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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*
... 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
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?
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
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
The pupils gave the teacher an apple. Looks like it's the other way round now.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
....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
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.
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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!
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.
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.
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.
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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 $1.00Do 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."
Are the teachers going to make them wrap up the laptops in brown paper covers?
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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