Arizona School Won't Use Textbooks

Some Guy writes "A high school in Vail will become the state's first all-wireless, all-laptop public school this fall. The 350 students at the school will not have traditional textbooks. Instead, they will use electronic and online articles as part of more traditional teacher lesson plans."

Comments

Finally!

[jhylkema]

Textbook sales are a racket worthy of the Gambino family.

The Dog

[Valiss]

So now, when someone says, "The dog ate my homework," they'll actually mean, "The Dog virus ate my homework!"

Laptop school

[Anonymous Coward]

Yawn. Didn't we just have an article about kids getting criminal charges for installing software on their state provided notebooks? This ain't news anymore folks, its the trend becoming mainstream.

Their school motto:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Staring into a computer screen is like staring into an eclipse. It's brilliant and you don't realize the damage until its too late"

What's wrong with textbooks?

[Anonymous Coward]

All the money is being spent on "tech in schools". At the end of the day, a bad teacher will be bad given a set of textbooks or laptops. Imo, this money should go towards more teacher training/more teachers.

Re:What's wrong with textbooks?

[Tackhead]

> All the money is being spent on "tech in schools". At the end of the day, a bad teacher will be bad given a set of textbooks or laptops. Imo, this money should go towards more teacher training/more teachers.

The previous slashdot post contains material on teaching. Teaching is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of knowledge. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

Re:What's wrong with textbooks?

[ConceptJunkie]

Imo, this money should go towards more teacher training/more teachers.

Yeah, but mindlessly pissing money down a hole has been touted as the way to fix education for so long, hardly anyone knows how to do anything else, even though it has never worked.

Hire good teachers. This requires paying a decent salary. Dismantle the teachers' unions, which serve only themselves and are largely responsible for the horrible mess our education system is in, by locking in bad teachers and bad ideas. Hold schools accountable by allowing vouchers, which will force competition.

Based on my experience as a volunteer teacher and feedback from kids, parents and other teachers, I'm pretty good at it. Kids like me and I like them (and I've got 4 of my own). We communicate well and the kids seem to both learn and have fun. I would love to teach professionally, but I can't afford the huge pay cut and I will never take a job that requires me to join a union.

Re:What's wrong with textbooks?

[shmlco]

...i'm strongly concidering [sic] quitting a high-paying job at a major defense firm...

What firm? It sounds as if they need qualified people...

Re:What's wrong with textbooks?

[NeoSkandranon]

Requiring more training could potentially make more "bad" teachers quit and do something they're more suited to.

Re:What's wrong with textbooks?

[GileadGreene]

Won't a bad teacher still be relatively bad given the same training as good teachers?

Possibly. But the bad teacher will presumably still be better than they were before the training, so the quality of education provided to students will improve. Does putting tech into the classroom actually improve the quality of education, or is it simply change for the sake of change?

Even if we put money in to raising teacher salaries, hoping to attract better teachers away from other careers, won't we also attract a lot of bad teachers looking for a relatively easy buck?

The point of raising teacher salaries is to make replacing the current crop of bad teachers with good teachers feasible, by increasing the pool of potential teachers. If there are few or no good teachers available, you have little choice but to hire bad teachers in order to fill your staffing requirements. With more candidates to choose from, you can choose to hire only the good ones.

Re:What's wrong with textbooks?

[fm6]

All the money is being spent on "tech in schools"...

...is partly offset in this case by not buying all those overpriced textbooks.

Here's what's wrong with textbooks: they peddle an oversimplified, predigested, emasculated version of whatever they're trying to teach. You say the solution is better teachers? Good teachers hate textbooks. Good teachers know that the job is to teach student to do actual thinking -- a process not assisted by the unchallenging, anti-thought-provoking crap standard textbooks contain.

Teachers have been trying trying to find alternatives to textbooks for decades. Thirty-odd years ago, I had a really good high-school history class (20th century U.S.) where the teachers tossed out the textbooks and replaced them with all the serious reading they could legally photocopy. Nowadays, they would just point us at the Internet, and save a lot of time and money in the process.

Anyway, computers are an essential part of modern education. Aside from computer skills being a basic element of modern literacy, they just do a hell of lot to help with the process. If nothing else, they make writing a lot easier -- I mean jeez, no sane person does real writing by hand or typewriter any more. And writing is two thirds of a real education.

Re:What's wrong with textbooks?

[juan2074]

You are right.

I would not want my kid going to a school like this. My kid had better learn how to read and write the old-fashioned way. Spelling, grammar, punctuation, and even penmanship are still important.

They also need to be able to do a lot of math with pencil and paper -- not rely on computers or advanced calculators. (Have you ever asked a teenager a simple math problem that they need a calculator to solve? Many cannot give you the correct change without the cash register's help.)

And schools still need music, art, and PE classes, to keep kids mentally well-rounded but physically fit.

Kids need to learn how to do things in their head before they learn how to make a computer do it for them. Otherwise, we will have some stupid kids when the power goes out or they are lost in the wilderness.

Is that what anyone really wants?

Re:What's wrong with textbooks?

[AuMatar]

You contradict yourself. You say teachers nee more money (I agree). You also say to kill the union. If teachers aren't making more money now *with* the union, do you really think it has a snowballs chance in hell of happening without?

And vouchers won't help schools, it will simply destroy the public school system. The real problem isn't teachers, or tech. Its parents not doing their job at home and pushing education. This occurs mainly in poorer communities- if you compare test scores and literacy rates of only middle class suburbs to private schools, the public schools meet or exceed the private schools. Thats because middle class parents understand the value of education and push their children.

So what will happen with vouchers? People will fall into 3 catagories. Catagory 1- parents who care and use the vocher. This will remove many of the higher performing students, making public schools even worse. Catagory 2- parents who don't care and don't use the voucher. No change. Catagory 3- parents who care, but still can't afford it. THey're the ones who get fucked. We now have an even more underfunded system, thats been given up on by the general public, and they have no way out. Their education level will fall even lower. The very group vouchers are touted to help are those most hurt.

The correct answer is to address the root of the problem, not the symptoms. Engage the parents, make them care about their children's education. This is not an easy task, and it doesn't have a solution in less than a decade. Too slow for most of todays knee-jerk politicians. Then increase the quality of teachers in areas such as math, science, and computers. This requires paying more, to lure them away from industry. But engage the parents first, the change has to come from there.

