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New Hampshire to Follow Maine's Lead
Timex writes "According to an article from the Portland [Maine] Press Herald, some seventh-graders in New Hampshire will be issued laptops in January. 19 school districts have been invited to submit proposals, and up to five of them will be chosen to lead the way in New Hampshire. Cabletron Systems co-founder and NH Governor Craig Benson is getting funding for the four-year project from corporate donations. So far, he's gathered about half of the estimated $1.2 million estimated cost."
(fp?)
mom, can I go back to school please. . c'mon I'm only 25
The teachers knew how to use them, and the system admins know more about securing them then the kids that are using them.
WindowsCHILD, WindowsNEWBORN, WindowsIMPLANT
If they don't choose Macs, they aren't following Maine's lead, they are moving in another direction entirely.
Namely, backwards.
I dunno. I can't see issuing my middle schooler a laptop. Not because I have any particular problem with their use in education, but because the kid has a tendency to drop stuff (and lose stuff). Seems to be endemic to the age group.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
I help support the laptops here in Maine and the program is a complete joke. Schools don't do much more than post information on the Apple run FirstClass mail server and have students use search engines with the things.
Now if a REAL computer curriculum were to be developed around the Unix aspects of Mac OS X that would be something, but integration with the classroom itself isn't going to happen. I don't know how it could really without losing the attention of students who resort to web browsing during dull (and meaningless) lectures.
High School/Public School education is a joke in the U.S. Student's don't even know algebra by the time they graduate with A's in math.
What a waste of money. Laptops aren't the answer to better student performance, as anyone who's been through college recently can attest. Laptops simply add more distractions - games, instant messager, PORN ... and aren't really more efficient than old fashioned pen and paper.
That $1.2 million should be spent on something that really matters ... like new textbooks?
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
And then what happened? Surely there is something more to this story? Maybe some linux zealotry or a little MS bashing? Please?
Could buy an awful lot of textbooks.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
...as opposed to ass backwards in the case of Winblows.
well, if there is no proper supervision it could lead to problems rather than improve learning. my accounting class was in a computer room, all we used to do is play multiplayer shockwave games and hearts
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
The same money could buy more desktop units, and could be used to teach the kids how to actually program.
I was taught that one needed to know the math before one could use the appropriate functions on the calculators or computers. This is a prime reason there are so many garbage "scientific" studies out there. Nobody recognizes the stats for the baloney they are.
I am a teacher in Maine and I have to say that the program in Maine works. It received some criticism early on but now the program is in full force and it works. You can trash Apple as much as like but the bottom line is this. Imagine training the number of teachers necessary and then handing out laptops to very enterprising middle schoolers. Also imagine the headaches that could arise when all these middle schoolers get their computers infested with Windows worms and viruses and then expecting the teachers to fix the problems. It is a disaster in the making. The bottom line with using Apple laptops is that they are simple to use and maintain with a big emphasis on maintain. You can quote all those crappy TOC studies you want about Windows vs Apple but again, the burden on day-to-day maintenance is on the teachers themselves! I hope this is clear to all the Windows pundits. For what the state of Maine needed these computers, Apple simply worked better. I wish my neighbors in NH the best of luck in setting up their program. I hope they will take what we have learned thus far in Maine and get their program off to a good start.
This is just a typical example of what is wrong with the school system today (and why I am homeschooling my children). Instead of wasting money on high tech solutions that cost more to maintain the school system needs to stick with the building blocks of basic education.
I guess the kids go back and then just say their laptop was stolen, and then get another one, so everyone wins!
> Student's don't even know algebra
Looks like you didn't pay much attention in school either...
What the hell? Middle schoolers don't need laptops, what are they going to use them for? Nothing. Good god, I was just a middleschooler and it would have been COMPLETELY pointless for me to use a laptop at school. The percentage of kids also don't know how to use computers, or how to treat them(hello falling on the floor).
Absences, tardiness and disciplinary trips to the principal dropped significantly in one Maine school with the laptops, Benson said.
"If that doesn't tell you this works, nothing else will," he said.
I think it's because the laptop is more like a gimmick that keeps kids occupied. Back in my days, we stopped playing pencil break because we were busy making ASCII porn on a TI-82.
Has punctuation been taken off the curriculum too?
The irony here is that MacOSX now exposes more of the fundamental concepts of computing than Windows does.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I live near Bangor, Maine, and I did a college photojournalism project at my middle school to see how the laptops were working. Not only did the students seem more engaged in their learning, but they used them for almost everything: they wrote journal entries, found clipart for multimedia presentations, and then researched information for a speech. And that was all during one class. Students in social studies the next period spent time researching current headlines on msnbc.com and informed the teacher of the latest development of the war in Iraq (I visited this spring). That's right, they were telling her the latest news. What better way to engage students in education than by letting them be the teachers? Every study I've ever seen has said that two-way learning is much more effective than reading from a textbook or listening to lecture.
While some districts in the state may be less excited about the program, its important to note that the laptop program in Maine is still supported and still working. While expensive, this program introduces students to technology at a fairly early age. It's very possible that Maine students will be much more tech-savvy once they leave their middle and high schools.
I agree... schools, and the education system in general, need to figure out 2 things:
- How to teach using computers, and when teaching without them is better.
- What to teach about computers.
Both these issues are not being addressed or even recognised in schools over here (Holland). In rare instances you see an enthusiastic physics teacher giving classes on computer science, and even in those cases they have little if any teaching materials to back them up.
Buying computers for schools or giving laptops to kids is not the way to improve education.
Oh, I can sympathise with your sentiment about education. Here in Holland, per-capita spending on education is about 2/3rds of the amount spent in the rest of Europe. It scares the hell out of me to see my country dumbing down, visibly.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Only a small portion of the entire economy will require extensive computer knowledge besides typing LOL and WTF? and using cellphone word auto-completion interfaces. Paper and pencils don't require batteries and are cheap to replace. Whatever happened to teaching reading, writing, and 'rithmetic?
