Texas High School Gets iBooks

bigjnsa500 writes "Starting in December, high school teachers and students in the sleepy south Texas town of Pleasanton will be receiving Apple iBook wireless laptops. The school has installed wireless access points throughout the campus, including classroom buildings, the shop areas, gym, field house and press box at the football stadium. It will be first high school campus in South Texas to go high-tech." Maybe it's just me, but wouldn't that $2.2m over four years be better spent on books and teachers?

Comments

I'm with Clifford Stoll here

[cellocgw]

In High-tech Heretic Stoll does a quickie calculation to compare the cost of computer installation (computers, network, software, maintenance) with the number of textbooks and general library books a school could buy. There's no doubt that books are a far better deal. Not to mention that books last a lot longer than any software or computer hardware will. I'm not saying there's no place for computers in school. My kids do some killer data reduction in science classes, but that doesn't mean flooding a school w/ laptops is a good idea.

Operating systems are the last thing...

[nickovs]

schools should be spending money on today...

My school bought operating systems every 3 years... My senior year I had a brand new Microsoft Operating System (exactly as buggy as the old one) and all the others were 3 years old... Windows editions were completely out of date (because they were poorly written... should be something that doesn't go out of date)

With computers there exist ways of having new resources for all classes, but you'll never be able to access the only fine formats ever again.