestling team.
Don't just assume because you were a dumbass when you were in 7th grade that everyone else was/is.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
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).
What the chances going out in the work force and working with a mac? very slim, it's stupid.
Maybe it's stupid for someone who only has enough room in their brain to use one OS (that's not what you're saying, right?), but guess what? Most kids I know can figure out how to get around any OS in no time. A window is a window, a menu is a menu, a X is an X (where X is radio button, check box, push button, etc.).
Do you really think that using software like Word/IE/Photoshop/etc. on a Mac is that different from using it on a PC? C'mon!
Let's see, what else is available for Mac? Quake III Arena? Check. Castle Wolfenstein? Check. Master of Orion 3? Check. Tony Hawk? Check. Jedi Outcast? Check. Max Paine? Check. Deus Ex? Check. Warcraft III? Check. And the list goes on and on and on.
There are glaring omissions. You mentioned one. But right now is the best it's ever been for Mac gaming. Here's a good place to start looking.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
$300 per computer per student according to the article. 37 million dollars someone else on here said translated out to roughly 50 someodd thousand per school in Maine. Every library has computers with net access, even assuming cheap PCs you're looking at a cost of $300 per computer. Then you still have to buy the books, shelves, pay for book upkeep (trust me there's more to that than you think) plus pay for staff. 50k per school isn't going to go very far.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
It would appear that Bill & Melinda fronted almost $1,000,000 of the tab...
Settle down dochood
All I am saying is that they lived liked socialists.
Your point about willingly is a good one and well taken.
Email:
governor@maine.gov
Mailing Address:
Office of the Governor
#1 State House Station
Augusta, ME 04333-0001
Phone:
207-287-3531
207-287-6548 (TTY) Fax 207-287-1034
If it's not one thing, it's Steve's Mother
I think they need to better refine the metric by which they measure "success". If guess if you're in a public school, at least in California (and maybe Maine too), higher attendence would be considered a success since schools are essentially paid for every individual day that each individual student comes to class. As to whether or not the kids are actually learning more, the article is tellingly vague.
:) One wonders if the NY Times would be as effusive.
I think the answer is probably no. We had an almost identical program at my high school when I was there, except this was during the peak of the bubble when everything Internet was A Good Thing. Thus, the district had no problems or detractors when it decided to drop a couple of million on a program to give laptops to freshmen. Fancy IR-based networks were installed in the classrooms, teachers went off to some training program to learn how to harness the Internet in education, and 550 shiny new laptops got distributed to the incoming freshmen.
I should add that part of that cash-laden spending spree created a bunch of new opportunities that I and some nerd friends were able to take advantage of. We got jobs which paid the cushy-for-high-school rate of like $12/hr fixing the laptops as the idiot freshmen (why on Earth they gave them to the freshmen as opposed to the seniors, e.g. us at the time, I don't know) broke them. And boy did they ever. There's no way to quite describe the pained look my face acquire as I walked down the halls and saw the short freshmen who were unlucky enough to have score a high locker, turning the damn computer on its side and using it as a stepping stool. One time we got one that had been microwaved; the kid swore up and down that it was an accident. I swapped out screens that had been shot with BBs, I replaced keyboards where the keycaps had been rearranged to say "FUCKWHORE69". If my nose was not deceiving me, one time a kid shorted out his motherboard by spilling bong water on the laptop. This is to say nothing of the hours spent reimaging porn-, mp3- and virus-laden harddrives. Laptops that had been bad or karmically deficient in a previous life, they got sent to my high school the next time around.
Anyways, so I became pretty familiar with what these kids were doing with them. And I'll be damned if they were studying or learning anything. If attendence improved, it was only because kids were coming in to download more Kid Rock and nude J-Lo cutouts off our 3 T1s. The teachers didn't really use them, thought it was a waste of money that should have gone into their anemic salaries, and said so. In fact the only times I ever heard the word success used in conjunction with the program were at the same School Board meetings where the whole affair was conceived in the first place.