No, they aren't training kids to be programmers or Unix dudes or whatever: so what. What they are doing is ensuring that the entire educated populace in maine is comfortable with technology. And whether you like it or not, that is still becoming more and more a fundamental requirement of any form of employment, even if it's just on the administrative end. Hell if you want to work the cash register at the pizza place next to me you have to know the basics of computer usage.
The last story on this in maine highlighted greater attendance, fewer discipline problems, and greater attentiveness in class as easily spottable trends after the implementation of this program. The laptops stay with the classroom, not the students as they move on. But when the students move on they will know how to use the internet as a research tool, how to use spreadsheets and databases and word processors and such, in short they will be able to utilize technology.
In a state that is trying to update its workforce to keep pace with the times, that alone is a big step. Frankly, I think an educational system that IS NOT addressing the ever growing prescence of technology and its uses in our lives is woefully inadequate.
Hi,
Please don't end a sentence with an implied ellipsis. Didn't they teach you anything in grammar school?
Sincerely,
the Nazi Grammar Fairy's iBook
What the poster was trying to point out is that simply throwing a bunch of laptops at schools isn't enough... Schools and teachers need to support the use of these things as well, and teach students how to use them.
As he pointed out, the schools in his area were hardly making good use of the machines. In your example, I bet that the distribution of laptops in Maine was accompanied by an education programme to teach how to use the laptops for school assignments.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
this is just another of those sounds good, feels good ideas. i taught seventh grade for seven years, and now teach high school. the whole "computers in the classroom" is nonsense. there has not been one definitive study to show that technology aids in learning. now if these were part of a technology program, fine. but are these going to motivate students? no. are these going to increase learning? no. are these going to make the students more critical thinkers? no. it isn't the computer, it's what you do with it. for years teachers in my junior high school were all shits and grins about powerpoint presentations. they'd have the students spend a week in the lab, make this really neato PPT presentation. impress the shit out of everyone with all the eye-candy, and what did the students learn? not much. there was so little room for any information, all the students' time was spent looking for pictures, making word art, etc. it was crap. now, i would do a current event assignment. the students had to find a current event, had to research the country at the cia website, had to research the history on the web, and had to evaluate the article for bias. even though it was done in word, i specified no pictures, graphics, etc. i wanted content. now, which is more impressive? the PPT. which is more educational? hmmm...
beware teachers and districts that say how much technology they are implementing. if it is a tech program, i.e. networking, web design, sys-admin, programming, etc., fine. wonderful. but nothing beats a good teacher, who knows their subject, who makes kids read, think, write, and learn. technology should be part of a technology program only. it doesn't take a computer to make kids read books, use their brain, learn arithmetic skills, write complete sentences, learn history, etc. sorry, but that is the truth.
i am finishing a masters in ed. technology. i am as big a computer geek as there is on a high school campus. but i also am a history teacher. and there is nothing a computer can do for me, the kids, or the class, that will make them learn history better.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
That money could buy a lot of miniature American flags.
In the late 1980s i got busted in the 7th grade using my C= Plus/4 to do my algebra and geometry homework with. I was removed from both classes and had to make them up the following year.
My principal's famous last words:
"You need to learn to do this without a computer. When you grow up and get a job, is your computer going to be there to do your work for you then?"
heh
do() || do_not();
I think it's a great idea to provide all kids with regular computer access, so long as it's access to something. What I mean is, just handing out computers to kids and hoping osmosis or something will take over and they'll suddenly start weaving technology magic and make the kids learn more is useless and a waste of money.
If they're providing the technology for access to more technology enhanced curriculum or integrating something useful, then It's a very good thing.
I live in the silicon valley, and I went to a middle school that issued all the 6th and 7th graders laptops(for some reason, not the either graders, so I was screwed). The problem with that kind of system is, it ONLY trains the students to be entirely helpless end users, and nothing more, but there's really no way to fix that. The thing is, when you own your own computer, it's YOURS. You can do what you want: install software, put in another OS, set it up as a webserver, program, etc. However, all of that gives the user access to parts of the computer that the network admins of schools don't want them to have. So, all that they end up being able to do is type word documents, surf the net and use AIM durring class, and play nanosaur. Nothing else.
Now if a REAL computer curriculum were to be developed around the Unix aspects of Mac OS X that would be something
Why would a 7th grader need to know anything about Unix? Seriously.
From what I've read here and know on my own, it's apparent that most geeks don't favor laptops in the hands of kids at school. If we, who know and love our computers, can see the folly, why the hell can't educators see it?
My brother's wife teaches high school math and 'computers'. She knows nearly nothing about computers even after her "training" and she's the smart one of her group! I have to work on their system all the time after she's fucked it up.
If a kid can't read, write, and do basic math, they are lost. No amount of playing with a computer can help that. Oh, hell, I guess it'll boost their "self esteem".
Larry Cuban, a professor of education at Stanford, has written a book on the subject, "Computers in the classroom: oversold and underused," which is available in .pdf form here:
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/pdf/CUBOVE.pdf
I absolutely agree that the curriculum needs to endorse and support the laptop program in order to be successfull. However - the expectation cannot be that teachers can do this overnight.
When we implemented a laptop program for graduate students in 1990 at UC Irvine's Graduate School of Management, it definitely took some time for faculty to understand how to best use the new technology for their curriculum. Obviously, some professors took to it faster than others, some may never take advantage of the fact their students have laptops. IMO it took a 3-5 years for the faculty to understand how to best utilize the laptop program for their curriculum.
So when the next worm/virii hits its gonna piss little kiddies off that can't run their Sponge Bob video game.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
My opinion is that every child should, by high school graduation, be capable of efficiently working --including scripting, and maybe programming-- in Windows, Mac OS X, and a more standard *nix such as Linux or Solaris.