Re:What's wrong with textbooks?

[wmspringer]

Supply optional training, paid for by the district.

Then pay attention to who's taking advantage of it.

I took an education class this past year; it was paid for by the teacher's union (to which I don't belong) and I got some useful information out of it.

Only trouble was I had to actually get out of the building on time to get to class :-)

Re:What's wrong with textbooks?

[UserChrisCanter4]

I'm not going to delve too far into economics; it wasn't my field of study, and I don't pretend to understand much beyond what the introductory courses teach you. So I'll say this.

I teach English at a public high school. I graduated Summa Cum Laude with a 3.8 GPA, Dean's List, glowing marks during internships, etc. All the things a major employer would look for in a prospective employee who had just graduated. I am an exception in public education.

Don't get me wrong, I work with brilliant people, many of whom far surpass those achievements. I would say that the school I am currently at surpasses all others I've seen. I am paid a reasonable wage, and I get some great benefits, but I also work for a district that pays $13,000 more than is legally required. It's a job that's rewarding in a lot of respects, but when I started down this path, I knew there were sacrifices that would have to be made. I may start out with a good salary now, but 10 years from now most college graduates will be earning far more than I will. I'm willing to deal with that; it's a choice I made. Obviously, there are a lot of people out there who disagree with me, and when you want good people, money is one of the best places to start. I can't tell you how many people I've met who tell me, "I would've loved to have been a teacher." The unspoken bit of elaboration is that they found something else, something better.

Because really, it's all about attracting good applicants. If every school could all of a sudden pay $10,000 more, I guarantee that there would be an enormous increase in applicants. Many of these people would be well-qualified. Imagine if a school was only paying $8,000 or $10,000 less per year than a comparable industry job. Math and science positions, in particular, would have some spectacular applicants. There may not be as many presitigious jobs available for people with English or History degrees, but if the stakes are raised, you will get more applicants. With more applicants, obviously, you have a better chance of finding a well-qualified one. As for the poor-performing teachers already in place? Well, it's a little easier to dump someone if you know there are five people who might jump at their job (a very little, but that's a rant for another day).

Won't we attract bad teachers looking for an "easy" buck? Yeah. There are crappy employees in every job sector. But it's a lot easier to weed out the crappy ones when you can choose from among 10 applicants instead of 3.

The public school system in America has plenty of problems. Listing them would take far too long, and most people already know them anyway. I seriously doubt, though, that a lack of laptops is a major hurdle in our education system.

Re:What's wrong with textbooks?

[UserChrisCanter4]

I am a member of a teacher's union. I hate 98% of what they stand for. But $130/year gets me $6 million in liability coverage. When some kid decides to sue for bad grades, sue for "mistreatment" while being taken to the disciplinary office, or accuse me of "touching them" because I failed them, I need that. It happens more frequently than a lot of people would care to imagine, especially the first example. So while I disagree with the teacher's union on a lot of things, I can't afford to take the chance. I'm going to have to have that same kind of coverage from the state before I give up my union membership.

Incidentally, union memebership is totally optional in most districts.

Re:What's wrong with textbooks?

[lucifuge31337]

i'm convinced that most IT people don't understand the point of their job - provide service to their users so that their users can get their shit done. That means, if you have to research something you don't know (how to get Macs to connect to SMB shares) then get off your fat ass and find out how!!!! Then help your user!

Having gone through this at the grunt level as well as the management level, I can say that you are 110% correct. Most IT people, especially "paper mill" MCSE's really don't know whay they are . They often seem to think that the network/technology/whatever drives the business, rather than the other way around. With very few exceptions, that is obviously not the case, with their salaries easily in the "cost of doing business" category. This is eaxactly why so many non-techies have such a negative view of techs.

One of the worst examples I personally witnessed was an underling of mine who decided that the middle of the day, after he finished lunch, would be a good time to clean up the wiring closet. He felt no need to notify users, and seemed to not understand why this was a problem (at a web-based software development company, where 90% of the employees were testing code on machines that they damn well needed the network to get to).

And one more: A software developer at at a different job who I assigned to write a piece of software (almost....nothing more than an Access app) to assist in expediting a daily paperwork nightmare (ACH to/from several accounts....all source destination information already available electronically). I told him to go sit down with the girl who did it and lear how she does her job and exactly what she needed. His response was "I don't need to know how to do her job to write that." My response was, "See that door? Don't let it hit you in the ass on the way out."

Re:What's wrong with textbooks?

[Taevin]

As someone who is still in college and thus was in high school only a few years ago, I would have to say that you probably have not been in the public school system in quite some time. The teachers ARE indeed a real problem. I was fortunate enough to live in one of the most affluent counties in my state and thus had access to many extracurricular resources and the like but it seems like teachers must be the same everywhere. Most of the ones I had were average. They had a mild interest in their subject and mostly stuck to the book. There were of course some bad apples too (the rediculously boring ones that taught straight from the book and/or seemed like they didn't even want to be a teacher).

There were only three in the entire course of my high school education that stood out as great teachers. Two of them completely threw out the book (and made jokes about it - humor is always a great addition to a classroom IMO) and the other only used it moderately. All three of them had an inspiring effect and made me actually want to learn about the subject and thankfully one was for AP US government so I actually learned to pay attention to what the asshats in our government are doing. Needless to say, I've retained most of the knowledge from those three classes while I've forgotten much of the other crap I 'learned' in school.

I do have to agree with you on the parent issue though, at least to an extent. Yes your average parent probably needs to put more effort into their child's education. However, I think schools too often expect parents to help their child with the deluge of homework and projects assigned to students. Personally I think it's a little unreasonable to expect parents to come home from work, make dinner, catch some news, AND do an hour or two of homework with their kids and still have a little downtime for themselves to keep from going insane. Of course this is impossible for the single parent working two jobs to support their children and then, on top of already suffering from limited interaction with their parent, the kids do poorly compared to their peers. This of course goes back to the teacher. The lower the ability of the teacher, the more likely they are to rely on the 'crutch' of homework and projects.