As a final thought, I ask you, when was the last time you really learned something on the Internet anyways? I'm not talking about delving into source code that you wgetted or reading math PDFs, but just plain old high school grammar, geography, history, etc.? Quality sources of that are few and far between, and many of them are of the "The Holocaust is a Jewish conspiracy" variety. In other words, worthless crap. If you're like me, all my friends, my family, all their friends, and, I think, about 99% of the surfers out there, you spend your time on the internet in a sort of subdued mental haze, not really thinking, not really learning, just being, possibly being entertained. Really, it's just like marijuana, or television. Now imagine what would happen if Maine gave 7th graders $37 million worth of Trinitrons and pot
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
At least if you have your kid sleep with Michael Jackson you get a few million out of it. Just getting an Apple laptop out of it seems like selling yourself (well, your kid) kind of short.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
I heard that the governor, who is a bit computer-illiterate, was especially and very pleasantly surprised to learn that the biggest download from kids was a software known as M.A.M.E. which, according to a kid whom the governor asks, stands for Macs Advancing Maine Education.
Ok. I usually hear the comparison from people who compare the Apostles with Marx & Lenin, and THAT gets me hot-n-bothered!
dochood
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.
Regardless of the teacher. I know - I was homeschooled with guidance from my teacher (parents) only when I sought it.
For my money, I'll take a classroom full of excited students over a more expensive teacher (who might not be better, just paid more) any day.
After all, the ulltimate goal should be to develop students excited about learning...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
BTW, I've administered pretty much all the systems I listed above, so I do have a pretty good idea what I'm talking about.
Of course, you're an anonymous troll, so I doubt anything I say will have much of an influence on you, but your post represents a common enough bait-and-switch that I thought it should be addressed.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
MacOS 7-9 may very well have been better than Windows 3.1, however I would expect that because they came out a few years later.
For stability, I would choose Windows 95 over MacOS 7-9 without a second thought. I admit that isn't saying much.
I really don't know how MacOSX in its latest for-a-fee service patch (10.x.x) stacks up against Windows 2000/XP. I would hope that the folks at Apple would get their act together on the stability front, because I think the classic MacOS GUI is quite user-friendly.
Amazing magic tricks
What exactly are you doing where DLL woes become an issue?
Are you sure that it's Microsoft's fault and not the software vendor's fault?
Amazing magic tricks
Not all work will ever be outsourced. Dealing with different time zones creates scheduling issues; different currency creates project risk; different countries creates political risk.
Not all companies can manage that risk to the point where paying someone 80% less is actually an overall less expensive proposition.
For employees, stability requires that you can do more than just the minimum requirements of your job. The same thing goes for McDonald's and Engineering.
or
http://tinyurl.com/6wud
I prefer a void in conversation to a vacuous one.
So what you're saying is that this program is financed independently of the Maine Learning Technology Endowment
?
Hilarious. Kids learn quick, don't they? Let's see, sell your FREE school computer and buy a PlayStation 2, some new skis and a couple bottles of hooch from the older kids... hell yeah I'd have done the same thing. (=
This whole thing is just good old-fashioned graft. Nice to see the kids picked up on it so quickly. No wonder attendance is up!
I kind of agree with you, but Alan Kay (pioneer in GUI, laptops, SmallTalk, etc) has some interesting ideas about the computer being a medium, just like a the book became in the Renaisance (sp?). He advocates very young kids using computers.
y na book.html
This is a shitty link but can't find anything better right now:
http://www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/archives/Kay/01_D
Google around for "User Interface: a Personal View"
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
You're thinking inside a box here. Assuming that they're trying to say "Think Differently", the grammar is indeed wrong, though you could argue that it is a self referential joke in that a "different" grammar is used to promote "different" thinking.
But you can also read it as "Think 'Different'". Don't know what it's called but here is a conversational example that should make it clear.
- How was the movie?
- Think 'Star Wars' but with horses instead of space ships.
Or to phrase it less elegantly: "Think Different" means "The simplest way to describe our product line and attitude is by the word 'different'"
Perhaps it's unsurprising; the education market, with its red tape and long depreciation times (if you used an Apple ][ in high school, raise your hand!), has turned out to be a less-than-stellar place for Apple to concentrate funds. Still, a rather ironic coda.
