Slashdot Mirror
Notebooks Replace Textbooks in Texas
DrEnter writes "Yahoo! is running this article about an experiment at Johnson Elementary school in Dallas, Texas, which will provide an IBM ThinkPad to every 5th and 6th grader, each one loaded with electronic versions of textbooks and 2,000 other books. Apparently, due to rapidly increasing enrollment and long delays to get new books the school is trying to head off future problems. They also mention a similar program in Henrico County, Virginia, using iBooks and how some of these programs are affecting laptop design (like Apple replacing pop-out CD trays with CD slides)."
You know, these programs to give elementary school students notebook computers sound really great on paper. They sound progressive, tech-savvy, and even hip, but I have grave doubts about it.
What bothers me is that there are a few dangerous criminals out there who read newspapers, and I imagine that upbeat stories about ten- and eleven-year-old kids walking up and down the street to and from school with $1350 notebook computers in the their backpacks are likely to give a handful of enterprising criminals some unpleasant ideas.
I picture a dozen or so kids blissfully strolling home from school when a dirty white van pulls up. Two guys with masks on pop out of the back of the van, point guns at the kids, demand that all backpacks be removed and placed on the ground, load a dozen backpacks into the van and drive straight to their favorite crooked pawn shop.
If a school system is going to provide notebook computers for its young students, or require them to own their own, I think it would be wise of them to keep quiet about it.
So far a bunch of school systems have implemented such plans without any reported dramatic increase in students getting robbed, but I fear that once the word gets out among an areas criminals that there's easy pickings walking around wearing backpacks, all heck could break loose.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
While I don't think it is bad idea to supply all students with laptops, I think this is a perfect opportunity for a next generation ebook reader. I have an Ebookman that is ok for reading text, but doesn't handle PDF's or graphics, has a small screen and eats batteries when backlit.
There are several products from asia that are interesting, I just wish they would make it here sooner:
EB660
Panasonic Sigmabook
Sony
This could be the type of application that would launch ebooks into the mainstream.
So are the comps gonna be recycled like books!? (REcycled Paper)
Why does yahoo do this
Outfit them all with giant sewing-machine size Compaq luggables for portable computers. Everything's bigger in Texas, so why not have the biggest portable computers around? The former governor also told me that the bigger a disk is, the more data it holds too!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Amount of time It takes for every thinkpad to be running counterstrike.
Billy, what is 8 divided by 2?
What? Man that was BS Stupid Shield Lamers, Damn Lag. #@$#%
I'm L337 Screw you Teacher!
This was done in the Maine public schools a few years ago.
how about learning to write with pen and paper.
what happens when the damn piece of crap breaks down?
what a waste of taxpayer money
didnt read the article, and don't know how long the Texas job has been going, but the Henrico County job has been going strong for almost 3 years.
doesn't Apple have a contract with Maine school systems(or individual counties/cities systems) for the last year or so as well?
the history of the world
Hello plagarism!
Raise your hand all of you who thought about quitting their jobs to become a 5th grader!
I gotta tell you, in my house we have a powerbook and an older generatin iBook, and the pop out tray CD loader needed to go. It's not as nice and much flimsier. I'm glad they got rid of it. I used to have a Pioneer CD drive with a slot loaded drive my Windows desktop machine. it was great, I wish more drive manufacturers would make them.
Texas.
So have some respect for the State that provides for the security of our nation.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I recognize the case of using electronic media because the physical media is not always easy to obtain in a timely manner. The article from above gives a mix of both sides of the fence. If utilized effectively, the laptops can be a great tool in class.
I have to admit, however, that the bundled software and the technology upgrades that are being added to these laptops seem like a good measure to assure that they will maintain use even with daily student abuse.
Cool technology upgrades, some of the people at my office could use those the way they handle equipment...
I wonder if any mention of evolution is automatically elminated? :-)
Dr. Frank J. Nagy Fermilab Computing Division Authentication and Directory Services Group
A large portion of the 'graduates' in the Dallas school system can not read or write at the 3rd grade level.
Couldn't the money be better spent on, I don't know teaching?
Why should kids be exposed to too much of comp- and the radiation adds up with the already behmoth amount of radiation they get from Television--Guess they are all gonna end up with spectacles. (What if they are gonna see porn! in class with friends?Who knows!)
Why does yahoo do this
Has to be roughly the same as a Spinal Tap drummer. These are elementary school kids, remember. Just think back to your childhood and how rough you were with anything school related. Whomever that school hires for tech support/repairs had better go to Sam's Club right now and stock up on Maalox.
Think about your average 5th and 6th grader, not exactly a bastion of common sense. Now, think about handing them a 1350 laptop.
I can only imagine that with in the first day they had 10 kids in the principles office with smashed screens, click-o-death harddrives, etc.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
This is just another step in the evolution of publishing. A lot of rapid turn-over material like this will soon be published this way. This will make it much easier to keep things up to date.
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
The MBA program I attended used electronic versions of books a lot. I hated it. A lot of times I wanted to highlight a section or makes notes in the margin. You just can't do this without a real book. Some people printed theirs out. The cost of doing this is ridiculous versus just buying the book in the first place.
"Um, my dog at my laptop..."
on the one hand, I feel its a good thing because at least this way the students are getting the reading material.
on the other, I find it extremely hard to believe that they can afford IBM Thinkpads, but not manage to get dead tree books. There is a great deal to be said about dead tree books, none the least that they are easy on the eyes. I've also found books to be the better format for things such as textbooks, because it's easier to flip back and forth between pages. K-12 textbooks are also larger and probably hold more text per page than a laptop screen can (goes back to easier on the eyes).
Then there's the old fart in me that has this uneasy feeling in the back of my mind that says "laptops?!? back in my day we had used textbooks and took notes by hand! and we learned to search for text in an index! (barefoot,uphill, in the snow, etc etc). and we liked it!" While I am all for technology in learning, I just can't get over the nagging feeling that it's just school boards looking to justify spending to make it LOOK like they're doing a good job, and not spending it where it NEEDS to be spent, like on actually qualified and caring teachers.
NO CARRIER
I doubt the 5th and 6th graders will get the nice T or X series though.
Instead, I am replying to a slashdot article on my laptop.
You see, my school is very tech-savvy. The reading carousels have ethernet ports.
I am easily distracted by the computer, and I'm a grad student! I hope these 5th and 6th graders have a lot of discipline... ha!
So rather than the chronic complains from school boards of not enough money for textbooks for every students, are we going to hear of complaints of not enough money to keep the computers up-to-date with software updates, security fixes, current eBook readers, and current editions of various eBooks.
Let alone the burden of replacement cost for a below poverty line family when a child has his/her laptop stolen.
And even better, use free (as in freedom) text books from wikibooks on the laptops.
;-) ).
Wikibooks has free (beer / freedom) books and textbooks that anyone can edit, by the makers of Wikipedia. A whole list of projects are found here at Wikimedia (yes they like the word Wiki alot
If you think it would be bad if criminals learned about these laptops, think about what would happen if the taxpayers who will have to pay for them found out!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Amen. Give the kids a cheap external hard disk to take to class with textbooks and suchlike on that, then make a deal with a wholesale refurbisher for home and classroom desktops. The hard disk would be much less valuable if stolen.
Here in Maine every 7th grader is provided with a 12" iBook. Some people think the program is very successful, others think it's a huge waste of money. As one of the students who didn't get a laptop (senior this year) I'm a little jealous, but I think it's a good idea.
I'm a criminal and i would have never thought of this by reading the paper alone. But reading your comment explaining how i should interpret the paper has really opened my eyes.
Thank you.
I have a friend that attends a private military school, where they give laptops to each student there. The front is practically plastered with warnings about how this is not your laptop, and that you shouldn't steal it. One of them is about 3mm off the surface of the lid, and says that it has a tracker in it, and it requires 600+ pounds of pressure to remove. Needless to say, I imagine the plastic would break before you hit the necessary 600 pounds of force. Now, sure, they could just be saying that you need that much weight to scare you off, but another one of the labels say that there's a chip inside where if you wave a wand over the laptop, the chip sends back some ID number.
So, unless these crooks knew all about what to do, I doubt they'd run straight to the pawn shop, without stopping to clean up the laptops first. Do you think the pawn shop will really take in 5 laptops (or heck, even one laptop) that have 'NO THEFT' stickers plastered all over them. I think even the pawn shop people are smarter than that.
I would've much rather taken home a 9 lb. laptop than 50 lbs. worth of books. Maybe I would've gotten beat up less too. :-)
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
What ever will happen to the school book depository there in Dallas? They'll have to find some other use for it I guess.
Another thought:
Are the teachers able to use and understand these machines?
They don't think that half of the laptops will be broken a month after they're handed out?
I went to a decent public school, but a good percentage of my 6th grade classmates were definitely not responsible enough to be trusted with a portable computer. It would get thrown, stepped on, punched, or they're just load porno and games on it.
The school is in Forney. About 15 miles southeast of Dallas. Dallas ISD would never be that forward thinking. Besides, the laptops would set off all the metal detectors.
Stranded.org
And considering how completely inaccurate some stuff on Wikipedia is I am sure their education would be great. I think I'd rather stick to professionally written and edited material for my kids.