Ugh I'm sick of writing about this already... I'm just glad I'm out of that shitstorm. You could probably write a dozen dissertations on all the problems with the public schools. I just hope they are a lot better when I have children of my own. Or I might be one working an extra job to pay for the thousands of dollars in private tuition fees.

Re:What's wrong with textbooks?

[UserChrisCanter4]

Um, they sue all the time to get grades changed. A guy I worked with was sued after his third year as a teacher because he failed a kid. She was slated to be the valedictorian, got her solid class rank (many districts establish a valedictorian in January or February of their senior year), and just stopped doing any work. He failed her, and got to spend the next summer and fall in and out of court non-stop. It's also fairly common to sue the district (which has money) and name the teacher(s) as co-defendants.

The union doesn't just pay up if I'm found to owe $2 million. They also pay all lawyers' fees, which is far more important in a lot of cases.

Umm... vision?

[JossiRossi]

How many of us stare at a laptop screen for hours on end? How many of us realize how bad that is after a few days straight of doing it? LCD screens may not have the refresh rate issues, but still this can't bode well for the children's vision. Although optomitrists will likely be excited.

Re:Umm... vision?

[rwven]

they'll be about as far away from their eyes as the books they were reading last year... i highly doubt this will be an issue...

Re:Umm... vision?

[pilkul]

Actually, as someone recovering from a back injury from programming on a laptop all day, I can tell you that muscular repetitive stress injuries are a much bigger health risk than eye strain. With a laptop, either the screen is too low or the keyboard is too high, so there's no way to use it ergonomically. You end up hunched and it messes you up over the long run.

Costs are brutal!

[darth_MALL]

Ruining a laptop is so much more expensive than wrecking a textbook. Plus how are you supposed to draw mustaches and balls on all the pictures for the next class to see?

Re:Costs are brutal!

[NetNifty]

"Plus how are you supposed to draw mustaches and balls on all the pictures for the next class to see?"

Hack the server with the "text book" stored on?

meanwhile, in kansas...

[avi33]

Plans are underway to do away with all science books except for one.

No Match for books.

[sacbhale]

This should be an interesting experiment.
I have had computers for years and I use them extensively to learn things but I have found that they are no match for good old books. Books are so much convenient to use.
I think it is unwise to completely eliminate the books from clasrooms. It would be great to augment the books with online resources. But replacing them completely seems to be a dumb move.

EPaper

[kidtux1]

This textbook less classroom will begin to happen more and more once epaper finally comes to fruition. I know I would have loved to be able to download my books instead of having to buy a $200 text book for my college classes.

Re:EPaper

[Dr. Evil]

I'm sure they'll still charge $200, only now it will be for a 1 year license rather than this year's edition.

Re:EPaper

[Tsiangkun]

I'm so glad I was able to figure out how use a library card in college.

Most students never figured out that the texts books were available to be checked out. Library late fees are a joke compared to the cost of buying the books.

You've got to be kidding.

[pudding7]

400 high school kids running around with laptops?

My screen is broken
My battery died
My S key won't work
I dropped it
I lost it
I lost the cables
It won't turn on
I spilled soda on it
The wireless access point is down
The network is down
My wireless card broke
I can't log in
I forgot my password
I locked myself out
I deleted all my icons
Billy deleted all my icons

What an administration nightmare. Blah. Good luck with this little project.

Re:You've got to be kidding.

[Saeul]

What an administration nightmare. Blah. Good luck with this little project.

If the kids are there to get educated, shouldn't using a computer be second nature when they graduate? And how can you make it an extension of their minds unless it is central to the learning process?

And what if it happens to engage children more to use a computer to learn? The main problem most of my friends had in high school was hating showing up every day. What if your education was meaningful, practical, and you were fully qualified immediately out of high school for better pay because of computer skills being second nature?

I see this as a step away from silliness and towards reasonability. Precisely how useful ARE textbooks? And isn't the control over the textbook as a source of philosophy and slant one of its major problems?

Switching out stale, dry textbooks might not work, but it has the advantage of perhaps invoking the Hawthorne Effect: changing the environment sometimes will cause an improvement in productivity simply because the people think you are watching and interacting with them more seriously.

More wifi for me!

[activesynapsis]

I live a mile away from that school, now I'll have all the wifi access I can handle.

Lack of vision not enought hind sight

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see this plagued with problems. where will most of the data be stored?

1) What happens if you have internet connectivity issue before a test (night before).
2) What happens when a web link gets out dated and you cannot reference it during your studies.
3) Viruses and worms do bad things.
4) Managing the secuirty on the laptops.
5) File corruption.

Well, all the problems listed above can actually prepare a student for the real world in an office built around MS technology.

Re:Vail is in Colorado!

[not-real-sure]

If you bothered to RTFA you would see that there is a Vail Arizona. Also a little research and you would come up with http://www.vail.k12.az.us/

My deepest fear: text changing on the fly

[Lead Butthead]

Imagin the power government will weld when they can change education text of our children on the fly to suit the preveiling views of the government.

Re:My deepest fear: text changing on the fly

[Meshach]

That is actually a very good point

Tin foil hat on

Anyone who has ever read 1984 knows that this is one of the hallmarks of a controlled society. As soon as a book can (untraceably) be edited much objectivity is lost

Hat off

This is a good money saving idea. And it will save paper and make it easier to do homework from home

I am torn

Re:My deepest fear: text changing on the fly

[dabigpaybackski]

On-the-fly textbook editing might be on the agenda, but what makes this initiative so retarded is the sheer gimmickry of it.

Think:

Government schools, who cannot teach and indeed have no interest in teaching basic literacy, are buying laptop computers to hand out to the kids.

What do I make of this? It is another distraction intended to waylay semi-literate parents of these public school inmates into thinking it will somehow foster education in some vague... **insert stream of government/corporate obfuscatory marketing buzzwords** ...

oh, I'm sorry, what was I saying? I just read this newsletter from the school district talking about this great new program with laptop computers and stuff and it's gonna make my kids so smart and hey, where's my remote and honey isn't there a bag of Doritos in the kitchen somewhere I'm hungry...