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
If I didn't have a computer when I was a kid, I would have done just as poorly as my classmates who were just as smart as I was, but unmotivated to learn.
Computers were fun to play with, are fun to play with, and will always be fun to play with. Once in a while you learn something by screwing around, and that's the only reason I'm not in jail or dead right now.
And if all you think a laptop is for is writing a research paper, and you don't think you can learn algebra with a computer, then how in the FUCK did you find slashdot?
BTW - it's NOT your fucking tax dollars going into this. It was privately funded. If you want to force-feed a kid "culture" and drop $50M on getting them a tomato in their lunch instead of catsup, then put up the cash.
Someone thought that computers would serve them well, and he came through with the funding.
I like the way that you know EXACTLY how to improve Maine public schools. You must be a fucking genius. Why is it that you geniuses never have any money, and instead try to force people who do have it to put it where you want it to go? Or do you have $37M and are just a selfish bastard who doesn't want to help out the schoolkids?
Hell, I don't have $37M, but it's none of my fucking business to tell someone HOW to be a fucking philanthropist.
~D
If our kids* were going to grow up and live in the past, you're argument would be fine and dandy.
I don't want our kids to have what I had in school. I want them to have access to more technology, more computers, more educational tools. When we were in school, laptops cost 4-10x as much, and didn't do a whole lot (and they weren't laptops, lapcrushers maybe). Nowadays, they're more than comfortable in the consumer computer market, and are hovering around 30% market share among new computer purchases. We are in the dawn of ubiquitous computing. It's the world our kids are going to live in. I think it makes sense to prepare them for it.
If you want to change the way education takes place, really revolutionize the educational process, you have to do things that have never been done before. Maybe the Maine laptops aren't the ultimate solution, but they're a step towards positive change.
People need to forget about what was "Good Enough" or "Just Fine." We need to ask, "what's better?", "what's best?", and "how do we get there?"
Apple's commitment in this program is manyfold. They didn't just hand them 25k iBooks and walk away. They're involved in the hardware, software, techsupport, education, networking, maintenance, and replacement processes. Its all included with the laptops. The TCO for the entire program is $37. They worked with the state of Maine to design a program that was educational, affordable, sustainable and productive. No other company provided a complete bid like this, and its doubtful any other company could.
SO, you've been yacking off without knowing a spit about what your talking about.. but thanks for playing.
* I don't have kids, but I do pay taxes in Maine. So I'm REALLY putting my $$$ where my mouth is.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
...there are less 2nd hand macs...
(duck)
to err is human, to forgive is divine, to forget is... umm...
I will only respond to points 1, 5, and 6:
1) According to the article, "The cost of the four-year program is 37.5 million." It mentions a million from the Gates Foundation, and a $400 million software donation (that probably consisted of a hundred CDs and a thousand licenses, and will probably cost a fortune when it comes time to upgrade). But I don't see where the rest of the money was supposed to come from. The article could be wrong, so would you please clarify how all the money was privately generated?
5) Equality of access is important, and should be done to the extent that resources allow. Within that constraint, the question becomes, "What things are most important for kids to access?" There's a huge list of possibilities: The attention of a competent teacher, nutritious food, computers, textbooks and library books, livable schools, musical instruments, sports equipment, and arts and crafts materials, just to name a few.
By claiming that computer access is a basic educational need, you may be ignoring the possibility that you could do more to improve overall education by diverting that money towards one or more of these other items. To me, it would make more sense to have two or three well-furnished computer labs shared by all the students, and this program is just spending scarce resources on sexy toys.
6) It's pointless to argue about what sort of arguments were going on in the 1930's, when Maine is collecting valuable data on how kids treat these computers. Let's wait a couple of years, then pull out the books and see if the repair costs are really worth it.
Other options are available, ranging from "chained to the desk" to "practical ownership." For example, students could sign machines out for special projects.