'Cuz, they gotta turn them back in, right?
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
You mean compared to OS 7-9 vs. MS-DOS/Windows? I'd argue that it always did. Windows/DOS was never a good place to learn computing fundamentals, just a place to get misinformed. I've always noted a congruence between Mac and Unix people. They always took the same approach, but at different levels. Good computing design is good computing design.
Really that's exactly why the OS X transition has been so relatively painless. I remember Jobs, of all people, saying "Unix is the future" in the late '80s when the first NeXT came out. That was right after he left the original Mac project. It was a layer transition, not a rethink.
Why not just teach them binary, hexadecimal, and logical thinking? Do we need laptops for that?
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
This has serious potential of being a serious nuisance. can you say, students not listening. -browsing -games -music -INSTANT MESSENGING! plus the possibility of some guys running exploits on other students machines . id take windows off ... nix (and wine if necessary) ...
nonetheless ... i like the idea
With that said, as a practical matter, laptops are a bad idea. They are easy to steal. They suffer a lot of wear & tear and break (all you road wariors know this). Anyone ever had an LCD crack? Laptop batteries, just like all other batteries, can only hold a charge for so long. And repairing/replacing them (all the parts, not just the battery) is expensive.
Now, I recommend that instead of trying to fool with all this fancy technology (administering these laptops would be a pain in the ass, too), students just take a pad of paper and a pen. We are really losing something important if we teach these youngsters to be dependent on technology to learn.
The 19 school districts are: Mascenic Regional; Allenstown (4800); Colebrook (2600); Franklin (8400); Monadnock Regional (23000); Winnisquam Regional; Farmington (6000); Mascoma Valley Regional (12000); Somersworth (11600); Haverhill Cooperative (4100)(Warren, Orford, Haverhill, Bath); Wilton-Lyndeborough (3300); Lisbon (1700); Stratford (900); Milton (3700); Wakefield (3200); Andover (1900); Hillsboro-Deering (4600+1900); Weare (6800); and Thornton (1600).
hi, nh kid living in an actual city here... just like to point out those are like... really small. did it even say how many laptops they're getting? 1.2 million over 800 bucks a laptop is 1500 laptops. the above list adds up to just about 100k people, so how many of those are 7th graders? 1.5 percent?
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
I think it's a good idea to put computers in schools, but I see giving some students laptops as opposed to having a compter class with maybe twice as many desktops stations as a real mistake (analogous to the NEA giving 10 artist $1 million instead of 1000 artists $10,000). It just seems like won't really address the fact that ALL students are going to need to have a computer education and if they don't they might as well get a shoe shine kit now and get to work.
I believe the article said no taxpayer money is being used; it's from donations.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Because, maybe, just MAYBE every noteworthy operating system except one is some form of Unix? If you know how to use Unix, you are capable of working efficiently with Linux (more and more common every day!) and can do more with Mac OS X, something a lot (not a plurality, but still a noteworthy quantity) of seventh graders have at home.
C's not only work, they play,
Yeah, it's just so important for SCHOOLS to have computers that can play all those tired old cookie-cutter derivatives of Doom that come out every month.
and do a lot of other things as well.
Like crash, spread viruses, and slow down the internet in general and e-mail systems in particular with traffic from all the rampant worms probing for unprotected systems to infect.
" Exactly. No one disputes that iBooks are the best tool for the job if you accept that a portable computer is a good idea in the first place. "
No one? Better check again: most laptop users/buyers reject iBooks and get something else.
A competent teacher can teach give a piece of chalk, a blackboard, a textbook and an eraser. Money for education should be used to support a highly trained teacher profession who has excellent grasp of the subject matter to be taught.
Most primary and elementary school students need to be educated in the basics before they are able to
tackle the literate medium of the Internet.
We used to produce many engineers and scientists and put men on the moon when we weren't falling into this PC trendy educational experiement. I seem to recall that those scientists and engineers did well with the phonics, sentence diagramming, and long division worked out on paper, not a calculator.
The reason why our kids can't read and perform math without a calculator is that the modern educational system hand-holds them through the things that they need to learn.
My 2 cents,
-Crolis
I've seen lots of posts with people complaining about how laptops aren't any more efficient/better/sexier/etc than pen and paper, but let's look at the facts: In today's instant messaging filled world, many kids can type 50wpm or more. Show me someone who can write at 50wpm. No matter how fast you move your hand, it's just not physically possible to form letters using a pen as quickly as tapping the letters on a keyboard. For this reason alone, kids could spend more time thinking about their ideas and less time writing them down/typing them.
"Like crash, spread viruses, and slow down the internet in general and e-mail systems in particular with traffic from all the rampant worms probing for unprotected systems to infect."
No, like do productive things. There are so many productivity applications on PC's that just do not even have Mac equivalents.
"Yeah, it's just so important for SCHOOLS to have computers that can play all those tired old cookie-cutter derivatives of Doom that come out every month."
You can play Doom on the Mac (one of the few programs it has) so what is your point? If they want to do something besides Doom, they'll have to get non-Mac machines (which turn out to be easier to get, faster, and cost less: a win win win win win situation)
I wonder what kind of laptops will be issued. Physical fitness classes are on their way out and we wouldn't want the kids throwing their back out lugging around a Dell.
They should do all the math in their head because they might lose the pencil or drop the calculator!
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I believe the poster's original point was that the laptops were useless education-wise. Your post seems to support that assertion.
Not only did the students seem more engaged in their learning
How exactly can a distraction such as a laptop cause students to pay attention to the subject at hand? Can you elaborate? Do you mean they weren't looking bored because they were playing Minesweeper while the teacher was explaining history?
they used them for almost everything: they wrote journal entries
And how is that better than writing journal entries in a notebook?
found clipart for multimedia presentations
I always found that multimedia presentations were a way to waste class time doing nothing. Can you explain what a multimedia presentation might be useful for? How does finding clipart contribute to those kids' education?
then researched information for a speech
Of course, we all know how reliable the Internet is at delivering accurate information... NOT. I think those kids would be better off learning how to use the library.