Do we really need the link to yahoo.com? Isn't the link to the news.yahoo story enough?
In my day! We got bad lower backs by carrying 50lbs of text books on our backs and we liked it! What kind of character building exercises will these kids needs to go through these days? *sarcastically yours*
What ever happened to the old methods of teaching? Proper instruction by example? Reading the assignments out of the book? I still think there's something to be said for turning the pages yourself and reading, away from the electronics. In addition, laptops for kids will further introduce repetitive stress injuries and carpal tunnel syndrom earlier in people's lives.
Nothing but the finest in meaningless drivel
That being said, I would want the option to have some of the textbooks in book form still.
There really is something to be said for being able to flip through a book, or highlighting text and writing notes in the margins. Also, you don't need a charged battery to read a book, nor do you have to treat it as delicately as a computer. Also, while this is somewhat hypocritical because of how much I read on the computer everyday....I still wouldn't want to have to read a history book on the computer. Certain types of text are just easier on the eyes to read in a book. Short little sections would be fine on the computer, but not the longer stuff.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Ummmm, Texas isn't one of those states that you'd commonly associate with inbreeding; you'd need to go a bit East and possibly North to the likes of Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, etc. Texas is full of psychotic Christian hicks, but at least they don't keep it in the family.
Who's Idea was it to give hunderds of 11 and 12 year olds $1,350 pieces of equipment? I highly doubt that a lot of the laptops will last. And is it necessary to have a $1,350 notebook for the sole purpose of reading text? They probably got a higher model than what they really needed, sounds like a lot of money was wasted here to me...
They say a set of childs textbooks is $350, so if the notebooks were $500, it would be cost competitive.
Admittedly its been a long time since I've been in school, but my textbooks were largely decades old when I was in school. They may be $350 a set, but spread out over 30 years, thats $15 a year per student.
We can barely keep an IBM laptop here at work running for a year before they break, and these are developers and sales guys, not 6th graders using them.
Even if the cost of the electronic versions was $0, I don't see how this is even remotely cost effective.
I wish they would put linux on these laptops for kids. Then they not only learn the regular school crap, but also learn that there are other ways to use a computer besides windows. I had a Mac for years because I was basically taught how to use them from Junior High and up. The only use we had for Windows was in our typing class, and all we did with that was use net send to make fun of each other. On a side note - I remember when they put Novell on our network in 9th grade when I went to military school. The only thing that did was give us a way to crash the network so we could go to the library and read Popular Science/Mechanics and Mad during keyboarding.
I also reply below your current threshold.
Looks like Texas has a lot of money lying around.
sure, get the kids glasses by the time they are in highschool.
yeah, also complain that there's no money to hire qualified teachers. Oh, but they can be imported form philippines.
looks like some decision maker got a little something from some laptop maker.
The article said a set of books costs $350/student, and they thought they could get a laptop for $500/student.
We all know laptops become antiquated within a few years. I find it highly unlikely that a laptop would last for 5 years, it's probable that at the 3-4 mark the school district would have to sink big $ into new software licenses, or just buy new machines.
I'm pretty sure I remember some of my school textbooks being pretty darn old... the signatures & dates of students being assigned to them were 10+ years on some books.
So how is buying laptops w/ ebooks saving any money?
BTW, this Slashdot comment posted a few days back nicely sums up the current state of the school system in the US. I'd rather see them fixing the existing problems rather than inventing new ones. For one, I would like them to teach unbiased history/science rather than preach Creationism and "American History version 1.0"
Snippet of comment linked above:
Re:Isn't this redundant? (Score:5, Insightful) by fucksl4shd0t (630000) on Monday April 26, @05:14AM (#8970702)
American schools suck. They perpetuate a lot of myths, such as the myth that Thanksgiving as a holiday has been practiced ever since the pilgrims showed up on the Mayflower, or the myth that the West was conquered because the so-called Indians couldn't keep their word (this one actually got a lot of attention in High School, but in lower schools it was taught that the Indians were pure scalping evil), or the myth that the Civil War was fought with the altruistic purpose of freeing the slaves (yes, it was fought to free the slaves, but not over altruism, over money instead). The US internment of a whole bunch of Asian-descended people during WWII is generally left out of the material entirely because the material is deemed to resemble the concentration camps in Europe of the time a little too much. Not to mention, we can't have ever been racist in our history, the US does no evil, right? It wouldn't take much to correct these flaws in the education itself, and it would do a better job, I think, of instilling a sense of responsibility into the kids. "Yeah, we fucked up, yeah, we live here as the fruits of our imperialism. We've grown up." Or have we?
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
150 laptops to 5th and 6th graders? By June, we will have:
2 TB pr0n
137 computers infected with at least 20 virus
66 computers with the necessary courseware baleeted
1.5 TB mp3s
350 advance copies of exam (248 with answers)
2 computers with antivirus software properly installed and updated
98 book reports written in 1337
124 computers containing WeatherBug AND Gator
433 background images depicting photographs from faculty Christmas party
0 computers with properly updated OS patches
> Apparently, due to rapidly increasing enrollment and long delays to get new books the school is trying to head off future problems.
Well, I predict long delays because everyone is using the printer!
Who will recycle book that allow you playing QuakeIII right inside the school ? ;)
Visit Tutorials & guides collection
With the low cost of printers, and a binding machine, why don't the schools print their own books?
love is just extroverted narcissism
Sounds very nice, and a great idea.
However, a drawback to reading everything on screen (I suspect this will mostly be the case, although you could of course print) is worse for your eyes than reading the dead tree versions.
At least one should take preventative measures, like looking out the window, and focusing on a far-away object for approx. 30 seconds, every half hour or so. Hope they get educated on that, too.
For the record, I've just started using glasses a year ago, and I suspect staring at the screen too much for too long without doing the above (google for more things you should do).
As a former HS teacher, I remember "book return day" at the end of the year. Ugh. Do you know how many kids wanted to pay $60 to replace the physics textbook they lost or damaged so badly it was unusable?
Now, what happens when instead of $60, a lost or stolen COMPUTER costs 25 times that to replace? I sense that the parents may not be so happy with this arrangement, either.
Keep the computers in the schools, I say. Give the kids books to take home.
Thread administration appears to be broken. At this point, infact, I can still post.
AC
You know, it seems that every school board wants a set a of textbooks that match their own criteria. Some school systems want creationism taught alongside evolution; other systems want phonics emphasized over rote spelling. With paper textbooks, no publisher can produce a textbook that pleases every set of criteria. At best, the publishers can come up with variants on the original textbook, and update the next edition to suit a plurality of customers.
Enter electronic textbooks. Publishers can now produce a unique version of any textbook for any given school system. What's more, the content is no longer static for years and years. Found a typo in that edition? We'll have that corrected and downloaded to you in a week. A major change in biology studies because of human genome research? No problem. Examples, homework assignments, and content need only be limited by how much the publisher can organize and layout. School systems' per-student textbook costs drop down to the cost of a computer per student (which follows them through high school or 'till they break it) and the publisher subscription costs.
Sure, there are problems with textbooks on a tablet computer. However, the cost and content benefits are so strong, school systems will be forced to switch. The bag full of books we lugged to and from school (through the snow) (uphill) (both ways) will become the old-fogey gag of our children.
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
I think it would be easy enough to embed some sort of ID into the laptops that would allow them to easily be recognized as school property. They might get stolen at first but when the criminals find that the pawn shops won't accept them (since the pawn shops keep getting busted for the stolen laptops) I think the problem would go away.
True story.
"I think I'd rather stick to professionally written and edited material for my kids."
:).
There are many professors on the wikipedia mailing list, so I assume they are contributing to wikipedia and wikibooks. Do you expect them to stand by and do nothing if they see something not factual go into an article or book?
As well, one person doing a book or article is likely to make more mistakes then 1000's reviewing the samething. This arguement should sound familiar since its used for open source software as well as 'open source' books and content too
What if they were all running a linux distro with a good gui? Or even teach them to use the command line?
Wasn't school boards just telling us that they're strapped for cash???
As far as I'm concerned, computers should not be a part of a child's in-school education until high school. Reading and writing should be done by hand, using a pen or pencil, paper, dictionary, and thesaurus. Why? Doing schoolwork with computers makes it easier, because the computers automate the 'boring' tasks, which is great, unless it's the boring tasks that you want the students to be learning.
The overuse of computers with younger kids is incredibly evident today, as students emerge from high school with almost no solid reasoning or formal communication ability. The average high-school student is almost completely incapable of communicating with others in a high-level fashion, because the curricula they have been exposed to has never demanded that the student learn to read or write. Surprising as it may be, having a proper command of the English language, which includes spelling and grammar, is still a vital ingredient to success -- even a good mechanic needs to be able to read the factory service manuals.
If the parents want their kids to learn how to use computers in fifth grade, that's great, and a good thing, but the core curriculum should focus on students using their brains.
On top of that, each of these laptops is going to run the school a bit over a grand a pop, which is about the cost of thirty brand-new textbooks -- that's a full classroom set which can be used for years. The laptops will, of course, be abused all to hell by the kids, and require dedicated maintenance personnel, which further adds to the budget. So, this is a nice, long-term, highly expensive solution, put in place because the schools want to save money?
