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 $1350 notebook computers in the their backpacks are likely to give a handful of enterprising criminals some unpleasant ideas.
I picture a dozen or so kids blissfully strolling home from school when a dirty white van pulls up. Two guys with masks on pop out of the back of the van, point guns at the kids, demand that all backpacks be removed and placed on the ground, load a dozen backpacks into the van and drive straight to their favorite crooked pawn shop.
If a school system is going to provide notebook computers for its young students, or require them to own their own, I think it would be wise of them to keep quiet about it.
So far a bunch of school systems have implemented such plans without any reported dramatic increase in students getting robbed, but I fear that once the word gets out among an areas criminals that there's easy pickings walking around wearing backpacks, all heck could break loose.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
While I don't think it is bad idea to supply all students with laptops, I think this is a perfect opportunity for a next generation ebook reader. I have an Ebookman that is ok for reading text, but doesn't handle PDF's or graphics, has a small screen and eats batteries when backlit.
There are several products from asia that are interesting, I just wish they would make it here sooner:
EB660
Panasonic Sigmabook
Sony
This could be the type of application that would launch ebooks into the mainstream.
Outfit them all with giant sewing-machine size Compaq luggables for portable computers. Everything's bigger in Texas, so why not have the biggest portable computers around? The former governor also told me that the bigger a disk is, the more data it holds too!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Amount of time It takes for every thinkpad to be running counterstrike.
Billy, what is 8 divided by 2?
What? Man that was BS Stupid Shield Lamers, Damn Lag. #@$#%
I'm L337 Screw you Teacher!
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
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...
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?
I thought we were all in Fifth grade here! You mean you're not?
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.
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.
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 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!
Another thought:
Are the teachers able to use and understand these machines?
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
how about learning to write with pen and paper.
what happens when the damn piece of crap breaks down?
You, um, sharpen the pencil?
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
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.
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?
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.
I'll decrypt your ???'s.
1. Search
2. Copy
3. Paste
4. Cite
5. A+
suddenly I feel very tired
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
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.
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.
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
office with smashed screens, click-o-death harddrives, etc.
Sounds like the CEO's of the US top 500 companies and their laptops.
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
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!
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.
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!
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