Students in social studies the next period spent time researching current headlines on msnbc.com
Great. How exactly is social studies remotely related to current headlines? What does that prove, that the students know how to read MSNBC.com?
What better way to engage students in education than by letting them be the teachers?
Was the teacher explaining the latest developments in Iraq when that happened? If he/she wasn't, then this is just a regular distraction.
Every study I've ever seen has said that two-way learning is much more effective than reading from a textbook or listening to lecture.
Perhaps. And every student I've seen prefers to watch TV to doing homework and reading textbooks. Obviously, if the students can choose to either do work or have fun, they will choose the latter. But that does not improve their learning of the assigned material.
In short, your post simply confirms the original premise: the laptops are useless toys that do nothing education-wise. Sure, they might slightly improve students' understanding of computers. However, learning how to use Word and Powerpoint is something that can be done in just a few hours, and doesn't require students to have laptops.
Michigan's legislature has decided that, in the midst of horrible educational funding cuts (order of 10% for many districts), they will be funding $1000 toward 6th grader laptops. In my opinion, it may be the dumbest legislation Michigan has had. Of course, the No Child Left Behind act makes it look like the best thing ever to happen.
Because, maybe, just MAYBE every noteworthy operating system except one is some form of Unix? If you know how to use Unix, you are capable of working efficiently with Linux (more and more common every day!) and can do more with Mac OS X, something a lot (not a plurality, but still a noteworthy quantity) of seventh graders have at home.
You did not really answer my question, how does average student get benefit from knowing the inner workings of unix? Essentials of word processing? sure. Basics of email? Why not. How to use mouse and keyboard? Certainly. Those are skills they will benefit from. But to teach the inner workings of unix is a skill that is neither useful or important for the vast majority of the population.
It'd be better if they'd spend their time learning math or maybe english.
Ever use Blackboard? It helps with teaching.
High School/Public School education is a joke in the U.S. Student's don't even know algebra by the time they graduate with A's in math.
Thats because math isnt taught in a way so that people actually learn it. You dont learn math by memorization alone but thats how its taught, its just rote memorization.
Also students dont know math very well because we distract them with a hell of alot of other subjects, like history, PE, and all those elective s which just waste time.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
the should instead use the money to bust the NEA and allow some competition and choice.
1 6/
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/00600966
Boy, am I happy I don't live in a state where they piss taxpayer money down the toilet like this!
" iBooks are sturdy, easy to use,"
More figures disputed by the majority of users, who choose other systems because they are easier to use than iBooks.
" relatively immune to viruses,"
That is a beneficial side-effect of the Mac software situation: no one writes anything for Macs, and this includes viruses.
"and are reasonably cheap."
Huh? They tend to cost twice as much as "similar" PC notebooks which are faster. Cheap compared to an AS-400 maybe.
How long does it take to teach someone how to use e-mail, once they know how to use the hardware and the operating system? Oh, five minutes maybe. Word processing? Thirty minutes. Keyboard and mouse? Gee, mice are designed to be EASY to use and keyboards -- well, keyboards are pretty standard and nothing new, having been used on typewriters for over a hundred years. And I never said to cut back on English or mathematics (except maybe, now come to think of it, to get rid of the stuff from math that's even more useless than you claim Unix usership to be, i.e. two-column proofs). Rather, I said that the basics of Unix should be taught. If all people can use is Windows, the first time they run into a Mac (probably in college, but maybe later) they'll crap their pants. Heaven forbid they actually encounter a Linux box.
If I was in the normal school system for my age, I'd be in middle school, but, I'm in college right now and here's a sytem I use for text entry.
I have an Older PDA, a handspring visor I think, and it serves my needs. What I did, was buy one of those foldable keyboards. They used to made by targus where' it's fold up and connect directly to the bottom of the PDA.. anyways, I'd carry around in a CD case my PDA & Keyboard.
It was quite handy, turned on instantly & also served as a calander for assignment due dates. Best of all, it was about 800 dollars cheaper than a laptop, and much more durable.
Attention all sixth-graders everywhere: If your parents pay a lot of property taxes, make sure you do poorly on your tests. Maybe next year you'll be rewarded with a laptop!
then I'm for it. Seriously, why shouldn't textbooks be replaced with PDFs, HTML, or something similar? Publishers could charge a small semester/annual fee (make it a course fee for colleges), students would always have the current edition, it'd be a LOT cheaper... other advantages are just gravy.
I say this having just spent over $600 on books for college classes this semester. When the fsck did these things get so expensive? You could post the books on the class website for registered students to download and/or read online. The cost saved would balance out the expense of a good thin-and-light laptop (like this one) over 2-3 years and you'd have the laptop for word processing, Internet browsing and what not too.
Granholm's mistake is that she could cut a lot of waste spending by finding some way to bypass the NEA. Thanks to the NEA, education improvement is blocked in Michigan, and there are many rich teachers who get richer forcing schools to make class sizes much larger, and, in some cases, they also force schools to close.
Granholm will never do a thing: the NEA helped her campaign by giving her millions in stolen dollars.
The NEA is to education as the American Cancer Society is to education.
Macs don't have virus problems the same way K-Mart doesn't have shoplifter problems.
When there's nothing coming inside, this means that the bad stuff stays out too.
"MEMRI [memri.org] translates Middle Eastern news and commentary into English."
That is a great SIG. "MEMRI" cuts past the antisemitism that afflicts media and gives us the facts.
"OTOH the Newton had all these properties and excellent handwriting recognition."
I'nn us11ng @ Nevvt0n rig8t novv. Th3 handwr11t11ng recogmiXion i5 50 gQQd !