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
Time to hop in a truck, go to Texas, and hand out PS2 and Xbox games! I'm thinking that a 5:1 swap might be persuasive...
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
a PDA powered computer that had a 4x6 screen and a simple touch interface which is only used to pick a text and go forward or backward one page.
these would be cheaper and are smaller.
then, rather than giving the kids an entire textbook, you could beam them the reading for the day for that lesson along with any practice problems.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Laptops are a wonderful tool that can add signficantly to learning, but they require either reeducation or very, very good teachers. I went to a college that had a program bringing laptops to the classroom. It was the second year of the program. Big things I noticed were we could do complex circuit designs on the fly with logic sims, PSpice, Maple & Matlab, which was really nice for several classes. However, they ended up being a liability in things like Calc, basic Circuits classes, and other foundation classes, where they were more of a distraction. Not that I really minded the screensaver in front of me during calc lectures, but that's a whole other story. The sharp teachers had lecture time and later computer time with the loss of a letter grade if you broke the rule. The less savvy teachers had whole classrooms who were either surfing or playing networked games most of the year. Not that they cared, 1st year of ROTC was a required class for everyone and they broke out classes for all the kids who weren't on scholarships, and met the requirement. Anyway, unless the teachers are taught how to teach with computers, I fear that the computers will be more of a detriment to learning rather than an enhancement. Lots of kids today can't do arithmatic due to calculators being put in their hands in early grade school, just thing if they all have spell and grammer checking word processors from day one.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
yes they like the word Wiki alot
How about wikifactsaredecidedbydemocracy?
I like the idea of wiki, but I think there is an intrinsic problem in trying to have it create something like a textbook. A guide to London, fine, but I wouldn't trust the theory of evolution to be accurately represented in a biology book.
-Colin
While we're at it, why don't we stop hiring trained teachers and let anyone who wants to show up in any classroom any day and teach? Just run 'em through a search first.
Read above as snide, not comical.
1. Laptops are to powerhungry
,DB-25 adapter,Protective flip lid .
2. Not child safe (what if it falls) ( you need some gameboy like build device )
3. Expensive
4. Overpowered for this situation.
The best thing to do would to build a custom ebook reader. That wouldn't be to hard I think. Just take an el-cheapo (older model) PDA (its engine) and but a bigger LCD screen on and maybe a bit more vram.
For instance:
1. To save development costs on the hardware and OS and tools we will use the: Palm IIIc Handheld. Which has 256 colours and costs $79. Mind you this price is also including all the extra's like warrenty, batteries, small LCD and Synchronizing HotSync cradle and battery recharger (120 VAC, 60 HZ), Metal stylus, Palm Desktop organizer software, Handbook , Lithium ion rechargeable battery (internal)
So without all of that we will pay Palm $60 for the hardware and OS.
2. Just slap on a slow (not watching video or playing games) and cheap LCD of 800x600 that costs about $60 (in mass quantities). Example here
3. Bluetooth module $5
4. Casing $10
A total price of $60 + $60 + $5 + $10 = $135 for hardware and OS. Now add some $$$ for development costs and accessories and profit and the price will be about $209,95.
Optional: Touchscreen, newer hardware, faster wireless networking etc.
-- I don't buy it, I grow it.
Can someone please submit this article to Slashdot's editors? Its been pending for a day and a half for myself. I've released this text into the public domain so feel free to reword anything in it.
I think its self explanatory but feel free to reply here for clarifications.
---
Open Source Application Under Attack by Maker of KaZaA over Reverse Engineering
A story from Zeropaid indicates that maker of KaZaA, Sharman Networks, has sent a Cease and Desist Letter to the maker of GPLed software KCEasy because it interoperates with their FastTrack network. The creator of KCeasy says on the KCEasy website "I feel that inclusion of FastTrack access with KCeasy is not worth a legal battle between Sharman and myself". A similar issue was covered by the Slashdot story Fight On Blizzard Vs. Bnetd Case on the right to reverse engineer to create an interoperable network. Reverse engineering to be another on the list of rights that have fallen by the way side?
Have an overdue assignment? No problem now that kids can use the Travelstar excuse that we adults use for work.
Why not give them usb stick and they can save their files to it, save docs and such, take it home and have access. I wouldn't trust a senior in high school with a laptop computer.
I could go on and on about those, but I won't. I invite you to check out the Dallas Observer for a glimpse into Dallas's politics. Read about the fake drug scandal, for instance.
The textbooks on computer is the worst idea of all. I don't know about you guys, but I can't stand reading anything really long on the computer. Laptops get hot, the screens aren't great, eyestrain happens sooner. It's just bad all the way around.
Billy has Blaster again!
[classroom chanting]You've got Blaster! You've got Blaster!
Havong worked for a company that both resold, and serviced notebook computers sold to 5th and 6th graders in Michigan, I can say that while there did seem to be a higher percentage of notebooks deployed to students coming back, (as opposed to ones issued to teachers,) but I can't be sure, I have no hard numbers on total deployment.
Out of somewhere on the order of 2000-3000 notebooks sold, we would usually have only a couple come in every day, and maybe once a week one that was a non warranty repair.
The package we sold, included a 3-year extended warranty with once-per-year for so called "End-User Abuse" repairs.
I think a lot has to do with the design of the notebooks.
I think the mode we handed out in '01 was much better than the one in '02, which had screws that secured the screen's plastic back to the hinges, that should have been installed with Loc-tite [SP? I've never had to use the stuff, really.] because they were working their way loose, causing loose displays, that would wiggle before the hinge started moving, occasionally causing damage to the plastic housing of the display.
I think from a durability standpoint, the notebooks design and weight matters more than anything else. Apple style slot load drives would have been a big improvement.
As I recall, the children were regularly told to back their work up to the network, (though not all of them did it) because if they ever had a problem, the first thing that they always did was re-image it to rule out any software problems, (and because the Mfr. would only pay us for working them if a part had actually failed.)
In the case of the program I worked for, the parents purchased and owned the laptops, (financial aid was availible,) and there were two "Special" notebooks, for visually impaired students, (one purchased by the district, one by the parents)
In summary I think the success or failure of such an inititive depends on the specific implimentation.
How do you know that somebody reliable has actually reviewed something? Do you really think that 1000's of people review everything on that site? What about the more obscure stuff? There are 6,000 contributors and 600,000 articles. That is 100 articles per person on average. Do you really think that is adequate coverage?
How do you know that a professional writer and a professional editing staff are going to make more mistakes? And what of the thousands of professors and teachers who use the textbook year after year? Do you think they wouldn't catch mistakes.
One expert can be worth 10,000 amateurs. Considering how ignorant most slashdotters are about simples things like Copyrights, Trademarks, and Patents I would hope you don't count them in that 1,000.
There are just way too many questions for me to trust anything on Wikipedia.
Maine is only second in its implementation Socialism to Vermont, so of course the kids will get laptops. Tell that to the Ethiopians invading your inner cities because getting government money is so easy. Why not just join Canada, so you can all starve together?
-1, Troll, but +1, True (lived in Maine, paid taxes in Maine, moved out of Maine)
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
This is definitive tunnel vision.
_nfotxn
Who said anything about pawn shops?
Looks like I'm getting a new Beowulf cluster this year!
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
I am not so sure the money is better spent on laptops, books or teachers, but it got me thinking a little.
elementary school aged children are probably pretty hard on books, so they must need to be replaced on some schedule. and some books (and probabably relatively few) need updating.
but text books have gotten extremely expensive over the last few years. could the cost of a new $1000 dollar laptop every 2-3 years per student be less than the equivelent cost of books over those same two years? it might be close....
Great! So instead of printing a copy of the classics downloaded from the internet at a few pennies per copy, my child can now use a $1350 laptop:
I don't see any sense in this at all. Basically, this makes every child a target of criminal activity. But worse, it seems to me that this is a part of the greater "worship computers because they are the future..." mantra I see in schools. Just because little Johnny can use a computer doesn't mean he's not an idiot, and I believe that most businesses are aware of this fact. What's going to happen is that these parents are going to find out the hard way that the money they spent on computer hardware is actually going to be a disadvantage when it comes to their children going to college - you can't use a computer on standardized tests, and without it, little Johnny's going to be lost. No worry, though - he can still qualify for that fast food job and go to a "computer school," or community college where he'll learn how to be a Windows Admin for $6/hour (or whatever it pays by then). If he looks good, they might feature him in the commercials...
Rest assured, these students won't learn any computer science during this program. In fact, they'll be lucky to read even 10% of the books installed...
Computers don't teach logic or reason - if they did, a substantial portion of the population would not be making a living teaching inherently stupid machines to perform monotonous tasks.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I'm confused by the author's comment that Apple replaced the pop-out cd trays with slot load cds on their iBooks because of a school/school district. Are they saying that Apple redesigned the iBook because of the school or that Apple took the iBooks the school already had and replaced the popouts with slot load?