Re:My deepest fear: text changing on the fly

[Jherek Carnelian]

Anyone who has ever read 1984 knows that this is one of the hallmarks of a controlled society.
As soon as a book can (untraceably) be edited much objectivity is lost.

This is already happening, and it is indeed scary.
They just don't quite have the untraceable part down yet.

About a decade ago, Time Magazine published an essay by Bush Sr and Secretary of Defense Scowcroft on why they chose not take out Sadam during the first gulf war. A lot of the points they made have been proven true today.

Time DELETED the article from their online archives. It was as if it were never written, URLs that once worked are now road-kill on the information super-highway. Not only that, but significant changes were made to other articles in that same issues as compared to the print version.

Fortunately it wasn't quite so untraceable and has been widely reported (not widely enough IMNHO). Here is one take on the story, you can find plenty more by googling for bush scowcroft "reasons not to invade".

http://eee.uci.edu/programs/comp/39c/google/hesket h.html

If you had asked me

[Approaching.sanity]

A year ago I would have told you that this sort of thing is far fetched and implausible. Since then I have moved to a Laptop University that is connected to several online databases and online journals. I regularily write five to ten page research papers from the comfort of my dorm room.

The future of learning is in information being availible everywhere. This school will prove it.

Re:If you had asked me

[SA Stevens]

I regularily write five to ten page research papers from the comfort of my dorm room. ...without even needing to touch a keyboard, with just flicks of the mouse!

Re:Go Arizona!

[cato kaze]

What does technology, in the form of laptops, have to do with a good education? As a HS senior, the most productive learning experiance I've had has come from quality teachers that have an intrest in teaching rather than just moving students through the system and crunching points. I'd feel a whole lot better of my school put more money into training and acquiring good teachers that some nearly useless technology that is just a crutch.

Alter-universe

[Dark Coder]

Top 10 things you're likely to hear shortly after the bell.

10. Canius Virii ate my homework.
9. Not now, I'm IM'ing with my broker
8. Press me and I'll press this button erasing your server
7. Road crew didn't blog their detours.
6. PDF Midterms -- Fresh off the teacher's home server, send $$ to PayPal.
5. Check out Mr. Crabapple's latest decline at RateMyTeacher.Com
4. Acrobat Reader is crashing... I couldn't bone up on it overnite.
3. Microsoft locked out PDF in favor of XML. Do you have an XML reader?
2. Not enough memstick-space
1. I can't read.

Look out for...

[hackstraw]

TPAA!

Textbook Publishers Association of America. Yeah, I made it up, but we simply cannot allow for progress against an old business models. Trifles innovation, hurts the authors, and leaves the suits worried.

what a dumb idea

[Anonymous Coward]

"hey, let's replace $60 worth of books with $600 worth of fragile computer gear. I'm sure no one will drop one or anything."

English classes should use paper for literature

[davidwr]

E-books are great for things that change a lot, like science, and are good for things that are amiable to hyperlinks, such as information about Shakespear.

However, when it comes to plain old literature, like Shakespear's works, paper-in-hand is a much more pleasing experience than laptop-on-lap.

Sure, have annotated, hyperlinked copies of Romeo and Juliet on the computer, but for goodness sake give those kids an actual book to read if they want one.

And with VoIP and cameras...

[Anonymous Coward]

they can outsource the teaching jobs to India. Imagine how much cheaper those teachers are! We finally can pay the administrators what they deserve!

I've a bad feeling about this.

[Linker3000]

Why does my '25 years in IT' brain shudder at the prospect of this? In a nanosecond the following flashed through my consciousness:

Dropped it, flat batteries, can't see it in the sun, viruses, forgot to backup, stolen, central server outage, corrupt file, server cracked, can't type that fast, wifi down, wifi overloaded, forgot my password, not enough power sockets in the room, pulled off desk by someone tripping over power cable, broken keycaps, spilled drink on it, fighting for printer time, someone took my USB memory stick, unauthorised upgrade...I'm going pale at the thought!

Need Paper

[bhive01]

I don't know about everyone else, but LCD or not I can't stand to read anything longer than a slashdot article (or its impending dupe!) on a screen. I have to have paper.

What about Content?

[PogieMT]

It seems like the superintendent promoting this and many of the posts here are ignoring a fundamental problem: content. While it is nice to write about how great e-texts would be, it's not as if publishers are going to give that material away, even if it exists. So the cost of textbooks will still be there. Additionally, the answer to better education away from the textbook doesn't seem to be taking away books, which, as it turns out, can be valuable resources. The answer would seem to be giving teachers better training and forcing them to be accountable. In my experience as a teacher, the answer has never been a different avenue for transmittal of information, it has been a better transmitter.

Computers Degrade Academic Performance

[Sigfried]

The folks in Vail have obviously not read this slashdot article about the correlation between computer usage in the classroom and a degradation of academic performance.

Horrible Idea...

[John Seminal]

The laptops cost $850 each, and the district will hand them to 350 Empire High School students for the entire year. The fast-growing district hopes to have 750 students at the new high school eventually. A set of textbooks runs about $500 to $600, Baker said.

First, if the laptops are $850, don't also forget to add the tech support that will be required for each laptop. Will students be able to take the laptops home? What if one gets a virus, and infects the others. What if a few students decide to destroy all the laptops. In a wireless community, that can be done. Yet, it would be impossible to burn all the books.

Add to the list of concers, that Ferenhite 451 is comming. No more books. No more written records. Students will start using only computers, and trust the content as accurate. I can see in one years curriculum "we are going to war because of weapons of mass destruction". Next year the laptop says "we went to war to liberate a people from a ruthless dictator". If the first sentance was in the book, it could not be erased, and students would ask "what? why? how did it change?".

And what about lost laptops? What is a more attractive target to steal? Laptops or books? I know on college campuses, people try and steal books, to sell them back to the bookstore for $20. Now imagine something worth 10 times as much.

This is a bad idea for so many reasons. It will raise costs per student for the school to operate. Either students will have to pay, or the property tax will increase. Laptops are more vulnerable to 14-17 year olds for thieft and malicious viruses.

And how good is it for the eyes? Most of my friends who spend 6+ hours in front of a computer have bad eyes by the time they hit 25ish.

Re:Horrible Idea...