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I cannot see any reason to spend this much on something that will do so little. (Note: media classes are exempt; laptops are useful in them.)
A laptop might let you take notes quicker, and save for some minor annoyances like key-tapping and maybe computer-noises, that's a pro. But other than that, is there anything laptops can add to a class?
Maybe quizes could be administered quickly. But with that sort of technology it could be easier to cheat. And would quizes really be any better than on paper?
There would be some communication benefits perhaps. Nothing will be any better than someone sticking up their hand, though - and in this case the whole class can hear the question (or ignore it). So silent questions to the teacher while in class is out. It wouldn't be good to allow students to communicate like that, I think, since they could get off topic too quickly. It will be easier to focus without chatting.
A big con is that students could possibly be installing games and crap they shouldn't be using when instead they are supposed to be learning.
Maybe laptops could provide more interactive learning to replace the textbook. But still, I don't see how that could be so much better when doing math problems is easier on paper. If the questions are given on the laptop, it still is no better than a textbook. Students should be listening to the teacher in class though, and doing homework at home (imo - get the most use out of class time).
Monitors are hard on your eyes after a while. I haven't used a laptop for a long amount of time (don't own one), but this could just add more health problems. (well, very minor ones I'm sure - headaches and such at the worst)
Textbooks get better written and updated with new information all the time. I think they ought to be spending any extra money on textbooks, not useless laptops. I know my high-school classes could have used better ones. My new, expensive college textbooks are excellent.
Waste of money...
"Uhh, Ms. Brooks, my dog ate my--"
"Now Timmy, you don't expect me to believe your dog ate yout homework."
"No Ms. Brooks, mt homework's fine, but my laptop's not."
HTML would be better than PDF. More "open", and none of the problems of the PDF's confusing interface and inability to cut-and-paste, and having to bang away at the "+" icon to get the text letters larger than the tiny default size which is smaller than a typical minimum (1) size in HTML.
The only way $1 pdf's would be good is if they are unencrypted so they can quickly be converted to a usable format.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Doesn't matter, they were only doing all that stuff for show. As soon as you and your camera left they went back to playing UT and looking at porno.
School system tenet: Never pass up a photo op, especially when it shows tax dollars being put to "good use."
How long does it take to teach someone how to use e-mail, once they know how to use the hardware and the operating system? Oh, five minutes maybe. Word processing? Thirty minutes. Keyboard and mouse? Gee, mice are designed to be EASY to use and keyboards -- well, keyboards are pretty standard and nothing new, having been used on typewriters for over a hundred years. And I never said to cut back on English or mathematics (except maybe, now come to think of it, to get rid of the stuff from math that's even more useless than you claim Unix usership to be, i.e. two-column proofs). Rather, I said that the basics of Unix should be taught. If all people can use is Windows, the first time they run into a Mac (probably in college, but maybe later) they'll crap their pants. Heaven forbid they actually encounter a Linux box.
Yes, i think that everything joe average must know about computers can be taught in a handful of hours.
And to have hours to teach unix you must either increase total amount of hours or not teach something else.
And most people will never see Unix box in their lives. remember that not everyone goes to college.
Sure, I have nothing against showing how to start OOo in Linux or in Mac or how to check email using multiple clients. But you cannot really say those are the core business of Unix.
It seems to me you're saying that we should teach kids how to use grep and other *nix tools and I do not see any reason to do it when vast majority would get much greater advantage from learning something else.
corporations are donating the cash for it. the tax money is not even touched for the program, unlike maine.
Being from NH myself (and only removed from high school by 3 years), most communities have **serious** issues way beyond cure by giving students laptops.
In the not-so-distant past, there have been LAWSUITS against the state by the towns and cities (technically, Franklin, NH (maybe 9000 people) and Claremont, NH (not sure on pop) are chartered as a city. We're a crazy bunch, yes). Education funding has been a serious issue and accreditation threatened in a few cases. Corporate support of schools is not a bad thing, but buying kids laptops so they stay out of trouble in the classroom (by what? Playing games?) is just a fundamentally bad idea, especially when you can't afford to hire teachers who understand technology.
(AC because I don't have an account)
it's going to lend every sixth grader a laptop. Dunno if this was decided under former guv Engler (R) or current Granholm (D), but every teacher has said it's a stupid waste of money.
They can't keep their current Win2000 setups running, who the hell is going to maintain all the porn on these laptops?
Laptops are useless. What a waste of money. How about actually teaching the kids.
Good grief, people! I can't believe I'm reading this reaction here at Slashdot. You all seem to think that your kids should have to earn the right to use one like you did! What's with that? Today a computer is not a computer at all, but rather a communicator. Only a subset of kids will have an interest in the inner workings of a communicator, but everyone has an interest in communicating with others and being able to use the resources on the net.
This has nothing to do with teaching kids how to use a keyboard and mouse, or about binary and hexadecimal data storage. It has everything to do with empowering them to use the intellectual tools of the trades in our society. And one laptop contains every textbook you or your kids will ever need, and always in the most up to date version. The entire MIT undergrad curriculum and much of the grad curriculum is now online, along with most of world literature. Do you think this is mistake that will soon be corrected with a back-to-basics movement? Give me a break! This is the vehicle through which our kids will progress at their own pace, rather than being held to the average abilities in whatever class to which they may be assigned.
Give a human a fish and you feed them for a day. Give a human a fishing rod, and teach them how to use it, and you give them the means to feed others as well as themselves.
ThosEM
that you get your ass-kicked everyday. If my kid came out of the freaking womb smarter than Albert Einstein, you better believe that he'd go through the same school as everybody else. But maybe I'm just odd in not wanting my kid's to be socially underdeveloped freakshows. Seriously, what's the advantage of this? There's not way someone your age can meaningfully relate to another college student, and that's more than half of the point of college. Life's not long enough for you take an extra few years and at least have a chance at a real college experience? OTOH, I guess the people who think this would be a good idea probably aren't likely to really be social superstars anyways.