I agree that computers are the future of education. They'll replace textbooks, they'll allow for constant access to school resources and libraries of data, and they'll be valuable for easy collaboration on projects. But remember the infantry mentality: He who leads is he who steps on the landmines.
I hope this program does great things for your state. But my gut tells me that Maine is in for some pretty expensive lessons.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Amen. Why are we wasting all this money on our children's educations rather than funding full employment for state workers?
</irony>
Sean
The orignal $50MM (reduced to $30MM) was from the one-time settlement of Betsy Noyse's estate. Very fitting, as it was Intel money. Rather than fritter away in the general fund, it was proposed, successfully, that the windfall should be used "to make a difference." Time will tell if that is the case.
I spent a lot less money on my P3 to start with, so my guess is that I still come out ahead.
Sean
I will not address everything you ask as, frankly, I do not know and do not have the time or inclination to research it. I agree about the issue of leading, however, though I think that is in part what makes Maine a good test bed. Relatively small and relatively inexpensive to work out the kinks before rolling it out in a *large* system.
As I said elsewhere, It is my understanding that the orignal $50MM (reduced to $30MM) was from the one-time settlement of Betsy Noyse's estate. Very fitting, as it was Intel money. Rather than fritter away in the general fund, it was proposed, successfully, that the windfall should be used "to make a difference." Time will tell if that is the case.
They didn't use a control group when they did the experiments, so the sociology crowd finally concluded that there wasn't much you could conclude from the "experiement". Or so I recall from MGMT 101.
Sean
just because the money isn't raised through a tax doesn't mean it's "private" money. the wording of your first two bullets in your previous post are misleading, at best.
the fact is, if it hadn't been diverted into this special project, the money might have been in the general fund, and may have helped with some of the current problems the state is facing.
But to some people irrelevant, since your little conversational example is, by the strict rules of grammar, incorrect also.
There is a problem with correcting other people's grammar. A lousy writer uses poor grammar. A decent writer uses good grammar, with some mistakes. A good writer uses perfect grammar, except when quoting people, and even cleans out some quotes out of courtesy.
A truly talented writer, or even just an experienced, professional one, knows exactly when and where to break the rules of grammar in order for his writing to have maximum impact. He knows exactly what agrammatical or antigrammatical constructions will flow more smoothly than a correctly grammatical sentence. ('A preposition really isn't all that bad a thing to end a sentence with.') And, more importantly, he knows exactly when he doesn't WANT a smooth flow, and exactly which laws of grammar to violate in order to make his reader sit up and take notice.
The talented one does this instinctively. The professional does this with full malice aforethought.
Basically, then, this: the way to become a really excellent writer is to learn all of the rules of grammar, follow them for a while, and THEN learn when it's necessary to deviate from them.
Or you can just keep sucking, and pointing out the grammatical inconsistencies that the gentlemen with way more experience and professionalism put in there deliberately.
(By the way, I would say that the person who came up with 'Think Different' was exactly such a naturally talented person. It forces you to take notice: it is completely comprehensible to anyone, but it's also nothing you've ever heard before, and doesn't quite follow the rules. That is, it's just jarring enough to make you think about it.)
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
If ANYBODY can figure Windows out, but only a select few can get the Mac... that kinda shoots down the theory that the Mac is a more intuitive, user-friendly machine, doesn't it?
Sean
*gives you official texan hat*
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
He didn't say 'find me someplace more sparsely populated than Maine'. He said 'find me someplace with more small towns than Maine.'
Honestly, if you took the entire population of Maine outside the largest population centers (i.e. anywhere you could consider a 'small town' but not a 'large town' or a 'hamlet' or 'village'), and the entire population of Alaska outside of the largest population centers, I bet you'd end up with many more people in Maine than in Alaska. Which by default almost HAS to equal more people in small towns.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Perhaps you assume that their saying that they've had almost no problems with damage, vandalism, theft, and so forth means 'most of the students haven't carved their initials so deeply into the case that they've penetrated into the circuit boards,' but that's not what I assume.
