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Texas High School Gets iBooks

Posted by pudge on from the i-am-movin-me-to-texas dept.

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?

22 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. surely... by xirtam_work · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm sure they've let some money for teachers. It's not mutually exclusive to spend money on technological resources and teachers is it?

    1. Re:surely... by PainKilleR-CE · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I would think that technology funding and teachers come from different pools of money, but I could be wrong.

      Additionally, they might be able to save some money if they can buy the books on CD-ROM. Hell, they might even save some of their students from serious back problems if all they have to carry around is a little paper, and iBook, and a pencil.

      --
      -PainKilleR-[CE]
    2. Re:surely... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Tax money is the only pool that this funding comes from.

      I'm not convinced that this is the best way to spend the money, but it is not my decision to make.

      Would the money be better spent on teachers? If it is spent on hiring more teachers, improving student-teacher ratios.

      Even though teachers are grossly underpaid in relation to the importance of their job, major increases in their salaries might bring in more of the "I'm in it for the money" teachers rather than "I want to teach" teachers.

  2. They can take them home? by mahart · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How many of these are going to get lost/stolen/broken? I remember the hardback textbooks at my highschool had a tough enough time making it through the school year. I think a better computer lab or even laptops that are confined to classrooms would be a better idea.

    1. Re:They can take them home? by Llywelyn · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Doesn't confining a laptop to a classroom defeat the purpose of having a laptop? Besides, letting them take the laptops home allows them to write papers etc while at home.

      That said, the iBook is a pretty durable laptop. You can put one through a good deal of abuse and it will still come out okay. So broken is only a nominal issue.

      Lost and Stolen are more of a concern, but I don't see that as being a big problem in a small town when the laptops are already being locked down and probably have the serial numbers linked to the students. This isn't exactly NYC we're talking about here--if you leave a backpack on a bus you'll probably get the backpack back with all of its contents intact.

      --
      Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
    2. Re:They can take them home? by SavoWood · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Depending on the angle the machine hit the ground, it could have ended up being a non-issue. I've dropped my iBook twice from about 6 feet. It landed fairly flat both times. The first time, you couldn't tell anything happened. The second time, I broke the hinge, but it still worked so I didn't get it replaced. It's an amazing machine. It took a serious beating and still runs like a champ.

      My 12" PB has also taken a fall from about 4 feet, and it never missed a beat. It was running a long process at the time, and compiling The Gimp. There's not even a scratch on the PB, the process never stopped and had no errors, and The Gimp is running just fine.

      Either I'm unusually lucky (and clumsy) or your sister has incredibly bad luck. Lucky for her, it's still under warranty and Apple is VERY liberal with their warranty repairs.

      --
      Plant a tree in a developing country.
    3. Re:They can take them home? by ManxStef · · Score: 3, Informative
      Doesn't confining a laptop to a classroom defeat the purpose of having a laptop?

      I'm on the IT advisory board of the local college here, and the reason they're keen on laptops (with wifi) is all due to classroom resource usage - why lock a room down to a single purpose "computer room" wired up with workstations and monitors when you can just carry in a scutch of laptops and then let any teacher use that room for other purposes?

      This isn't a perfect solution in that it doesn't factor in resources such as manuals, books, etc. which would also have to be carted between rooms, or dedicated hardware for that matter, so it doesn't obviate the need for networking/Cisco/hardware labs for instance, but overall laptops are an excellent solution in freeing up classrooms.

  3. Books? Books! Now hold on there, pardner... by nystagman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe it's just me, but wouldn't that $2.2m over four years be better spent on books and teachers? Only if those books do NOT mention the heretical "theory" of "evolution". Note to the humor impaired: I am totally serious. Really.

    --
    Theory and practice are the same in theory, but different in practice.
  4. Where to spend school dollars... by dbirchall · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Maybe it's just me, but wouldn't that $2.2m over four years be better spent on books and teachers?
    Um, no. We've had 2 or 3 decades of the mantra of "we need more money for books and teachers," and has it helped? Not really.

    Why? Well, I'm not an academic, but I think they forget that learning is something you do, not something that's done to you. You can't teach someone who doesn't want to learn, isn't ready to learn, or whatever. Conversely, you can't stop someone from learning who really wants to. Teachers are all well and good for the middle third of kids, I suppose... but give a kid a computer and odds are they'll learn something without you having to tell them to do so.