Lest we not forget the ultimate goal for modern capitalistic society is for public schools churn out little consumer-producers that do not have the skills to realize that they have been enslaved to perpetual budget-deficit debt and recurring fiat-currency frauds.
The whiny Libertarian/Republican Dog Eat Dog-Survival of the fittest idiots that always complain about always having to pay taxes for the poor, and say that no one in the U.S. has any rights to a job, an education, or even food. The ones that claim if you are poor and/or have disabilities, you deserve nothing at all.
How about investing that 1.2 million into producing open source texts for the children to learn from? When will we have a good ebook for education?
While writing simple text notes is indeed faster on a computer than by hand (at least for those of us who type well), writing complex equations is generally much faster by hand, especially if they happen to use symbols you haven't encountered before (which is not infrequently the case -- you are after all supposed to be learning things you didn't already know in these classes). No matter how proficient you are at LaTeX, it's not very fast to write down formulas filled with stuff you've never seen before, while with pen and paper you can just copy them down immediately.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Teaching them grep and stuff couldn't hurt. It'd be more useful than two-column proofs, which NOONE ever uses.
I leave my laptop at home nearly all the time, unless I have a specific purpose to take it with me. I am taking calc3 and other high level comp sci courses now and only need a pencil and notebook during class. The idea that a laptop will increase my learning ability is ridiculous. It would only slow me down. This whole idea is pushed by people who have no understanding of technology. There is a time and place for everything.
If they get a laptop with a little camera on it, the boys will take pictures of the girls legs, won't they? I know a middle school teacher that quit, saying kids that age only have one thing on their minds, and can't be taught anything. Give the laptops to college freshmen. They still have s$x on their minds, but are in college to learn, rather than in a required middle school.
As a general rule, giving expensive equipment to kids is a bad idea. They don't know how to take care of it; chances are half of these will be broken, lost or stolen. Who is going to pay for it when that happens? Can every parent afford to shell out $1000 when their child's laptop comes up missing? I predict incidents of child abuse will go way up, as parents find out their kids used a computer as a football or a sled...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I guess with all of the concerns about scoliosis in schools from kids carrying an outrageous number of books around with them that this might be a good idea. Hopefully the schoolls are trying for bottom of the line pieces who can pretty much run acrobat reader and works (you know spreadsheets and word processing). Really these things have little value beyond slightly more functional e-books.
Being that I was in middle school about six years ago, I can still recall that we didn't really do all that much that was very computer intensive. Most people tended to be physcially awkward (lots of tripping) and a fraile piece of equipment, especially an expensive and fragile piece of equipment is probalby not the best of ideas. Of course, if bully McJerk comes up to you and throws your bag on the ground before pounding the stuffing out of you for your lunch money, then your laptop will suffer a lot more than some textbooks will.
Again, I see this as a nice idea with a few flaws, but essentially it's good to be getting away from 100lbs children carrying 200lbs of books.
In short, your post simply confirms the original premise: the laptops are useless toys that do nothing education-wise. Sure, they might slightly improve students' understanding of computers. However, learning how to use Word and Powerpoint is something that can be done in just a few hours, and doesn't require students to have laptops.
Flame bait and ignorant.
Teachers like this one , and studies and newspapers back up my claim.
Do you work better on a good day or a bad day? Most work better when happy. I know this sounds amazing, but learning AND having fun is possible. Don't be a troll and don't try to deny the results. Attendance is up, kids are having fun, teachers are happy, test scores are good, etc. What more do you want?
Hahaha... goog one.
Unix is a complex system. If you teach about processes, threads, interprocess communication, job control, etc... the kid will gain much insight into logic and problem solving.
For example, they could write a program that had to accomplish a task with multiple processes working together.
I don't think teaching them to research using the web and having them use fairly straightforward programs like photoshop and powerpoint (or clones), teaches them to be more "tech savvy". To teach them that you will need to teach them to solve problems instead of memorizing formulas and make sure they have a functional understanding of logic and basic algebra. Students going through most public schools in Maine seem to be lacking in these areas. I would say that it is not even worth going to high school, but instead skipping straight to college once someone can read and write. College courses generally teach a much more fundamental understanding of their subjects than any public school I've seen in Maine (except for maybe MSSM).
Remember, computing is learning how to make a computer solve complex problems for you! It is NOT learning to use word or find clip-art for presentations. That kind of thing could be done just as well on the desktop computers schools spend thousands per year on anyway.
It would be a great project if teachers tought a course in TCP/IP and computer networking and then applied this knowledge using the laptops and Apache to let the students set up their own web server and make their own home page on their laptops. It would teach them valuable skills which they could apply to a world where computer network knowledge is of ever-growing importance.
But NO! We want them to look at MSNBC.com and make multimedia presentations!
Teaching them grep and stuff couldn't hurt. It'd be more useful than two-column proofs, which NOONE ever uses.
That just proves that maybe we shouldn't teach them two-column proofs. There are countless things out there that would be good for a kid to know but we must prioritize and I see no reason to put *nix knowledge to a high place on that ladder.
They know some of the rules of algebra and how to apply them to very specific types of problems. That's not going to help them when they are in college calculus and need to express something as a function of something else for example. Often the solutions to those types of problems are not immediately clear (you can't just plug certain given values into an equation and get the answer). You must show certain relationships between one set and another and then use those relationships to formulate a function.
While I'm talking about sets let me point out that the math curriculum in my high school NEVER consisted of sets at all!
My high school has used laptops for four years. To be honest, they're more trouble than they are worth. The first year, most of our class played games, downloaded music (we have a wireless network), etc. Four years later, our laptops completely unreliable. We all prefer to take notes on paper and groan whenever the school forces us to work on our laptops. My school is a private school, so our parents purchase the computers rather than the public school system, but I still say that it's a waste of time and money.