I've found, personally, that if you give a child a responsibility, and make it clear that you are trusting them with something valuable, they will almost always live up to that responsibility. If you refuse to trust a child with anything, they will become untrustworthy. Of course, there are always exceptions... but it sounds like, by and large, the state of Maine isn't one.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
I bought my G4/400 dual processor for $1100, used, while they were still shipping. I got an offer on it of $800 a few weeks ago. That means that the total cost to me for using this machine for 2.5 years was $300, plus (if you want to get technical) the lost utility of the remaining $800 for 2.5 years, which given the stock market and so forth in the last 2.5 years is negligible, possibly negative.
Not a bad price, really.
(Oop, I added some memory and an extra hard drive, didn't I? I got the hard drive for free, but it was probably worth $60 or so (refurb 20 gig), and I got the memory for $60. So let's say the total cost was $420. Still not bad.)
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
No aid what-so-ever to financially strapped states... a first for any state budget shortfall of any real magnitude since before the great depression, and this is the worst state budget shortfall SINCE the great depression.
Bush claims that the problems are all due to massive overspending from the boom years, but the fact is, most states cut taxes during the boom years, because they didn't care about doing the smart thing and retaining some of that money, just the popular thing. Now they're having to cut services. I know of a school that will be firing its entire music staff, shutting down the music program, and just turning off the lights and heat in that area of the building.
God, I hate this administration. The temptation to vote with my feet and move to some other country grows ever larger.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
From Edweek:
Starting Maine salary average (in 2000): $24k
Average Maine teacher salary (in 2000): $37k
And also (from the Google cache):
2001 starting salary average: $23.8k
2001 average salary: $36.6k
Not $47k.
-T
Last year I was a teacher at a school in the Richmond VA area, and we were the first school to have the "Apple iBook initiative". At the end of the summer, every HS teacher was given his/her iBook (The clam shaped ones), then at the beginning of the school year every HS student was given an iBook (the white square ones) [NOTE: The teacher books were bought by the SD, the student books were leased]
The first half of the year was a MESS. The students were originally given stock iBooks. We had students file sharing, piracy, missing and deleted apps, you name it. Since the school had purchased an anti-virus program from a company that went belly-up shortly afterwards, we had viruses running though-out the schools wireless network. A lot of the kids were using their iBooks in school to listen to music, share porn that they got while at home and play games. Then when they were caught, the iBooks would be confiscated. This made things very unreliable from the teacher perspective. I can not count the number of times I made a lesson that was going to use all this wonderful technology we had, only to find that over half the class did not have their iBooks cause- 1) they were being fixed, 2) been confiscated, 3) low battery, 4) missing apps, etc. This became the norm, so at the time when the teachers were the most "gung-ho" to use the iBooks, they were unreliable. I should note here that, as with everything else in life, there were many students (and teachers) used the iBooks as planned, and acted very respectable towards the entire project. But we had enough "bad apples" (excuse the pun) to ruin the experience.
The second semester saw a lot of improvement as the SD learned from the mistakes. They bought new anti-virus software and "locked down" the student's iBooks so that a lot of the non-educational things were not available. But by now, most teachers had returned to using standard methods of teaching. The use of the iBooks became equivalent to use of a computer lab. Yes, we used the iBooks more then a lab since we did not have to sign-up 3 wks in advance or waste time moving class, etc. but I do not think that was what the SD really wanted.
I have mixed feeling toward laptops in school. I think student should be able to use as much technology as possible, BUT only when it is better then, and supplements the standard methods. I think that laptops should be limited to the HS, were students are more mature (for the most part). I think that teachers should be heavily trained on how to use the computer as a supplement to their teaching. Schools should have "test groups" before issuing out laptops to the entire school. And these test groups MUST be a mix of the school population, not just the "good students".
If it is done right, I think it can be a great tool for education, but I have seen/read too many times it is quickly implemented so that the politicians (both government and school board) can get a new feather in their caps.
Just my 2/100 of $1.00Understood. I believe that socialism is a fine idea on paper, but in reality just doesn't work.
Do any of the textbook publishing companies release their 1000 page books on CD so that the poor kids don't have back injuries?