    1. Re:Where to spend school dollars... by Quixotic+Raindrop · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You make an interesting point about learning/education being a process that students undergo, but I think you are confusing the issue. First, the money spent on the computers probably comes from a capital fund, which in many states cannot be used for teacher pay or textbooks (it's illegal to mix the funds in many states).

      Second, the "mantra of we need more money for books and teachers" doesn't seem to have helped because it's a mantra, and the funding doesn't actually get improved. The argument often used is "the money we gave you already hasn't helped, why should we give you more?" (the "good money after bad" theory.) The problem can be made more clear this way: if we funded the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force with $10 Million to share between them, we'd have been run over by the North Koreans already. We have asked our public schools to perform one of the most vital and non-trivial tasks in society, and we have asked them to do it with about 20% of the money they need. Until we fully fund all public schools, we cannot say that we have fairly assessed them, and are in no position to criticize them for failing.

      --
      Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
    2. Re:Where to spend school dollars... by ivan256 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      doesn't seem to have helped because it's a mantra, and the funding doesn't actually get improved.

      Hah.

      As somebody who lives in a town that has had outragous tax increases every year since the late eighties, let me tell you that it's more than a mantra. The problem is that the money doesn't go to teachers and books alone, it goes to the school. Then a huge chunk is paid to school administrators, is used to expand the sports program, renovate buildings, and by the time the additonal money gets down to the teachers and books, the teachers that already are overpaid (yes, overpaid. $60k/9 months is overpaid, and that's the average around here... many make more than that here) get raises and no progress has been made.

      I refuse to believe that students learn better in a new building than in one built in 1970. I refuse to believe that raising my taxes again is going to improve the local schools when last time they increased the schools funding they used the money to build a football field. I resent parents voting for things with long term costs so they can have their little brats go to the best school possible, and then move to a town with lower taxes promptly after said brats graduate from high school, and I resent it because it destroys the community; something i believe is every bit as important as the number of teachers and books in the school. It's sad when all the retired residents of your town are forced to sell the houses their families have owned for generations because some self-focused parents have no concept of the long term concequences.

      Instead of throwing money at the problem we should be making the hard decisions and fixing the problems that make educating a child in a public school so expensive. That means standing up to teachers unions in communities where the teachers are overpaid. That means not nescicarily trying to win the state basketball championship. That means staying in that building even though it's an ugly relic of a past generation. That means not hiring administrators back on at an hourly rate and into a useless position after they retire and get their pension. When you can convince me you've stopped wasting money, you can try to convince me you need more.

    3. Re:Where to spend school dollars... by fridgepimp · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That comment MIGHT be interesting IF private schools hadn't demonstrated the ability to educate students (usually with better educations) for fewer dollars per student per year. Often, too, they pay teachers pretty well.

      And NO, not all private schools are for rich kids.

      The problem with funding our education system is that the bureaucracy built around education is so massive, and generally scarfs all the money.

      -fp

    4. Re:Where to spend school dollars... by Quixotic+Raindrop · · Score: 3, Informative

      Having actually worked in a public school district, I can tell you unequivocally that it is just a mantra. Most of the teachers in the district I worked for start at $23K, and teachers at other districts around the state start at between $21K and $25K. Top-end pay for teachers ranges from $45K to $65K, depending on their degree level (bachelor's vs. masters), and that's after 30+ years of teaching in the same district. Most of the money that our district received to buy things like computers, and build new buildings (not to replace aging buildings, but to build new ones because there were too many students in the school, or to replace aging trailers and temporary buildings because there were too many students for the existing buildings) was funded not by increased taxes, but by bond issues, and was later repaid.

      Maybe in your community, teachers are better-paid than police officers (starting pay for a cop here is $37K), but here they are not, and in many places they are not. Maybe in your community, schools raise taxes to build new buildings simply because their existing buildings are too old, not too small. But that is not reality in many places.

      --
      Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
  5. Re:What they get is not what I call a 'computer' by ViolentGreen · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Is this legal ? Does giving a computer for free allow you to monitor and filter whatever you want ?

    I would say yes. It is property of the school so the school is entitled to ensure that their property is being used correcetly. They are probably doing this for legal reasons as well. If the students decide to do something illegal with the computers, the school can stop it before action is taken against the school.