Yes that is incorrect apostrophe usage. I suppose we all make these mistakes from time to time. :)
Those who can, do.
Those who can't, teach.
Those who can't teach, teach teachers.
Those who can't teach teachers, administrate.
(If you can read this, thank your parents, not the teachers who don't care if a large percentage of students moving from 5th to 6th grade can't read at all)
"The whiny Libertarian/Republican Dog Eat Dog-Survival of the fittest idiots that always complain about always having to pay taxes for the poor"
No, it is just that the Libertarians know the fact that the taxes are really being paid to enrich the rulers (who merely say that they are taking money "to help the people": great scam, it works!).
"The ones that claim if you are poor and/or have disabilities, you deserve nothing at all. "
You are probably implying that everyone has a "right" to be given these for free, without working for them. Sorry, it is not in the Constitution. You deserve what you earn.
The reality was I did not understand anything. I did not understand what a computer really was. I did not understand what i was really doing when i was using one. But I did understand that these things were very cool and I needed to learn and understand. i needed to get comfortable with them. I needed to become a user. I needed to own one ASAP
And that is why the laptop program is potentially so good for so many students. If they parent has a computer at home, then fine. But for many students this is the only way they will get the technology. This is what is going to get some of the non standard learners involved with school. Sure, the person who is focused on curriculum and 'quality activities' may not see any learning going on. There may be no measurable results. But often learning is going on.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The funny thing is, there's already at least one school in New Hampshire that integrates laptops in its education program quite well. Some friends of mine work there; it's a private school, grades 9-12, called Brewster Academy in Wolfeboro. This school is very forward-thinking in its computer-enhanced curriculum and is constantly being written up in journals, magazines, newspapers, etc. for it.
I wonder if the NH school folks have consulted with, or researched about, Brewster? It'd be nice to think they would, given that it's right there in their state and all, but the real world being how it is, I don't know if that's likely.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Why does everyone need to know how to build a webpage? Would it not be better to teach something that everyone truely must do - taxes for example. There really should be very few uses for the computers by any students, with the obvious expections of games, porn and word processing.
rant.on
Look what generally happens to students that are allowed/encouraged to use calculators for math courses - they generally cannot perform simple computations with this "tool" (crutch). To make matters worse we having things like the TI92 and HP line of super-calculators that do symbolic integration and can solve differential equations. good luck learning with those. The best you can hope for is to learn how to use the calculator to solve preformed problems, which qualifies you for a great data entry postiion.
rant.off
Unless they are, they have absolutely no use for laptops.. the money could be better spent elsewhere, afterschool programs, better compensating teachers, etc.
Also, is every student going to have one of these to use? If not, it puts another sort of status barrier up, and there are far too many of those as it is... race, religion, money, and so on.
Is the $2.4 million to cover the Microsoft licensing fees after the laptops are so graciously "donated?"
Don't you just love the goons who rush in here to tell you what will happen without even bothering to look at what _has_ happened with other similar programs?
Just loooove to hear themselves type.......
- I am made of meat.
I did a college photojournalism project at my middle school to see how the laptops were working
Ok, now THAT must be a joke course in college, right? If you had done a thoroughly scientific study, you should have also observed the children in a class that doesn't use laptops, and compared the results.
they wrote journal entries
Did you compare the writing results of children who did the journal entries with pen and paper versus those who did it with a computer? Did you compare the quality of the writing, the length of the journal entries, and the choice of subject matter?
found clipart for multimedia presentations
That doesn't increase your intelligence.
this program introduces students to technology at a fairly early age. It's very possible that Maine students will be much more tech-savvy once they leave their middle and high schools.
The ability to click on a hyperlink is hardly "tech savvy". Software developers spend a lot of time "dumbing down the interface" in their applications to make it easy for people to use. This is known in other contexts as "spoonfeeding". In other words, don't misattribute the work and thinking done by the software developers to the children.
Laptops are an easy excuse for politicians and school districts to claim that they are "improving education" without actually achieving such aims. They are physical evidence that "money has been spent", and because the computers themselves are sophisticated machines, it looks like money "well spent".
Don't kid yourselves!
If you think the laptop program works, maybe the school district should buy all the kids mopeds so that they will more physically fit.
I did a college photojournalism project at my middle school to see how the laptops were working
Ok, now THAT must be a joke course in college, right? If you had done a thoroughly scientific study, you should have also observed the children in a class that doesn't use laptops, and compared the results.
they wrote journal entries
Did you compare the writing results of children who did the journal entries with pen and paper versus those who did it with a computer? Did you compare the quality of the writing, the length of the journal entries, and the choice of subject matter?
found clipart for multimedia presentations
That doesn't increase your intelligence.
this program introduces students to technology at a fairly early age. It's very possible that Maine students will be much more tech-savvy once they leave their middle and high schools.
The ability to click on a hyperlink is hardly "tech savvy". Software developers spend a lot of time "dumbing down the interface" in their applications to make it easy for people to use. This is known in other contexts as "spoonfeeding". In other words, don't misattribute the work and thinking done by the software developers to the children.
Laptops are an easy excuse for politicians and school districts to claim that they are "improving education" without actually achieving such aims. They are physical evidence that "money has been spent", and because the computers themselves are sophisticated machines, it looks like money "well spent".
Don't kid yourselves!
If you think the laptop program works, maybe the school district should buy all the kids mopeds so that they will be more physically fit.
"No, I'm claiming the Libertarian/Republicans believe in Dog-Eat-Dog/Sruvival of the Fittest, as in no social programs, no public transportation"
What planet are you on? Republicans tend to increase funding on all of these things. Even Newt Gingrich proposed a 20% increase in Medicare spending.
"Which is where the word Libertarian comes from, oh, that's right, the only ones that deserve liberty is the richest of americans"
No, under the libertarian philosophy, everyone has liberty, regardless of rich and poor.