[Jerf]

I can see in one years curriculum "we are going to war because of weapons of mass destruction". Next year the laptop says "we went to war to liberate a people from a ruthless dictator". If the first sentance was in the book, it could not be erased, and students would ask "what? why? how did it change?".

Read current textbooks much? You hardly need computers for such historical revisionism.

(Of course, while the 'right wing' efforts, mostly unsuccessful at that, of some people to get ID into textbooks and Evolution demoted to a theory on equal grounds, the highly successful and pervasive re-writing of history has been done by the multi-cultural 'left wing', and this doesn't bother the press enough for them to inform people. "Wings" quoted because in reality, the same mindset drives both sets of people; only whom and how much they offend changes, with the resulting changes in coverage. We really need to get rid of the mindset that school textbooks are the correct place to fight ideological wars. You can't make them ideology free, but surely there's something a little less extreme than the current situation. Look up "multicultural math" sometime... Oi! Whatever small core of value that idea may have had, and it is quite small, is destroyed by the effect it has on those it is taught to.)

Huge Mistake

[hungrygrue]

Great. now the kids won't read a damn thing. As long as they can just search the text, they won't even have to do a half assed skim of it to find answers. Say goodby to what attention span they have.

Racket!

[pin_gween]

In college they definitely are. Where I teach (NC), however, we don't buy books for a year (or worse, a semester) then try and get $3 at the end. We buy our books for 5 years. It is expensive as hell initially and when books are lost/destroyed. However, $65 for a book that lasts 5 years is not too much to expect taxpayers to pay.

Additionally, competition between publishers is fierce; thus textbook companies "comp" us extras like test banks, lcd projectors, informational cd's etc. I know the price of these freebies is inherent in the book cost, but...

It is a HELLUVA lot easier to get a kid to fork up $65 for a book than the $850 for laptops. What happens when someone steals the laptop? Not too many people look to jack you for a textbook.

What if they decide to keep the laptop for themselves? This is not a private school where the cost is absorbed in tuition, this taxpayer money. Add the cost of maintenance on the computers and I see this as a short lived experiment -- one dropped bookbag and you need another $850.

A local university tried this at one school in the district checked out 30 laptops to a class. Only half of them were returned and/or usable.

Re:Racket!

[Ucklak]

When I was in elementary school, most books lasted 4+ years.
In fact, I can't ever remember having a book that lasted only 1 year.
There was the student name panel on the inside of the front cover where the current student had to write his/her name and teacher.
There were kids who got the same books that their older siblings used that were 2 to 4 years older.

Re:Racket!

[Catbeller]

Well, the solution is to create an honest-to-god ebook solution: a hundred dollar lcd non-backlit cheapo unit, like a larger palm, the size of a piece of notebook paper, with an ethernet jack for transfering files in and out of non-volatile memory. It should run on AAA cells. It should be strong enough to survive a fall. Steel is cheap. Mass production would drive costs down -- how many students are there? tens of millions.

Laptops are simply Microsoft and Intel's way of locking in customers forever. eBooks do not need a bloody laptop. I'd imagine the publishers love the new hardware DRM being built into the laptops' chipsets by Intel.

Why isn't someone building a cheap, useful ebook? ... lawsuits from publishers?

Re:Racket!

[activesynapsis]

Local news reported a $54 optional insurance fee for parents to cover the laptops in case of damage/theft.

Re: Racket!

[dakirw]

I'd have to agree with the parent poster. At the university I was going to, a couple of students got arrested for stealing textbooks from backpacks near the dining commons of the dorms - the university hadn't bothered to set up lockers yet. Buying new (replacement) textbooks was a real financial pain - there weren't any good used textbooks in the middle of the semester.

Re:Racket!

[pin_gween]

My mistake for not clarifying in my original reply; I teach at a high school, not a college, hence the burden of money being taxpayer driven.
I think it is a bit easier at the college level because many times you can roll the cost of computers into tuition and actually "give" students the laptop. Despite what the Governator has/not done, many private uni's have given freshmen a laptop. (I think Wake Forest has done it for a few years and know Duke "gives" some odd gifts (they gave I-pods last year).

Re:Racket!

[Wakko Warner]

Are you kidding?

$500 a month is half a month's pay to some people.

- A.P.

Re:Racket!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the solution is to create an honest-to-god ebook solution: a hundred dollar lcd non-backlit cheapo unit, like a larger palm, the size of a piece of notebook paper, with an ethernet jack for transfering files in and out of non-volatile memory. It should run on AAA cells. It should be strong enough to survive a fall. Steel is cheap. Mass production would drive costs down -- how many students are there? tens of millions.

Why isn't someone building a cheap, useful ebook? ... lawsuits from publishers?

If you can make it work, go ahead. People have been trying to make a viable electronic book for the past twenty years.

From what I remember of the failed attempts: PDAs and notebooks in 1995 sold many "ruggedized" variants: the kind that could stand a (single) three foot drop onto concrete, or partial or total immersion in water. These versions tended to be four to five times the cost of a "non-ruggedized" version.

The cost of steel wasn't the limiting factor; shock resistant hard drives tended to be, though. Weight was also a limiting factor; by using titanium instead of steel, Palm is able to cut the weight of their cases in half (plus make them look cooler :-) ).

It's a non-trivial task to design a viewing system that

(a) is dirt cheap,
(b) looks good in multiple lighting conditions,
(c) is damage resistant.

You want "cheap" and "good" at the same time? Well, then, like the engineering rule says, you've ruled out "fast". Prepare to wait a long time to get what you want. I should know: I've wanted a decent pda/electronic paper solution for 20 years now. Palm pilots are the closest I've seen yet, and they've got a long way to go...

--
AC

Re:Racket!

[mabhatter654]

The real issue will be getting free, open knowladge out there for the schools to use. Teachers and school boards are so used to teaching to a product they've forgotten what they're really teaching. On top of that, all the state funded college/university establishment has become used to selling the knowladge rather than passing it down the food chain. One thing that's needed is to push the higher learning to get involved in lower education as part of their JOBs, not as extra spending money!

Re:about time

[JaxWeb]

This should have started happening in schools years ago.

Why?