    --
    Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
  6. Re:Won't Somebody Think of the Children? by midifarm · · Score: 3, Insightful
    TX already has bigger threats than some imaginary disease brought on by wifi. How about all the brown fields in TX? Pollution from all the factories that dump chemicals into the rivers and water tables that get conveniently overlooked? The idiots running around with their concealed weapons?

    Besides books can be issued on the iBooks. More pressure needs to be applied to the publishing companies to make all books available via PDF. Every kid in America should have an iBook!

    Peace

  7. And this different from...? by MyNameIsFred · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What you say is true, but kids will play games with anything. When I was in school, we folded paper into triangles and played football. We played hockey with quarters. We had races on inclined desks with erasers. And when calculators were first introduced into our schools, we played games with the calculators. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Saying kids will play games with something is always true, and is not a good excuse for not doing it. (Not that I think computers are necessarily a good idea.)

  8. Re:2.2 Million is a drop in the bucket. by duffbeer703 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's always funny to listen to educational "experts" wax on about the need to put computers in every class.

    What a total joke. If schools cannot teach reading and algebra, "teaching computers" (whatever that means) is pointless.

    --
    Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
  9. Re:Won't Somebody Think of the Children? by Golias · · Score: 3, Informative
    Why is 'soccer mom' such a popular term? I mean, do a lot of kids in America play soccer?

    In the American suburbs, just about every young child, male or female, plays soccer. The term "soccer mom" became a generic term for suburbanite married women with children, who tend to have slightly more conservative values than the single, urban feminist. The stereotype is a reasonably prosperous middle-class thirtysomething woman who drives a big SUV or Minivan to take her kids to soccer practice.

    While most urban women in recent decades have tended to vote as a block for one party (Democrats), the "soccer moms" are considered to be important swing voters, and both parties have been spending a lot of time, money, and energy trying to win their votes in recent years. (Bill Clinton did very well with the soccer moms, much to Bob Dole's surprise and disappointment.)

    --

    Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

  10. No, sorry by Mikey-San · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Actually, I guarantee you they won't be able to boot into any other OS BUT Mac OS X. They won't be able to boot from a CD. A FireWire drive. NetBoot. Nothing. They won't even be able to drop into >console.

    Why?

    Lock-downs. If this town is smart, they'll lock down the machines the same way Henrico County Public Schools did in Virignia. (After learning the hard way.) Firmware locks, linking >console to dropping into the "/dev/null" shell (wink wink), etc. The kids will get their own account and will never even /see/ the (hidden) admin account.

    I work for a repair depot that services the county, and lemme tell ya: These machines are /tight./ You can't even yank the RAM and zap the PRAM to reset the OF password because of these nifty little anti-theft strips that cross the AirPort card and top EMI shield. You can't remove the AirPort card to get to the RAM, and if you DO remove the strip, you get this nice little tattoo left behind by the sticker that means "hahapwned" to administrators.

    Hopefully, Texas is going to implement similar measures. If not, they're going to have baaaad headaches.

    --
    Mikey-San
    Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
  11. Breakage by borkus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    When Henrico County near Richmond, Virginia did this, they initially had considerable problems with systems breaking. Part of that was educating students in how to handle the systems properly. Part of it was underestimating the support needs of 25,000 laptop users. Even if 1% of the systems break each year, that's still 250 repairs a year. Initially, the county didn't have an on-site repair shop; machines had to be shipped to DC to be fixed.

    Interestingly, after two years of iBooks in schools, the issue has generated enough controversy to be an issue in school board elections. The results? Two incumbents were voted out - including the chairman.

  12. Perfect Price Discrimination by denisonbigred · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Perfect Price Discrimination explains why we pay so much for textbooks here in the US, while in poorer nations, the prices are so much lower. We are willing and able to pay the higher prices, while people in say, Ghana, can't. Schools could save tons of money by simply ordering textbooks from international distributers over the internet and having them shipped in to them. I have a friend who makes tens of thousands of dollars a year at his university by doing this fro kids there, which also saves them money.

    --

    "There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals."
  13. Next - Teacher Clippy by Hard_Code · · Score: 3, Funny

    "Hi, it looks like you are trying to cheat..."

    --

    It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?