" the constitution only applies to the rich, no to the poor. "
Not the United States constitution. It makes no such distinction.
" Smaller classes would help more."
Then we need to stop wasting money on those teacher pay raises when the union gets greedy and demands them. Every pay raise forces the schools to cut back on education and increases class sizes.
The pay should be for the value of the work, not the extortion demands of a greedy special interest group.
Band/Choir and non sport related after school activities that promote communication with real people were cancelled from lack of funds.
No sig for you!!
Brewster Academy (www.BrewsterAcademy.org) is a high school in NH that has had 1 laptop for every student for almost 10 years now. Purhaps you ought to read up about the Model(tm) before you start promoting the pros or cons of tech in the classroom. Just a thought.
Although not constitutional, it is commonly accepted that there is to be a seperation of church and state. This means that there shouldn't be a religion/church which is funded by taxes. Wether you like it or not, secular humanism is a religion(def.4), and it is being taught in schools. Also, to a degree, atheism is taught in public schools, and this too is a religion (although perhaps not "established"). There is no reason my taxes should be paying for a muslim/christian/hindu/linus based school, so why should they be paying for a secular humanist school? Taxes shouldn't pay for it, hence the reason there should be no public schools. The solution is this: if you want your kids to go to school, pay their way. if you cant afford to, maybe some other people from your religion will help you out.
> "I allege that SCO is full of it" -Linus
I'll be going into 11th grade this year, and I used an iBook for all of last year. It's been incredibly useful for me. I do all my assignments in class using OpenOffice (and Flash, Dreamweaver etc. for Multimedia classes). I've had no problems with compatibility (school is a 100% Windows environment) and the iBook has held up extremely well. It does get about 4 1/2 hours of battery life with the backlight turned down, and has survived dozens of falls, some from as high as 5 feet. My grades improved (straight As) mainly because I wasn't losing my assignments. If the paper disappears, I've still got it on my hard drive. I don't have to search for notes, because they are all right there.
I don't know if a program like this is right for all students, but it has certainly helped me.
I'm amazed that they can afford this. I know Massachusetts can't even afford books for students, let alone laptops. And New Hampshire has a lot less taxes then mass. They seem to be doing something right with their budget.
opinion is that every child should, by high school graduation, be capable of efficiently working --including scripting, and maybe programming-- in Windows, Mac OS X, and a more standard *nix such as Linux or Solaris
I don't know that I'd go that far - would remove all the special "awe" of being a computer geek in the eyes of the unwashed.
I graduated HS in 89. At that time, we had a computer lab (IBM PS/2 I think). Every student to graduate had to either complete a fairly basic computer lit course or a programming course. The students had to be able to identify main components of the system, how they worked together and be able to do some simple programs in basic - just to understand the theory of how the computer looked at the instructions. I think this was fine.
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
ool. I went to a private school in australia that introduced laptops to the classroom in 1995 (fifth grade for me)... heres what I can say. It was extremely useful for work, and helped a lot with that. It got me interested in programming (BASIC, logowriter, html (way back in 95 or 96 I made my first web page...)) MORE importantly, it provided a distraction - games, games, and, uh, games. Why is this more important? first off, i had to find a way to connect to the network without using my proper ID and such so that when we swapped games (via email, heh), i wouldn't get in trouble. This gave me at least a working understanding of a lot of under the hood things, and configuring everything just right for the games did the rest. then the time factor kicks in - i used a computer so much it replaced every thing else. I prefer to write math formulas, take notes, communicate - all with my pc. Now in college, (UC BERKELEY! GO BEARS) i have a reputation in my building as being the 'computer guy' her - 'my internet doesn't work' me - hmm, wtf, everything looks ok, wait a sec, why does your ehternet card wobble around... open case... ah, see, its good to have it connect to the motherboard... or 'why do popups keep coming on every page' followed by a download of zonealarm, hijack this, adaware... so, it provides easy money (or better yet 'favors', ;) and continues to help in my education - so, from my experience, laptops in school = l337 h4X0r c00l! boXx3n 4 4||! (uh, did i just unmake my point wit that last part?)
You guys are missing the point a bit. Laptops in education are about education, not computing. In this instance, the goal is to use computers to be learning aids - much like pen and paper.
No one would advocate learning how to produce pencils and paper in order for students to use them in the classroom. The same concept applies here.
Later on in High School there should be opportunities to learn how OSes work, not in 7th or 8th grade.
"Claiming that atheism is a religion is as silly as claiming that baldness is a hair color. "
No, atheism is a faith no different from any other. Like other faiths, it has its equivalent of the ayatollah who says that the faith is logically superior, and is not even a religion, it is "fact".
And what I ask is...why not both? I see the academic benefits of laptop computers...heck, I take ALL my college notes on an iBook...but I also see the benefits of teaching junior high kids how operating systems work, and how to use Unix. I mean...what ELSE is there to teach in junior high? I seem to recall that it's basically a holding tank.
In some areas, they are little paid. In other areas, they are badly overpaid to the point where there are severe cuts made to make up for the greed.
" Just like most car users reject Ferrarri and buy Toyota! Toyota must make the better car."
If this is Apple vs PC, the analogy only works if the Ferrari is actually slower than the Toyota and it can only go on a small fraction of the roads that the Toyota can go on (think of a Ferrari with a 43-mph-max governor with special wheels that lets it only go on train tracks). But, boy, it sure looks better than the Toyota. I guess that is all that counts.
That money could be better spent in districts in which the schools are falling apart, instead of rich areas on computers that, franky, is not worth the tiny possible boost in education for such a high price.
found clipart for multimedia presentations
Will the teachers give an "A for effort" when the kids produce cute pasted clipart and sampled audio instead of a coherent well-written presentation?
Are they focusing on substance or just the fun of being able to mindlessly browse menus? Do they teachers even know the distinction?
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
What is up with all you Mac-thumping fucktards?