There isn't really any advantage in learning from a computer. In fact, most people won't like it as much because physical books are easier to read. If you don't understand something it is much easier to read and reread a text book than to read and reread a PDF document. The article only mentions that they don't want teachers teaching straight from textbooks anymore. I'm not sure what is stopping them teaching straight from the computer material.

I've really no idea why this is considered a good thing. I like computer and so forth but still I wouldn't want this. I've been given a Physics CD-ROM from school but still use the text book for everything.

And think of the cost! There aren't so many people at this school though so that isn't so bad.

Where is the content coming from?

[KoReE]

I think it's a great idea, but where is the content coming from? Is there any board that's looking over the content to make sure it is sufficient? Not that schools can't do that themselves, but I know many states have strict guidelines for their textbooks, and I'd be curious to see how these online books/articles compare...

Reasons not to.

[Antony-Kyre]

1) Dropping a book versus dropping a laptop. Which will survive?
2) Power surges.
3) Do I have to buy my own electricity over spring and winter vacations?
4) Eye problems.
5) Eye problems.
6) See above.
7) People don't steal textbooks if left someplace. But someone definitely will if it's a laptop.
8) May I remind you of 4-6? (Someone else mentioned this in another post, but eye problems with monitors is such a problem.)
9) Computer malfunctions. Homework completely lost. Do it on paper? The move from paper books to laptops will make that more difficult. Try having a laptop next to you and a paper to the side of it. Writing surfaces.

Not a good thing

[mjkjedi]

I'm sorry, I think this is a lousy idea. Other people have commented about the dangers of giving a schoolful of kids expensive laptops, but there's something else: it SUCKS to read tons of text on a screen.

I (obviously) like computers, and I read tons of technical documentation online, since it's usually extremely interconnected, and hyperlinks help. But if I'm reading something that's pretty much linear (TFA didn't mention the structure of these "online articles", so I may be wrong there), or when I don't need to have a terminal window open at the same time to try out commands and whatnot, I prefer a printed page.

It's easier to move around and get comfortable with any reasonably sized book than with a laptop. (It's not just weight I'm talking about -- consider availability of AC power, glare, etc.)

I'm taking a class over the summer, and it's annoying me that one of the books hasn't been printed up -- instead we just go to the author's web site and download the PDF. I'd have gladly paid printing costs to get a bound meatspace copy.

I just think printed copies should always be an option.

This is a terrible idea

[jim_v2000]

Whoever thought the idea of give laptops to highschoolers must never have worked with any. I remember from my days in highschool. The kids are a destructive force. If it can be broken or stolen, it will be. I mean, seriously, how long until these things start getting stolen and showing up on Ebay? How do they prevent that from happening? Also, how do you stop some hormonely charged punk from getting mad and throwing a laptop on the ground? You know that it won't take but a day for some kid to forget that he's got a laptop in his backpack when he's throwing it in his locker. Books on the other hand don't break, and aren't hot items to sell. (College books are another story)

Plus I can see all kinds of new excuses...like I got a virus! Or my batteries died! Or Windows crashed/Clippy ate my paper! Books don't lose power, don't get virus, don't crash.

In the end, considering the group in questions (Highschoolers) books seem like the better solution. Plus, if a system isn't broken, why fix it? Books have been working for a long time, and can for a long time to come.

Don't you remember book covers?

[theurge14]

Remember the old lady who would scold you if she found any dogeared pages or frayed covers?

Well, I do. :X

Re:Mistake

[zeephyz]

It has actually not been proven that "real, material book[s]" make for more effective learning. I've actually had a very effective college-level course that was strictly online and actually based on a role-playing game. Sounds a bit silly, but it kept me interested.

Let's get books out already. We have the technology to provide students with tablet PCs containing all of the text-information necessary (and then some) for every class they have. AND if those computers could be reused year after year, then you probably have a cheaper solution.

Furthermore, as a soon-to-be science teacher, I don't really feel the use of textbooks to be necessary at all. There is much more accurate and up-to-date information to be found in scientific journals/magazines, and, believe it or not, on the internet. Anyway, learning doesn't occur just by looking at a book, it comes through experience and observation.

Not all books are textbooks!

[Hal XP]

The title of the story says the school "won't use textbooks," not won't use books at all. If eliminating textbooks is all that the move is all about, then I'm all for it. After grade school, I hated textbooks because of the way they were often used by incompetent teachers as a crutch: "Class, turn to Chapter 10, page 335."

My best teachers in college didn't prescribe any textbooks. Instead we got reading lists.

In a field such as literature, a textbook could even pose the danger that your mind would be warped by the author's presentation. More often, only the supposedly "representative" short works of an author would be included in a textbook on world literature. If they are at all included, the longer works, such as the novels or epic poetry, would be mercilessly excerpted.

Thus you don't get to read the real James Joyce or T.S. Eliot, just snapshots that don't adequately reflect their pioneering contributions to modern literature (e.g. stream of consciousness or free verse in English). The effect of a textbook-based curriculum on a literature major is no different from the cultural experience of a tourist who stays in a country for two days. You return home thinking that beer and sausages are what makes Germans tick or that people in Spain and Latin America are lazy because they like to take siestas.

Privacy concerns??

[John Seminal]

Those are all things that can go wrong with laptops, and I suppose it would be funny to hear a kid say he could not do his homework because "my S key did not work", or "the battery died". Just wait til one kid decides to sue because the flicker of the refreshment rate on his laptop monitor drove him insane or blind or caused him to not finish assignments on time.

But these laptops will belong to the school. And what is to stop the schools from monitoring what the students do. Keyloggers are cheap, can they be stuck inside the laptops? What about software monitors. Everytime you log into the school network for class, it downloads what you typed the night before, including the chat you had with your buddy about how you hate Mr. Teeths english lit class and want to stick a wad of dynamite up his ass and light it. Or worse, what if innocent Jenny, the schools love and joy was IM'ing with Johnson, the black no-no. Will teachers start looking at Jenny as a slut, worthless with no value? Can a teacher use this information to single out a student to expolit?

Who will own the content that is typed in the laptop. The school can claim they own the laptops. Unlike a paper notebook, that is mine and it would take a court order to look in it. Plus, it is not like mail, which is even more gaurded. I can see relationships between people breaking down as everyone is worried about saying the wrong thing.

My old highschool was in the newspaper last year. The decided to instal a new honor code policy, where students were expected to act a certain way on and off campus. That means if two kids get into a fight at the McDonalds, the school will get involved. When I was in school, the highschool did not give a rats ass what I did at 9pm, I was off grounds. What about laptops. How will this tie into the honor system?

an ebook sounds like a MUCH better solution.

[Vellmont]

The textbook replacement cries out for something like an ebook. Why? If designed right you'd get:

More rugged. Laptops have harddrives, keyboards, ports, etc. The more moving parts, and complexity the more likely it is to break. An ebook could eliminate all this via flash memory and touch screens. A gig of flash memory would likely be able to hold all the textbooks a kid would need for a year. Make it componentized so you could replace the touchscreen very easily.

Longer battery life. You really need very minimal processing power for an ebook, so you could use very low power processors. Battery lifetimes of 12-24 hours would be easy.

Lower OS complexity/OS access. If you make an ebook like an appliance and give the user only access to the core functions (no installing 3rd party apps for instance) then you solve all the problems of the OS being corrupted. Allow only data to be sent to/from the textbook.

Lower value to thieves. How many people really want an inexpensive ebook vs a laptop? If all you can do is read textbooks from it, it's a much smaller theft target.

What's the downside? Well the kids wouldn't be able to do homework on it. Big deal. They can't do homework on a printed textbook now.

The problem is the textbook publishers don't want to do it. For the most part they make money because textbooks wear out, not because the information in them needs changing/updating. How much has Calculus changed over the last 20 years? My guess is not at all. Science changes a little, maybe you'd need to update the information every 10 years (barring creationist lies). History textbooks probbably need more updating, but that's more due to changes in the political climate.

Re:an ebook sounds like a MUCH better solution.

[Toloran]

Lower value to thieves. How many people really want an inexpensive ebook vs a laptop? If all you can do is read textbooks from it, it's a much smaller theft target. In addition, if they make the design of it obviously different then similar products in stores, then when someone trys to sell it at a pawn shop then they'll immediately recognise that it was stolen. All that would be needed would be to emblazon the schools logo onto it in a way that isn't easily removeable. Another way would be to use some sort of security method so that would allow the school to upload/download data to/from it but not students/thieves/etc. Preferably it wouldn't be a password, passwords are much easier to steal/remove/guess/etc then, say, a special cord that can only be bought from the company that makes it (I personally don't like this idea but it is still an example).

Change the way we teach

[jfengel]

(I'm about to leave the office for my "second job" as a Shakespearean actor, so you kinda pushed the button. Sorry.)

Shakespeare (and literature in general) needs to be taught more like physics (wait, hear me out) and less like history and biology are usually taught. The goal isn't whether you can read the text and translate it well enough to figure out who killed Mercutio. The goal is to develop an appreciation for the process of reading, and for the pleasures of literature.

Just throwing somebody the e-text isn't sufficient, but just throwing a copy of the Penguin edition and telling them to have it read by next Wednesday isn't substantially better. For Shakespeare, read it out loud. Don't just have them read it to each other, at least not at first, because they don't know what's going on.

That's actually something that could be done better with the laptop. It's a multimedia device. Let them hear actors reading, or watch actors performing. Good actors can make the page come alive far better than a high school freshman can. That's their job.

Using the laptop as a substitute for paper is worthless. But there are some great ways to start with the laptop and use it to change the way we teach. That's my rant for literature, but expand the thinking to watching demonstrations of physics, or using a fly-through 3D model of a plant in biology.

I would love to be able to have a high school senior pick up a copy of Hamlet and be able to truly understand it, but only once you've given him or her the basics. I certainly don't expect a freshman to be able to do more with Romeo and Juliet than look up the hard words in the footnotes and try to parse the syntax. Which means that they're reading all the words and missing everything that's really there, and they'll never do any better with Hamlet three years later.

If all they can do is tell you that Laertes' father is Polonius, you've wasted their time and yours. But if they've seen Laertes overwhelming rage and blame for Hamlet, and they have some idea why it sounds so awesome when he says, "I would cut his throat in the church," you've really accomplished something.

Re:Change the way we teach

[jfengel]

I don't know of any good recordings. A lot of them are really old, and use acting styles that are out of date. If it's American actors faking a British accent, just skip it.

I didn't want to get too far into it, but movies are actually a better choice. Yes, it's poetry, and yes, it's meant to be heard, but Shakespeare has a visual component, too.

Again, the styles age badly, but there are recent films that I would recommend to a teenage audience: Branagh's Henry V and Much Ado; Mel Gibson as Hamlet; the new Merchant of Venice with Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons. Very modern, natural acting styles totally at odds with the stand-and-deliver poses you're probably used to seeing from Shakespeare.

Didn't you know?

[roman_mir]

Academia teaches the evil of singularity to human cubics - born of opposites. - Teachers are evil and this Time Cube guy bets USD10,000 he knows the truth.

Re:Any monopoly is...

[cashman73]

These teachers in universities, who make over $100,000 per year are not happy enough with their salaries.

Uh,... yeah, right! The "teachers" in universities, i.e. translated to the ones that actually do the bulk of the teaching at major, four-year public (and private) institutions, don't make anywhere near $100,000. Sure, the Dean, and Assistant Deans and other higher-ups make that much money. Plus, Professors can approach and even exceed the $100K mark as well,... but they don't do this by teaching! The ones that make real money make their money from research grants and other revenue sources. These are also the profs that might teach like 1 course per year because the don't want to waste time from their research load.

Of course, there's always the little, ahem, kickback from the publisher for requiring a particular textbook of their students, but the publishing companies aren't ***that*** nice,... There's also a few profs that write their own textbook, and if the book becomes widely accepted and used at other schools, then they can make some money. But this isn't the majority of profs,...

The Right to Read

[the0ther]

Hopefully their textbooks aren't DRM'd, or this is the beginning of what Stallman laid out in his Right to Read essay. Or was that Eric Raymond? Some slashdotter'll know.

Spines

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why?

There isn't really any advantage in learning from a computer. "

Have you seen sixth graders on the way to school lately? They're crushed under the weight of their textbooks, wearing backpacks almost as large as themselves.