Also don't you think that there will be problems with students defacing their computer? I certainly know that I have gotten some really defaced books in the past.
"Guns don't kill people, bullets do."
It's interesting that you should bring this up. I have slightly different, but supporting, perspective on this.
Military safety training...
Every 3-7 years, you get a change in pretty much all training guides for all safety-related procedures in the military.
The military doesn't do this because the safety procedures actually get better. They do it because, if they change the training guides and safety procedures, people stop being bored with the "old" way of doing things, and pay more attention. And simply because they are paying more attention, the accident rates go down. (Or stay stable instead of going up.)
So the effort of changing safety guidelines and procedures (which costs a noticable amount of money, and tends to look silly to outsiders who say "this is effectively what you had before!") actually has a benefit in fewer hurt soldiers.
Yes, they did studies on this, sorry for not providing a link. A lot of the silly things the military does actually have good reasons, if you dig enough.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
Giving kids powerbooks was the safest choice to make.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Fair enough. Those are good points. I would like some kind of modern Mac so that I can try 10.2 for myself.
Amazing magic tricks
I am a high school student in South Florida (pretty far from Maine but thats not important) and our school has gotten a lot of iBooks. I'm not a mac user at home, I prefer to build my own pc's, but I was loaned one of the extra iBook's from the school (as were many other of the tehnically inclined students) and have to say they are a dream. To put this in contrast I have also had at various times a generic pc laptop, an Apple Powerbook G3 (the black one with the white apple logo), a Dell Latitude, a Titanium G4, and the iBook I have now. My favorite by far is the iBook. They are small, light and compact. They are much more comfortable to work on then their larger and hotter pc counterparts. Everyone who's gotten them has fallen in love with them. My only complaint is the speakers on the iBooks are horribly underpowered. I work with our technicians doing IT work, and the iBooks are much easier to maintain. There are no removable drives or other parts to be easily lost or broken. When something breaks it's a simple matter to stick it in the box Apple provides and ship it back for warranty repair. They come with Appleworks which is an elegant and feature rich Office compatible word processing suite. Mac OS X also includes built in Windows Networking support, so they play nice on our network. The PC world does not yet provide a cost effective solution as well suited for education as the iBooks. I think Maine made a good choice in the iBooks, especially over custom hardware.
Are the teachers going to make them wrap up the laptops in brown paper covers?
Ya wanna know why? Well I'll tell ya. My school is planning on doing the same thing in 2 years and I would say that my school is on the upper tier of education so there is no real waste in taxpayer's money. I'm giddy with joy :)
How many times did you cut and paste this response? I've seen three (well, I assume one wasn't strictly a 'cut and paste').
How are these machines actually being used? (Seriously, not troll. If I were trolling, there'd be no doubt)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Yeah...well, my bad. I posted it as a stand alone, but then two msgs proportedly from folks in Maine amused/annoyed me enough that I planted the text under them as well...on principle.
One of the two links I posted under another response has a great collection of "success" stories addressing how they are being used posted by parents, teachers and the students themselves. I am sorry that I don't have it at my fingertips, but I am actually in the middle of finishing a project and can't go digging after it. Believe it is in a response to the "first" posting.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated $1 million for more teacher training.
Heh. That should have been part of the DOJ settlement.
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
It's because they were told of the experiment before it happened, so after *every* change they tried even harder.
Lots of things "should" happen... but we'll all go broke if the government tries to pay for all of them.
I remember reading that other initiatives like this were started in other smaller localities (the county level). I live near one of these localities, Henrico County in Virginia (USA) where iBooks were introduced to High Schoolers county-wide. Apple got some big press here from the Steve Jobs presentation.
I am curious how it has been working since I have no children that age and have no way to know.
Any feedback from these smaller initiatives?
.sig Sig Sputnik
Good info... and about that last comment ("A lot of the silly things the military does actually have good reasons.") reminds me of the fun I had reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon... the soldiers in the field are given lots of orders that seem silly, dangerous, and counter-productive, but it all made sense when viewed in context of the great WWII crypto game that Berkley Park played so well.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction