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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."
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
Don't know about you, but when I was in middle school my parents were essentially forced to buy or lease a $500-$700 trumpet so that I could participate in Band class. Didn't even particularly want that elective, but still I had to carry that thing around and try not to break it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They require boot time, which is wasted time
So, get an iBook. They are cheap and when you wake them from sleep, they are on almost instantly. No waiting.
They also require juice considering they don't run on air and a random day at college lasts 8 hours for me.
My 800 Mhz iBook ran for about 5 hours of constant use which is more than plenty for a day at school considering that you are not constantly using the laptop during your school day. If you were, you had access to a power outlet. Currently, I use an 12in Powerbook that has less battery life, but since I am not in classes anymore, I prefer it and the extra features.
Also, laptops aren't very versatile for writing down stuff in a hurry.
I can type much faster that I can write as can many, many others who generally prefer taking notes with a keyboard.
The programs given are very limited and using them can feel very unnatural at times.
I find a simple text edit program the easiest and fastest way to input notes.
That whole issue might be solved by those tablet PCs with the pen thingy, which is far more suitable for jotting down notes and what not.
I agree with you here. I have owned an Apple Newton 120 (they still rock!) and I have used some of the new Microsoft tablets, and by far, the Newton had better usability, although they are showing their age now by lacking modern I/O and networking. The Newton however was not quite ideal for notetaking. If you plugged in the additional keyboard they were O.K., but it needed a little more integration with the pen and keyboard. The current Wintel tablets are simply tablet versions of dekstop metaphors and simply, don't work very well. More R&D needed to go into interface design. I don't know if Apple will ever produce another tablet/subtablet type device, but it would certainly be welcome in many circles.
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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
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
I've thought about the usefulness of laptops during classes, and the best way that I've seen to make them useful would be to set up a tiny direction microphone pointed at the lecturer, set up a small webcam, and record.
Years ago, when my mother went back to school, she did a similiar setup with a cassette recorder. Works well for review, if your professor does not rely on blackboard diagrams. Else, an audio/video recorder is the way to go.
Then again, it would only take one person to do this and just share his `notes' to the rest of the class.
Next on Slashdot: Lawsuits over recorded lectures.