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.
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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:
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Panasonic Sigmabook
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This could be the type of application that would launch ebooks into the mainstream.
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
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...
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?
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.
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.
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 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. :-)
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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.
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This will make it much easier to keep things up to date.
"We are at war with Eastasia. We have always been at war with Eastasia."
- George Orwell
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.
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.
The school district superintendent is a college educated adult. I am sure Mike Smith, the school district superintendent, is not blindly ignoring maintenence costs. This is not a new idea; school districts and college campuses have been doing this for years. These prior projects have tabulated tons of data on the maintence costs of these programs.
I am sure elementary school spinal tap drummers crossed Mike's mind.
Kids are enterprising too. Wonder how many will be selling the notebooks themselves, rather than waiting for them to be stolen?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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.
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.
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.
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What are they teaching kids in school which has rapid turnover? How much has math changed in the several centuries at the level that even a high school senior would be using? Any fundamental errors in Newtonian physics been cropping up that I'm not aware of? The history of western civilization isn't going to change unless someone travels back in time. English will adapt only a little to accomodate cultural changes (like you know... whatever...) but on the whole, English grammar and spelling haven't changed in the last fifty years or so.
Anyone not in high school can make perfectly good use of existing books. The only reason why books change so often is because publishers like to sell more books! I never used a computer at school until grade 12 (Turbo Pascal on the Apple IIgs... w00t!) and given that I know more about computers and programming than most people who have used computers all their lives, I don't think this has been a hindrance. In fact, having started out with simple computers which I could fully understand inside and out, then progressing to more and more powerful ones has probably been the best thing.
These days, starting out with a laptop you can't open up with an operating system so complex that nobody can understand it without years of study must be very daunting. I can imagine it'd cause a lot of kids to just treat it as this big mysterious magic black box that does things when you click the right things with a mouse.
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... and that's exactly why you can buy NEW textbooks besides the pile of used textbooks. Used textbooks are cheaper than new ones because ... drum roll ... they've been used! Which means a previous owner doing what he wanted with it.
Your complaint would make sense for library books.
Oh, how I wish I had mod points to mod the parent up for this.
I do tech support for 3 different school districts. In my experience, the biggest problem is that teachers rarely have the computer knowledge to use utilize any new technology. Of the 150 or so teachers, perhaps 4 or 5 understand what a network is. Perhaps 2 of those would be able to leverage the new technology into something beneficial for the children.
Why spend $1300+ for a new laptop for each child when you're only going to use it as a glorified e-book? Sure they are capable of much more, but does an elementary school have the resources and support necessary to utilize them?
We get technology grants all the time. It seems that the money for new technology is there, but it is never accompanied by the training money or staffing dollars to implement it. The school is expected to pay for that. How does a school that barely has enough money to pay their teachers come up with money to pay the technical support for that many laptops.
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.
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.
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!!
office with smashed screens, click-o-death harddrives, etc.
Sounds like the CEO's of the US top 500 companies and their laptops.
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)
Yeah, great idea. Lets give the kids computers that are worth a lot more than the thinkpads, that'll solve the problem.
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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
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
Make an unbreakable device, and a kid will find a way to destroy it. These notebook computers won't last a week.