My guess would be its the former and I think the author's full of it. How can this author even lead us to believe that a school district in Virginia affects product design at Apple? Yeah, they buy a lot of laptops, but I think the author's stretching in making that proclamation. When the iBook came out with the slot load drive, it seemed like a natural progression because with the slot load upgrade also came the move to the G4 as well as numerous other changes like moving to Airport Extreme. The iBook was moving closer to the 12" PowerBook which has a slot load drive, G4 chip and Airport Extreme. I'm sure the drive to change the iBook design came more from integration of components across multiple platforms than a desire to prevent 11 years from breaking computers loaned to them.
I would hate to have to deal with all the spy software and viruses these laptops will get on them. They are going to wish they went with Apple iBooks.
30 years ago, the price of college text books was staggering, and took a chunk of my summer full-time earnings to buy them. It's nice to see that textbook publishers are continuing the fine tradition of ripping people off (of course, colleges and universities are doing a better job of carrying on this tradition, but that's a topic for another day)! To think that buying and equipping a laptop could be price-competitive with just buying the books, just staggers the imagination!
Of course, the textbook publishers will charge more money for the electronic version, and a copy will have to be purchased for each laptop, so the school won't save any money. It's like that professor in college that wrote his own textbook, and checked to make sure nobody had a used copy (I had two of them that did this, in fact). If nothing else, it's certainly an education in Economics.
I question, though, whether laptops today are built to withstand the abuse of a normal 5th grader. Even $500 is a lot to spend on replacements when the kid drops the thing in the schoolyard. But think of the potential market for such a product if it really can stand up to such abuse.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Try searching google.
DISD could make grade promotion easier
Plan proposed to help overage students
02/24/2000
By Linda K. Wertheimer / The Dallas Morning News
The young man with the mustache slouches in the desk chair, grinning disarmingly at teacher Theda Redwine.
Juan Garcia / DMN
David Saucedo, 16, is an eighth-grader at Quintanilla Middle School. He says the thought of getting a second chance to advance to ninth grade gives him hope.
Ms. Redwine, who tutors David Saucedo, doesn't smile back. David is a 16-year-old in the eighth grade at Quintanilla Middle School. He already has flunked two grades. He's barely passing now and is insisting that he has no homework to do.
David is two years older than the average eighth-grader in the Dallas Independent School District. Overage students like him are the motivation for a proposed policy school board members will vote on Thursday.
If the proposal passes, more than 1,700 seventh- and eighth-graders who automatically would have been held back in the past will get a chance to advance - if they make up course work in summer school.
Last year, students who failed three of their four core subjects - English, math, science and social studies - in middle school were held back, whether they went to summer school or not.
But if the school board approves the proposal, those students could be promoted as long as they pass two subjects in summer school.
With the proposal, Dallas is tackling a national issue: how to get rid of so-called "social promotions" but keep schools from filling with overage students.
In a district in which almost half of all middle-school students failed at least one core subject last year, the balance is a delicate one.
School district officials who worked with middle school principals on the proposal said the main goal is to get overage students out of middle school and into high school.
This school year, 22 percent of Dallas eighth-graders are 15 to 17 years old - the ages at which most of their peers are in ninth through 11th grades. In at least a few cases, 17-year-olds are attending class with 12-year-olds.
"These kids in middle school who are overaged, they get discouraged," said Dr. Donna Bearden , assistant superintendent of curriculum. "If we get them into high school, we have a better chance of getting them to stay in school."
Not reaching everybody
Even if trustees approve the policy, it won't reach all of the students who fail, based on last year's statistics. Last summer, only 46 percent of students who failed a grade went to summer school to try to earn promotion.
"It's by no means solving the problem," Dr. Bearden said.
Most states, including Texas, have instituted bans against social promotion in various grades, coupling new laws with summer school as the last chance for students.
Urban districts in particular have been hunting for ways to comply with new laws and help many failing students, said Dr. Gerald Tirozzi , executive director of the National Association of Secondary Principals in Reston, Va.
Studies have shown that when students are held back a year and returned to the same teachers, they often fail again, said Dr. Tirozzi, a former assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Education.
"What Dallas is doing is a good idea," he said. "It's sending kids a message: If you don't master these subjects, we won't send you on to high school."
Dallas principals and teachers had mixed reactions about the proposal. Some fear that students who are already failing two courses will give up on a third, figuring they have to go to summer school anyway. Others say middle schools can't handle all of the overage students.
Tom Kelchner , principal at Marsh Middle School in North Dallas, said the proposal amounts to "loosening the promotion policy." He said the solution lies within middle schools, which can provide tutoring and create special programs fo
I used to get dententions for not covering my books (i kow, very lame of me). What the hell kind of punishment are these kids gonna get for not properly treating their ThinkPads? In School suspension for not going to windowsupdate weekly? A day with the principal for installing malware? Writing on the chalkboard 100 times "I will defrag weekly"? I think they are putting a little bit too much faith, trust, and responsibility into these fifth and sixth graders.
Th
I recall hearing about a trial program that used wireless iPaq handhelds and those folding keyboards, might be a bit more practical.
I personally enjoy reading on my Hi-res Sony handheld, that only cost me $130 new.
Well my first thought is that the things would disappear pretty quick or get broke. So what they need to do is eitehr cripple them a little so the hardware will only run a special version of Windows or Linux. Maybe make the laptops with an ARM processor or something like that so they only run Windows CE. That way common games/ viri won't end up on them. Or if they do issue generic Windows machines they should lock them down REALLY hard. So extra programs can't be installed on them.
When I was in grade school the books where all well used and outdated. For some books this is hardly a big deal, math for example hasn't changed too much. But my 6th grade history/geography book still had Germany as 2 countries. The wall came down when I was in second grade. This is where electronic books would be awsome, always up to date. Of couses laptops for kids just sounds like a nightmare.
It would be great if when you walked into class the homework would automaticly be downloaed, and all assignments would be turned in. The teacher could check to see if you really did read a chapter, how long you spent on it, any notes you made. If this is how it is done then by all means do it, but what I fear is that these laptops will be fully loaded and unsecured with an icon on the desktop called homework right next to the one called Counter-Strike.
In my mind these laptops should be striped, no cd-rom or floppy, just a keyboard with a screen. Why? Because then you can't install software. All updates would be done by the school over the network (wireless would be perfect). Also just have the eBook reader software loaded and it runs on startup. If these are textbook replacements lets make sure that they are used as textbooks.
Actually, I can see them trading the laptop for a kick ass set of speakers :)
Truth: If it's not one thing, it's another
Without any fairy-tales like religion.
Can't.
Too bad. Every heard about the separation of the church and the state. If all your arguments are religious, they're null and void. It's about time we started enforcing that separation.
Yes. Only instead of cheap external hard drives, give the kids CD-R's with the textbooks on them, refurbished PC's for home if they need one, and let them do their homework on paper. A lost CD-R is 10 cents.
The text book publishers may not like that idea, but maybe they can change their copyright policy from a $60 per textbook model to a $60 per student license, and let the schools replace the CD-Rs as needed.
Use the money for the laptops to build a decent computer lab for the students instead.
More music, fewer hits
Giving kids computers is not the answer. The right answer is to design your course in such a way that the use of a computer -- or not -- will not affect any pupil's work. Children need to be taught to use their own minds first. I was never allowed a calculator till I could do sums on paper, nor a digital watch till I could tell the time with an analogue watch. Had such things as word processors been available in my schooldays, I suspect that I would still never have been allowed one until I could write with a fountain pen.
..... a skill I'm proud of BTW}
{I suppose this could be taken to the logical extreme of not living in a house with central heating till I had learned to light a fire without using liquid fuel
But there should be no requirement for kids to be using computers in schools. They should be out playing in the fields, or exploring in the woods, running around and using up the energy they get from the food they eat {which is better than the food we had in my day}, breathing fresh air, falling over, getting cuts, scrapes, bruises and maybe a dose of the trots and actually building up an immune system -- not staying indoors playing with computers and vegetating, and definitely not learning how to use Microsoft software on the taxpayer's shilling.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I think I'd rather stick to professionally written and edited material for my kids.
Have you ever SEEN professional material on a computer? I'm serious, I've used biology and physics programs in class that were crippled with mistakes and drawn so crudely I wanted to puke when I was obliged to use them.
Material from books is really better and more accurate even if it's less fun for children.
I'll cut & paste my way to an "A"!!
"One expert can be worth 10,000 amateurs."
Read the fucking comments, EXPERTS are working on wikipedia and wikibooks, or are professors not good enough for you.
If they don't have a computer at home, perhaps they could take a laptop home, and leave it there 'til the end of the term.
splunge (n) -- A good idea.. but it could be lousy... and I'm not being indecisive!
I teach chemistry at a large, urban, mainly minority HS near Chicago. Most students don't want to read, write or study. Only the top 10% of the students should get laptops. Many of my students can't "remember" to bring book, paper or pencil. They lose books; think that they can't lose a laptop, then, think again.
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
<B>Kids are hard on books</B><P>
Do you remember going to school and doodling? Highlighting? Tearing out pages of chapters that you didn't cover and turning them into projectiles?<P>
I'm not certain that laptop computers are the ideal solution, but they are a step in a different direction. Perhaps a more useful product/tool/toy that <B>may</B> receive better care and attention than the average History book.
Entrepreneurial criminals? How about the geeks in 8th grade becoming the new hi-tech bullies of the 21st century? "Gimme your lunch money, kid. And your laptop too!"
And how do you know a "professionnal" is not a quack? How do you know he did not get his "Diploma in Biochemistry" with one of these phoney "OPTAIN A DIPLOMA" spam emails?
Fact is; when you buy a textbook, you rely on total strangers. Just because these strangers sell these things for money doesn't mean they're any more reliable. In fact, it simply gives them an incentive to lie. One who does it for free has nothing to gain by lying.
If he was a quack than nobody would buy the book. Remember that 1,000's of real teachers and professors use these textbooks. If a book isn't factual they wouldn't keep using them.
I am not sure how you came to the conclusion that it is profitable to lie in textbooks. That doesn't seem very logical to me.
We should set up sites for encouraging love between siblings and hand out some hard facts (like the myth about first or second generation inbreeding producing monsters).
Me and my sister have had a healthy, loving relationship for about 10 years now. We go out pretending to be a husband and a wife to avoid trouble with the mundanes.
batteries? I don't see how that is cost effective. Not to mention if the child has 3 or more hours away from an outlet. I could see this being more beneficial when battery power beomces more efficient.
MY SECRET DIARIES
You might want to go back and look at how thick the books are, and how many books.
Keep the computers in the schools, I say. Give the kids books to take home. .
I could not possibly disagree more. Given the ridicules volumes of text books being pushed on children, this is a good alternative.
Every year, some text book salesman shows some board of teachers how his book has more information, more details, more color glossy pictures, and converts the school to a new book. But the salesman and the teacher don't carry them home on their back, the kids do. Now, some on dollys with wheels because the weight is so high.
I say don't give them books, or laptops. Give them a little book of DVDs and a couple USB drives to hand in reports. Get rid of ALL that junk they carry.
Because ruggedized laptops cost a lot more than normal laptops, we are not talking about milspec hardware here.
I mean, they only cost 1350 USD each.
Why Apple switched to slot loading drives: They're cooler. Way cooler.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Oh please. How do you know how "expert" they really are? I couldn't find a list of the qualifications of each contributor on the site. Just because the Wikipedia people say they have experts working on the subjects doesn't mean they are. A published author on the other hand, especially one that has been well accepted by other teachers and professors, is most likely an expert. At least you can do some research on the guy to find out how much of an expert he is.
And to tell you the truth - professors are never good enough for me. Depending on the subject professors would be the least I would trust. If we are talking about science or technology then yes I would trust a professor but when it comes to almost anything else profressors are often tenured lifers who have no reason to do any significant research. Hell half the stuff they publish have probably been researched by TA's.
It should be noted that the Henrico County, Va program ( where I live and know kids that have the computers ) don't supply electronic textbooks. Students need to carry all the text books plus the computer.
IMHO, Henrico County got the computers but decided on minimal support on the backend and little thought to how to integrate the computers into the learning experience. The students I know only use the computers for sending email through various unblocked email sites to their friends. They don't use it for writing papers because there were only a few printers to use at school and long lines meant being late for class. It was easier to just write the paper at the last minute like we used to do in the good old days. Teachers did not accept emailed papers because the teachers didn't have enought space on the file server to do that.
The students can't use it much to do research because the software is locked down and limits the sites you can visit. Its easier just to use your computer at home where it isn't blocked. Those blocks also apply when the laptop is at home, unless you use the modem to make a dialup connection.
Originally the computers were sent home without any lockdown, and no usable application, not even Apple Works. 6 months later, the school system was shocked to find teen age boyes with pornography on their laptops and locked everything down.
It's a 3 day suspension to add software yourself, or change your desktop picture, so the student mostly don't put any files on the laptops.
There have been some hardware problems with hinges, latches, and cdroms. If you turn it in for repair, it's weeks before they get them back.
The student I know think Mac laptops suck because of all these reasons and will never buy one.
It should be noted that the superintendant who implemented the laptop plan has decided to take a job elsewhere.
The problem of theif is address by epoxying large metal tags with ID numbers onto the laptops marking them as part the Henrico laptop program.
Yeah, make em just like in Star Trek.
Though, with the right light, paper books are IMO a lot easier to read than something even off a LCD screen.
If anyone has noticed how kids treat textbooks, I expect the laptops won't last a week.
He spent a lot of time in class AIMing to other people, and generally not paying attention.
Also a couple kids at the school managed to download massive amounts of Porn onto their laptops.
The best teachers are the ones that DO NOT teach from the text book or use it at all. The text books represent a one sided story or what the publisher wants the kid to know. This is rarely the whole story or even the correct story. I'm in favor of ditching text books entirely. Need something to reference? After 3rd grade you should be able to take legible notes and study from them. Maybe 3rd and 4th graders would get notes copied from the teacher, but other than that how about learning instead of being spoonfed?
What's that? We've always been at war with eurasia? No problem, that will be updated within the hour.
When will the administrators learn that getting a kinkos or equivalent to print out open content textbooks will beat this technology every time?
The $1000+ laptop cost could buy 3 or more sets of books for each student + pay for seveal hours of professional tutoring each week....
Shit, that explains the dozens of these weird ibooks on Ebay then. Wonder how many of those are "I lost my notebook" or "someone stole my notebook" or "the dog ate my ibook" stories?
Even if students in the latest generation get used to reading materials on a computer screen, there are futher problems beyond that. For example, the level of reader/text interaction that reading onscreen allows. Granted, grade school students aren't at the level yet of underlining key passages and making margin notes, but current eBook technology doesn't allow readers to be as engaged with the text. Programs let you "highlight" passages and annotate them, but it's really not the same (I don't mean "the same" in the literal sense--obviously it's not the same as having a highlighter in your hand--but it's much more tedious that outlining with an actual pencil/highlighter and paper).
Let's hope we don't destroy our children's eyes because they are staring at cheap laptop screens all day.
So, it seems to be a bad idea to give the kids ThinkPads. I half agree, there. I think that ThinkPads/iBooks for high school level students is a good idea, I think that laptops for 5th and 6th graders is not.
Of course, the option is to continue with the aged book idea. The heavy, clunky, destroyable paper volumes.
I propose an alternative; e-books; available online via e-library. Much like O'Reilly's Safari. Of course, an internet connection is requisite for that, but only to update the volumes. Perhaps produce a CD full of the material for each student to take home? That would warrant a computer, but, one can only flex so much. It'd have to be either the CD or the hardcovers.
I dunno. Thoughts?
Informatus Technologicus
The closest thing in that article to a statistic was this:
This school year, 22 percent of Dallas eighth-graders are 15 to 17 years old - the ages at which most of their peers are in ninth through 11th grades.
Seems a little high, but I'd like to see how this correlates with the IQ distribution of the student population.
Anyway, the situation is more complex than even the statistics show. The student population is necessarily biased towards the low performers, in many schools, for many reasons, none of which can be melted down into a single sentence snappy soundbite. Making snide comments about teachers, who are actually trying to do something positive, helps nothing but your ego.
They had textbooks in Texas?
As a designer of textbooks, I am really interested in the ePaper technologies, such as the Sony Librie. In the near term these programs are experiements, but on the five to ten year term I see these products taking over the market. The teachers editions, which will likely see such products first, are at this point multi-volume 12" square, 600 page books, coming in around ten pounds apiece for 30 some pounds of book for a year. And, they don't cover the material. Imagine being able to tie low frame rate video for professional development, as well as the pupil editions, and typical content in a product of this size!
, 1200034,00.html).
The displays, as well as the various power draining components are what drive the cost of a $1000 notebook. eliminate much of this, mass produce it, and you have a great $250 solution for the same cost as the books.
Here is a review of current tech: (http://www.dottocomu.com/b/archives/002571.html) as well as a link to the Guardian article linked within (http://books.guardian.co.uk/ebooks/story/0,11305
I love my laptop because it's *MY* laptop and I have a right to all the data on it. It is not at all clear that these laptops belong to the students, and in particular what their rights to the content are. The laptops are running an MS OS (see the Vital Source Technologies website). Vital Source's web site doesn't (at least easily) display their licensing terms.
The economics of books provide a certain protection of liberties. Unfortunately, laptops do not.
The Right to Read
Send me to that school!
Ok first, giving kids laptops is just dumb. They're gonna be IMing all day, plus they'll probably trash them.
Second, I know from personal experience that sometimes its just easier to have a hard copy of the text. It's much easier to skip back and forth when looking for formulas, refering to the answers in the back, etc.
Finally, not enough companies are publishing to eBooks, mainly because of piracy concerns. I know several students who had to order eBooks for an accounting class freshman year, and getting around that DRM took maybe 5 minutes. One kid bought the book, the rest chipped in for their own copies.
So get real...spend your money on something you need, like better teachers if not all your third graders can read!!
How exactly is it more difficult to get textbooks shipped on time than laptops?
Maybe they should be using real books rather than textbooks, if textbooks are so hard to come by.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
eCreationism.pdf
climate change benefits flash demo
From CBSNews.com, Tuesday, January 6, 2004. See http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/06/60II/pri ntable591676.shtml
Texas Schools: Cooking The Books?
Houston won nationwide praise over the last few years for doing what
other big-city school districts only dream about: school officials
claimed they slashed dropout rates and significantly boosted test
scores.
Rod Paige, then the Houston school superintendent, got credit for
turning around Houston's schools by making principals and
administrators accountable for how well their students did.
President Bush liked Paige's approach so much he appointed Paige as
the Secretary of Education and used Houston as a model for his "No
Child Left Behind" education reform act.
Now, a Houston assistant principal tells Correspondent Dan Rather
that school officials deliberately hid the truth to make their
districts look good and to earn large cash bonuses for reporting
false statistics. Rather's report will be broadcast on 60 Minutes II,
Wednesday, Jan. 7, at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
Assistant Principal Robert Kimball, in his first in-depth television
interview, tells Rather he was startled to learn that the school at
which he worked, Sharpstown High School on Houston's West side,
reported that not one single student - out of 1700 mostly
underprivileged kids - had dropped out of the school in 2001-2002.
"I had been at the high school for three years," says Kimball, "...I
had seen many, many students - several hundred a year - go out the
door and I knew that they were quitting. They told me they were
quitting."
At that time, Houston claimed a citywide dropout rate of 1.5 percent,
while many educators and experts estimate Houston's true dropout rate
at between 25 and 50 percent. Kimball tells Rather that school
officials hid dropouts by classifying or coding them as leaving for
acceptable reasons, such as transferring to another school or
returning to their native country.
"...The teachers didn't believe it," says Kimball. "They knew it was
cooking the books. They told me that. Parents told me that...The
superintendent of schools would make the public believe it was one
school, but it is in the system, it is in all of Houston."
Kimball's charges were backed up by an audit of half the city's high
schools, conducted by the Texas Education Agency, which oversees
public schools in the state.
Kimball also tells Rather that school administrators boosted scores
on a statewide achievement test that was given to 10th graders by
keeping low-potential students from taking the test. Sometimes, he
said, students were held back in the ninth grade repeatedly to avoid
having them take the test.
Houston school officials told 60 Minutes II that the dropout audit
proved outright fraud only at Sharpstown. At the other schools, they
contended, the false statistics were caused by confusion about the
complex state system for tracking students who leave school. They
also deny students were held back to avoid taking the statewide
achievement test. They have denounced Kimball as incompetent and
transferred him to a primary school.
office with smashed screens, click-o-death harddrives, etc.
Sounds like the CEO's of the US top 500 companies and their laptops.
Not only will these laptops be stolen, the students will deal with Home Boy down the street who will sell it and split the profits with the student. Kid will file a police report and give a fake description. School district isn't going to hold the kid responsible if there's a police report, they'll just file an insurance claim and boy are their rates going to go up!
Have you tried to not run your laptop at its maximum CPU speed while you just are reading a book? Caching the file in the ram, and realy low cpu speed with the harddrives off it wont get warm at all.
I think the program is great. The computers crash, break, get lost, stolen..Well tht helps the kids learn responsibility. It als helps them get used to technology. Both kids are usually a lot more techno savy than me and Mom, but don't have the paitence to trouble shoot a lot of problems. I not only think it is a good thing to have kids get laptops, I think schools that don't provide them are gettting kids left behind. As far as the kids being distracted, the net access in the school is heavily monitored, and any linking to banned sites gets the pc's frozen and they must report to the help desk. I have no problem with the censorship for the kids, in this context censorship actually works. The kids as a whole are very ingenious, creating ways to get around attempts to ban im-ing and the like.
http://www.geocities.com/sethseekstruth/great_out
This is definitely a step to improve the many things people have brought up:
Weighty backpacks - I remember coming home from high school one day and putting my backpack on a scale. Binder and books only and the thing weighed over 35 pounds!
Material resources - For a school with 6 periods, at least two teachers covering a subject, and approximately 30 teens per class, it requires 360 textbooks for a single subject. That doesn't take into account unavoidable damage (floods one year caused about 1/3 of the class to need replacement books).
Revision / new data - Chemistry textbooks still teach the atom with nice even rings of protons around a clump of electrons and neutrons. That was out-of-date how many centuries ago?
However, the biggest problem is what many here have mentioned -- theft. The only way to make theft unrealistic would be to have the ThinkPads be so completely customized that they have no value to anyone but the student. Pink cases with 60's-style flowers wouldn't stop every thief - though it might be more quickly found and returned, stripped of anything of value. Serial numbers are easily removed. Even if the equipment is restored, the innards may have been ransacked or the data stripped or damaged.
Providing students with a home computer/system and a portable disk (or even better a USB key) for each textbook is better. However, you are now putting a valuable piece of equipment in homes without the security to keep it there. All it takes is someone who decides that old clunker would pawn for at least another hit or two. Penalizing the student or parents would do nothing to prevent it happening again.
We're going the right way, but there are an awful lot of roadblocks (mostly criminal minds determined to ruin any good thing) before we get where we need to be.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
"I used to get dententions for not covering my books. What the hell kind of punishment are these kids gonna get for not properly treating their ThinkPads?"
How would you reach the serial port if the laptop was neatly covered in brown paper?
And would the sticky label on the "inside front cover" obscure the screen?
Even better, give the kids password-protected access to an HTTP/DAV server and a computer to keep at home on loan for those who don't have one, and spend the first day of one class teaching those with recent OSes how to use built-in DAV capabilities (MS Web Folders and the like), and showing all how to use a custom web site hosted at the school to download/upload files (in case they can't use DAV per se). Nothing ventured back and forth, nothing lost.
Ever seen the search log on a college DirectConnect hub? Well, imagine the same thing, but replace "students-over-the-voting-age" with "kids with raging hormones undergoing puberty." Ah, the joys of learning.
How many classes have ever been put on hold because a child had difficulty booting up their textbook?
Maybe they plan to lock-up the CD slot when jr. takes the ibook home...
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
So, we handcuff the notebooks to the students and the only keys are in the classroom or in their parent's hands. These 5th- and 6th-graders could play at being master spies. (Yes, I know. Some of the more criminal minds amongst you have already considered cutting off the brat's hand or kidnapping the kid and picking the lock. I'm sure you'll come up with worse, so I won't try.)
The public education in this country exists for the primary purpose of preparing people to be educated voters. It is not meant to prepare them for a vocation (vo. ag. and home ec. classes, et al.), nor for college (although that's a necessary evil, since colleges base admissions decisions on secondary school performance). Just to prepare them to vote intelligently.
Trying to keep kids in school or get them through school for any other purpose is a misapplication of the public school system. Private schools exist to fill those requirements.
You think the initial cost of the laptop computer is expensive? Wait until the school gets the bill from the RCIAA from the music downloading that these kids will do with their nice new *cough* e-books!
Homer no function beer well without.
> I mean, what major has changed in... PE...that requires buying expensive books all the time.
Yeah, I remember all those revised editions of my PE book back in school.
Chapter 7, how to play volleyball without looking like an idiot.
Yeah, great idea. Lets give the kids computers that are worth a lot more than the thinkpads, that'll solve the problem.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
My question is: are these textbooks purchased or licensed? Do they expire? The good thing about a textbook is that it can be used over and over. (There's some discussion here about used vs. new textbooks and the highlighting issue, but these are elementary students with basic textbooks, not law students. Hopefully there won't be too much highlighting.) Do these laptops follow the students through the school, or are they collected at the end of the year and redistributed next year? Do the electronic textbooks stop working after a set period of time, and need to be "repurchased" or relicensed?
I suspect the first major virus outbreak and the time/cost to fix all these machines will make them very much NOT cost-effective.
My old school JPC - http://www.jpc.qld.edu.au/ has laptops for every kid from grade 4 to grade 12. All with wireless across the campus constantly connected to the internet, and has been doing this for about five years....
well before then they were still using laptops - i think for about 10 years it's been compulsary for high school students to have laptops.
...where will Presidential assassins hide out?
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
Stallman's masterpiece, right here I'm surprised nobody posted it yet.
Kids don't read textbooks.
Children don't actually read textbooks in the same way that some adults do, that is, with the intent to learn. There is very little review or reading for comprehension especially at the grade school level.
However, parents expect kids to have "learning materials". It's a sexy argument to say, "We're moving into the twentyfirst century by giving each kid his own laptop with electronic books" With an argument like that you can get parents to buy into levies/bonds.
The truth is, laptops simply won't stand up to the abuse and will need constant repair. How does the child do his work while his laptop is being repaired?
Like so many IT issues, this is a deployment problem. How do we properly deploy a limited set of resources to obtain the maximum bennefit.
I don't disagree with the idea of electronic books as opposed to hard textbooks from the perspective that it is easier to physically manage. However, it isn't necessary to give students an electonic means of reading them.
Instead of buying laptops for students, Put SOME, desktops, not one per student in the classrooms. Put laser printers in the classrooms and switch to a publishing on demand model.
By giving kids pieces of the books, instead of the whole book, you solve several problems. Kids don't have laptops to "play" with when they are supposed to be working. Kids have less on their desk to manage, i.e. just the paper and pencil. You can easily incorporate lessons from many sources, not just the textbooks. You don't have to give students new pages every day. You can give them the material a unit at a time to allow for individual exploration.
