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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
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?
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.
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...
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.
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...
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();
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.
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.
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.
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!
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