I think something like MIT's open courseware for grade schools would be fantastic.
But, none of this is sexy. It has a recurring cost, paper/toner. You can't sell parents on the idea that students are going to be getting fewer "physical materials", and to add insult to injury, they are disposable(recycleable) materials.
Books are a red herring. They aren't really used as adults use books, but they are expected because by not having them we are saying taht kids are getting less of an education. The answer then is to replace them with something sexier that is worth more $ in the eyes of the parents and will give their kids an "edge" in this new technological world.
plurvert
"While we're at it, why don't we stop hiring trained teachers and let anyone who wants to show up in any classroom any day and teach?"
;)
Isn't that how they do it America?
> "non-standard CD disk-size insertion."
Oh come on. Nobody cares about little CD's. Maybe one or two per year would try that. And don't be ridiculous. That kind of thing wouldn't require "replacing" the drive. It would require a simple unjamming and would not cause any damage to the mechanism.
> I would have assumed the [tray-]loads are more reliable....
Really? So, to you, a flimsy plastic thing that slides out of the side of the computer several times a day (and, on PC's, which can be triggered by bumping the button on the door itself), and which can easily snap clean off with any amount of force, ruining the drive, that seems more reliable to you than a slot into which one kid might someday insert a rare tiny CD, requiring a simple and labor-only repair? Interesting.
If you're on Windows XP, turn on ClearType. It antialiases everything. I think there's a similar option in KDE and possibly other window managers on *n?x.
I actually like my laptop's (Dell Latitude C840 with Ultrasharp screen) screen better than my desktop's (NEC FE950+). Both run at 1600x1200 with cleartype on, but my laptop's LCD looks brighter and sharper.
I happen to like reading things on screen (either one) more than on paper. I guess it's because I grew up doing it.
Y'know, you blow up one sun and suddenly everyone expects you to walk on water.
Why do I got a feeling providing hi-tech toys in an elementary school in texas will sound good for Bush. Who is now literally synonmous with the the president responsible for the tech bust. This is a start for reversing the curse.
This will out-do Kerry and his ribbon shotputting for a day.
This is actually something i've been working with for years, although not as direct as supplying textbooks on the laptops. I set up a number of schools in Missouri, New Mexico and Arizona to use a nifty client / server setup for curriculum. ;)
Rather than staring a book for hours, the students are presented with interactive multimedia content and games.... the kind of stuff i would have killed for while i was in school
We did hand out laptops as a project in one school, but they were very old (166 mhz) Thinkpads, and there really wasnt much of a problem.
Id also like to thank IBM for making the sturdiest laptops ive ever seen...
What was by far more of a problem was keeping track of all the pcmcia wireless cards...:(
At Cincinnati Country Day School, every student from 5th-12th grade must have a laptop (usually a Toshiba Satellite purchased through the school). The outrageous price of such a program is not a problem for most of the students at the school, because compared to tuition it seems pretty insignificant.
The laptops tend not to be that useful in class. They don't replace textbooks, and they aren't used as an integral part of most classes (other than Digital Photo, I suppose). Certain lab science classes use them, but only because the school also purchased some motion detectors, temperature sensors, and other instruments that interface with the computers--this is pretty much just a novelty, as other, cheaper, things (like thermometers) could be used instead.
One theory is that the school started the laptop program in order to make it seem more "modern" and "in touch" with technology. Certainly one advantage is that by high school almost all the students are computer literate, having been forced to learn how to use their computers (or at least having been forced to learn how to properly reboot their computers after Windows crashes). And nobody is ever bored during study halls, thanks to the school-wide wireless network. But the laptops are still pretty much unnecessary.
Theft/loss/damage is also a problem due to the tendency of middle school and high school students to not be very careful with expensive stuff. The damage is easily fixed by the magic of reimaging and warranty coverage, but the theft is a little trickier.
I think you missed my point. By professionally written I meant as in text not as in programming. I am talking about books not software applications.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
A free laptop? I'll gladly retake the 5th grade! Screw the job search
"What bothers me is that there are a few dangerous criminals out there who read newspapers,"
Yeah! Think of all the MP3s they can rip with those laptops! Why, I bet those ThinkPads are the equivalent of 5 or 6 regular-speed laptops!
If you think this push of technology is even the least bit fishy, go pick up a copy of _High Tech Heretic_, by Cliff Stoll (the Cuckoo's Egg guy). I scooped up a copy a week ago and he has beautifully pontificated all my feelings about technology in education.
...
A reviewer on Amazon wonderfly offers, "Why are we supposed to wire every classroom? Whose best interests are served by programs that offer "computer literacy?" Can we really meet people online? Stoll asks the reader to check assumptions and suspend judgments, while we determine what's really best for our children and our culture."
Highly recommended
I think school should just buy their book in PDF format, then let the parents or student print the chapter that they are interest in. Our system manuals comes in PDF format, so why not text book? Come to think, components datasheet and everything is in PDF format. Cut the textbook printing cost and make it PDF format and put it on CD or web
It has been a long time since I have seen a school kiddie strolling anywhere in affluent Henrico county. The longest walk is from moma's SUV to the front door of the school. The problems have been the kiddies doing unpleasant things with the notebooks. In the first year, they learned to defeat the filters and acquire porn collections, broke into the school computer system and improved grades, and other unplesant little tricks.
Am I the only one to think of one of RMS's rants? Picture this:
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
So now the bullies who would grab kids' $50 books and throw then around now will grab kids' $1500 laptops and throw them around. And of course, the parents of the bullied kids will have to pay for damage.
Whatever the benefits, grade schools are NOT a safe place for individual electronics. The suggestions to put textbooks on a server, or distribute CD-ROMS, is a good one. Giving everyone a laptop, isn't.
Every other dead IBM I've seen was your classic faulty workmanship and/or materials.
Right now I have a fleet of about a few hundred Thinkpads and Desktops. Some moron sold out to IBM, probably got a free PC or two for his kids, and left us with a corporate directive to purchase IBM, and only IBM. Four years later, I'm still cleaning up the mess. I'm convinced that IBM equipment is designed to last for two years and eleven months. It is so bad, that if you tell me a particular model of thinkpad or ibm desktop, I'll tell you how it will fail, and when.
Let me count the ways...
It gets worse... When you're on a corporate IBM account, and you keep calling IBM about these problems, they go deaf. Once they realise that somewhere between 70% and 90% of the fleet of computers that they sold you is dead or dying, they stop returning your phone calls.
I made this list by gazing around the room in which I sit and ticking off the list of carcasses of dead, not-economic-to-repair, can't-discard-'cos-it's-an-assett IBM branded equipment that I have piled up all around me.
IBM equipment is high workload for techo's. Schools either don't have technical folks, or spread them very thin on the ground. They're going to be very busy cleaning up this mess. I wonder just how many parents are going to end up paying for dead IBM equipment that the mighty IBM repair department puts down to 'user abuse' to hide their crapola manufacturing!
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
When I was in 11th grade (3-4 years ago) my Physics teacher decided to buy the CD version the textbook. It was absolutely horrible. It was slow and the book that I checked out from the library was ten times better, simply because I didn't have to stare at a screen to learn material.
Online material is often very helpful, but I always print out the material. Reading a screen is much more tiresome for me. I remember reading some old books on my computer a couple of years ago because it was impossible to get them in print, and after an hours worth of reading a text file I couldn't look at the computer any longer.
I'll also mention that having a computer is a huge distraction. Granted, sometimes its nice to not be completely bored, but often times you just stop paying attention if you're surfing the internet or playing a game.
The only positive thing about that CD (and the fact that my teacher couldn't teach at all) was that it actually made me study physics and discover that I wanted to continue studying it.
If you think it would be bad if criminals learned about these laptops, think about what would happen if the taxpayers who will have to pay for them found out!
Or even worse, what if some lawmakers found out about it?!
Its a teaching degree for pete's sake. That's training school, not college.
Yes, folks, this is still a bad idea. I use computers for absolutely everything, but that doesn't mean secondary school students should. They need to learn how to use textbooks. They need to learn how to WRITE... yes, with a PENCIL. They need to learn how to do math without a calculator. And they certainly aren't ready for the school system to just hand them a $1000-1500 pr0n and war3z machine.
Yes, computer literacy is important. But so is LITERACY. Take away my computer today and ask me to do math or write or research a topic in a Library the old fashioned way, and I won't be happy, but I'll get by. These kids won't if you cover them with electrons at this age.
RP
Teacher, the dog ate my laptop!
Non tam praeclarum est scire Latine, quam turpe nescire
-- Cicero
Books in Texas are used on average for 10 years. So that $350 per kid turns into $35 per kid per year. How long do you think a laptop will be 'usable' Four years would make $337 per kid per year. Only 10 times the price, what a deal.
I think you meant your post as a joke, but the parent poster mentioned pawn shops.
Also, people that steal things usually want money more than the object itself and pawn/sell the stolen merchandise so they can pay the rent/feed their family/purchase more drugs.
I would imagine that very few people would be willing to steal laptops from children and risk going to jail just so that they could have more processing power; most theives would be in it for the money.
True story.
Make an unbreakable device, and a kid will find a way to destroy it. These notebook computers won't last a week.
Ahh, the kids will fight to the death to keep their mp3's they downloaded... and what pawn shop will be able to resell one with "Davy Crockett Public School" silkscreened on it?? The real cool thing is that suddenly the kids have huge, interesting libraries with books to read and music to listen to IN THEIR ROOM!! and the cost is not necessarily that high. The cost of 20 books at 60 per book certainly covers it. A good idea, and worth supporting. Especially since most of those 2,000 books are probably public domain - and pivotal to the better aspects of human civilization (I assume we get stuff globally, not just locally)! I want one!
Crazy Al's House of Intertubes - where we make up in volume what we lose per bit...
Interesting stuff. I'm from Texas! Try our delicious, well marbled Grass fed beef. Come visit our site, and find out how grass fed beef was meant to taste.
Interesting Stuff. I'm from Texas! Luke the Grass fed beef Man!
With how fat kids are these days maybe it's a good thing....
My freshman class was the first in this new program, and I was given an IBM Thinkpad 4 years ago. Since my sophomore year it has been sitting on a shelf, collecting dust.
The school started the program requiring that the laptops be utilized in some way in every course. The professors shrugged and said "they're probably typing their reports/compiling their homework on them" to get past the requirement.
In reality, no one was using the laptops in the classroom, except to chat on AIM and play videogames on the wireless network. It's much easier for most people to write out their notes on paper than it is to fiddle around with a word processor, especially when you're trying to draw graphs or write out formulas. The professors who tried using them in the class (mostly "type this code into your compiler and see what happens" demos) quickly went back to simple lecturing.
I've found reading anything on my laptop to be a PITA. The screen doesn't sit at eye level, so my neck was constantly bent downward to look at the screen. If I'm reading about Chemistry, for example, it's awful hard to flip back a couple pages to find the formula/proof I want, and then flip back to the chapter I'm on and find my place quickly. The teachers know this, so very few try to push electronic material on the students.
My point is... if college professors don't even utilize the required laptops properly during classtime, how many grade/high school teachers will end up doing the same thing, either because their students are getting terribly distracted, are being slowed down, or because it's just plain easier to do things the old-fashioned way?
On the other hand, if you gave these notebooks to the teachers, every one of them would be ridden with viruses and spyware by the end of the first week. And so would the notebooks
,the kids will think these things are cool, something they usually never think textbooks. However, the poster who mentioned that they may be easy marks for criminals has a very good point.
:-) book reader instead of a notebook computer. It costs less, doesn't have a lot of moving parts, fans, disks, etc., and is designed to be a book. I personally don't much care for reading books on a computer, I'd much rather have a dead tree edition or something electronic that really acts like a book. The book remains one of the great user interface success stories of all time.
Plus
Finally, I have to wonder if this wouldn't be a better application for that new Sony ePaper (sorry, can't recall the exact name right now and I'm too lazy to look it up, so mod me down
$200 used computers (~700mhz, 256mb of RAM, 6gb hard drive, PS/2 keybd/mouse, just 'basic' yet very usable hardware) would be just as effective. Save the remaining $1100 for high-quality training and teaching in the schools, and the educational value of computers in schools would skyrocket.
... and they are free to fix mistakes, then they probably will.
I know of teachers who've found mistakes in textbooks, written to the publisher, only to be ignored and have the same mistake appear in the next edition.
A wide range of textbooks in wiki format would be a huge bonus if they were widely used. Of course that's a catch 22.
I think what a lot of people are doing is there assuming 'biggest and best' with respect to the laptops that will be issued- but I think that's false; these are going to be a special run of ruggidized laptops that are not going to be top notch (and will probbally be overpriced for the components within them).
Consider:
Standard monitor 13.5", but replaceable
no HDD, instead a 2gb flash card (1.5gb for windows XP), or a 5gb HDD with extera padding
slide out CD-rom (where all books will actually be)
Spillproof keybaord
Shockproff the whole thing
Low end processor (maby 500mhz celleron)
$700 each
Now that's far more expensive then those components are worth, but at the same time, how else is a school board going to be able to get thousands if not tens of thousands of these things created exactly the same. As well since all the individual components are cheap, removable, and build with the intention of ocassionally being replaced the cost to the student for abuse is more minimal then the cost of having abused a textbook (With the exception of the screen I can't see a single component in that thing exceding $80; then again, loosing the whole laptop wouldne't be fun)
-Millions of Monkeys, Millions of typewriters, 6 hours of sorting through faeces encrusted pages to find: This post
Well looks like people here are still posting idiotic unthought items.
Instead of supporting these forward moving programs you look for problems.
Technology is the future. Why use a pencil and paper when you can move forward?
What is the purpose of knowing addition when a calculator can be used? Why does it matter if you know how to add 11351 + 13511 when you can do it via calculator?
In the real world, no one cares about your mental math... just if you can get the right answer.
No one cares how neat your handwriting is if you are typing.
Also, as for kids im'ing and e-mailing - GOOD. If they don't pay attention in class and fail, that is their decision... they'll suffer in the end.
I thought it was bad that students had to bring their own toilet paper to school. Now we're expecting parents to shell out over a grand for laptops so the school districts can stop buying textbooks?
Typical right-wing ploy. Eviscerate a useful program (like education) of all its funding, claim that it's broken, shift the cost burden, and write up some very friendly contracts for the companies that finance your campaign.
It might come as a shock to some people that not all families can spend $1300 at the drop of a hat for a new laptop. And if that financial aid is anything like financial aid for college, it will cover about $200 of the total cost, and if you make more than $10,000 per year, you don't qualify.
Some of the people jumping out of these white vans will be the parents of students, trying to grab some cash to buy their kids their "requisite school supplies," which used to total about $100 and are now over ten times that.
Oh, and I forgot about teacher pay. Some of that money could go toward making sure the teachers in the area don't have to take second jobs at the arsenal to pay the bills. Then maybe we'd have enough money left over to buy new Pentium 266 computers. Would you say 32 megs of ram would be enough for running MS Word 97, or would you go to 48 megs at the expense of a working mouse?
*****
Dear Mary,
I yearn for you tragically,
A.T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
Last year I read about the rising cost of college textbooks. Now cost effective alternatives are taking care of the publishers gouging. I love a free market. Next year look for the printed books to fall in price and new online publishers competing with traditional publishers.
Most people don't want to hear it, but gas prices use the same market forces. For transportation gas and oil have the highest energy per pound so 400 miles on a tank is acheivable at relatively low cost. When gas gets too expensive, look for electric cars with their short range, natural gas (short range), biodiesel (emission problems), fuel effecient hybrids, fuel cells, hydrogen, and methanol alternatives to start to make inroads on the petrochemical market share. Currently gas and oil have provided the most cost effective transportation fuel. Prices have been cheap enough people bought fuel ineffecient big vehicles with little regard to energy costs. With raising rates, higher cost fuel alternatives will start to be competitive. This only happens in a free market.
I've already made the switch. There is a 6 month backlog of Toyots Prius Hybrid orders. The rising gas prices is moving the market away from high energy cost vehicles. Higher electric rates will follow, followed by more fuel effecient housing and apliances.
The truth shall set you free!
So in the future politicians will be assassinated by lone gunmen from the Texas Notebook Depository then?
how about for every book they replace with notebooks, they donate an actual book for 3rd world countries where children cant even afford an eduation or a decent book for them to learn how to read
my blog
Will we finally hear the last of the `broken cupholder' jokes?!
.
In the business world, full warranty/support can cost way way more than the hardware itself, so the question is, how much did your company sell this 3-year extended warranty for?
My college (www.rose-hulman.edu) started to require students to buy a particular laptop and software suite starting in my freshman year. It was found, gradually, that there is incredibly high wear and tear to take your laptop to every class, to set it up and tear it down four times a day, etc, etc. Some of this was just totally unexpected - before we graduated most of us ended up with out memory superglued in after having been to the computing center four or five times for loose memory.
Of course, it didn't help that the first year (1995) they could only find one company who could promise to deliver 450 identical laptops, and they were pretty cruddy - we kept having case cracks and some MechEs finally proved there was a structural flaw in the cases.
While I'll grant you the 600s battery issues, I've never had any other problems with my 560, 600, 770, or T20. The T20 did start getting flaky after I dropped it and cracked the case, but even then it was only after I upgraded the memory (apparently the cracked case flexed the internals enough blue screen).
The 50 - 560e's I take care of mainly have problems of user abuse: closing the screen hard on a pencil or pen, stepping on the back of the screen, etc... There were relatively few problems with the laptops otherwise over the 4 year span that it's been in service. The only real problem is that the screens on half of them flop down and don't stay up over the years. Luckily the 3 year warrantee allowed us to have those repaired so most of them are still working fine.
I did experience the Battery not charging problem with a T21 just 2 days before the warrantee expired, just in time for a replacement motherboard to, hopefully to last another year or two without any problems.
I agree with you. This notice sounds progressive and a notebook can be more comfortable and easy to transport than a book.
I think that not only could increase the number of robberies in the students, but in addition, in the long run, this could bring problems for its vision.