Somewhere along the way we got confused about what textbooks are for. Teachers now use them both for the homework assignment and for in class teaching. That means carting every book you might need home with you.

When I was in sixth grade, they told us "You should be doing half an hour a night of homework for every class that you're in." That kind of schedule meant that I had to carry five textbooks and five binders to and from school. My backpack weighed literally 40 pounds. At the time, I was proud of that. The permanent damage to my spine has since changed my mind.

As far as I know, the problem is only getting worse.

Sure, maybe you feel more comfortable reading from a book, but that's mostly because of the mind-bogglingly stupid use of WYSIWYG in *every* application. Switch your monitor to white on black, you'll have a whole new outlook on life. With macs you can do this with one key combo, I don't know how easy it is on a PC.

Obviously, staring into a lightbulb, which is reading a PDF is normally like, is uncomfortable. Putting a 90 pound child under 40 pounds of books and other supplies is much worse. Bad enough just carrying it, but I've seen what happens when a child trips under that weight. It's a real mess.

Personally, I'd be happiest if the textbooks stayed at home and no teaching was done from them at all at school, but that alternative just doesn't seem to work. If the teachers are going to something as a crutch, at least let it be something that doesn't leave the child on crutches.

why are you comparing book prices to laptop prices

[geekee]

"It is a HELLUVA lot easier to get a kid to fork up $65 for a book than the $850 for laptops. What happens when someone steals the laptop? Not too many people look to jack you for a textbook."

Just buying the laptop doesn't mean the textbooks will be free. You still need to pay for electronic copies of the textbooks as well.

Re:Another problem

[servognome]

then it might be arguably a violation of 4th and 14th ammendment protections (IANAL)

If the laptops are issued by the school there is no expectation of privacy. The schools would also probably have the parents sign a waiver.

Re:I remember reading..

[symbolic]

As of late, I thought it had been fairly well established that technology does nothing to help students learn more, or learn better. When I see stories like this, it makes me wonder which crony's friend/relative is getting the contract.

People Misunderstand the Intent

[reynolds_john]

I harken back to The Road Ahead by Bill Gates cica 1995. His vision is that all data should be electronic, with the sole purpose of controlling its dissemination and use, plus requiring recurring revenue.
Don't believe me? Read on...

The purpose of laptops in school is to get data on them electronically, with the secondary benefit of books which auto-expire at the end of the school year(s). This is already being done quite efficiently in some law schools. You purchase a laptop, which contains all the required law books on it electronically. You pay for them as part of the price. But guess what, if you want those books after you graduate, you have a new subscription fee to pay - otherwise your books are rendered unusable. They expire in 4 years after purchase.

In this fashion publishers are ensuring a new guaranteed form of revenue. To a large extent this is already in place with colleges demanding new versions of text books every year, some with ridiculously minor changes. Plus, now it's electronic, with little to no cost being eaten up with shipping, etc. Don't for a minute believe that the books will become cheaper as a result...

Students hate electronic books.

[bcrowell]

I've written some reasonably successful self-published physics textbooks. They're free in digital form (see my /. user page), and I also sell them in print.

My experience is that students hate electronic books. Of my own community college students, about 75% buy them in the bookstore for convenience, while the other 25% download them and print them out (saves a small amount of money, but it's a hassle, and the finished product isn't very nice). The percentage of students who don't use a hardcopy is zero. True, some might do it if they were forced to carry a laptop around, but that just begs the question of why anyone would want to force students to carry laptops around -- dopey idea, IMO.

The same seems to be true at other schools that use my books. I just recently had a student at another school order some books directly from me, and she mentioned that she was very upset at her school's bookstore for not stocking enough. She had been working from the downloads, but that's not what she wanted.

Coincidentally, there's a neighborhood grade school near me (not the one my kids go to) that provides laptops to some of their students, and soon is going to make it universal. My perception is that it's purely a PR thing to impress gullible parents with how high-tech the school is. (It's in a new development where a house with no yard goes for $600,000 --- I'm glad we bought a house in this town before the real estate craziness happened!)

Re:Another problem

[einhverfr]

Weeks later, everyone with the Doom binary in their folder was given some sort of punishment (probably detention - I didn't get one :).

Naturally, they spend the detenion time playing Doom....

Just kidding....

Personally, in a case like this I would probably refuse to sign the waiver and offer to supply my own laptop to my child (and furthermore state that any intrusion re: the laptop would be considered unauthorized access and prosecuted to the full extent of the law). Then maybe we could negotiate something and work something out. I doubt a school would want a student carrying a laptop that they have absolutely no control over, so I am sure that we could come up with something that would be more benign.

Re:Another problem

[einhverfr]

I may not be a lawyer, but I have noticed that the US Supreme Court has upheld freedom of speech, and other rights for minors.

The fundamental problem as I see it is that one can't try to teach a civics class where one teaches what the fourth ammendment is supposed to protect against when the entire school is set up (as a government entity, I might add) to infringe upon it.

One might argue that this is acceptable where the laptop computers are not really necessary for the student's studies, but where they are central, one is essentially stating that basic constitutional rights must be waived in order to participate in school which sets a dangerous precident. One might even argue that a private school might be given more leeway (provided that it was not supported using tax dollars) in this regard. But any government entity which sets things up so that people must waive these rights in order to participate in basic partions of a government social infrastructure is problematic to say the best.

When was the last time a school could keep a student from voicing a political opinion? Last I checked they were within their rights to say that certain things (such as beer advertisements on clothing) were not permissible, but last I checked expression of political views by a minor in a public school was still protected (i.e. a grade school student can't be disciplined because he/she wrote a paper on why it was wrong to invade Iraq, or why Bush should fire Rove).

This is not the same situation you would have in a computer lab (where monitoring would certainly not infringe on tool central to a student's studies, where there would reasonably be argued to be a compelling interest that could not be satisfied other ways, etc). But what do you do in a case where you are now monitoring everything a student does in school? Certainly that goes over the line. Is the answer to allow students to have bring laptops from home if they don't like the policy (and have laptops over which the district has *no* control, and which should they choose to look at the files without permission would cause the district to potentially be prosecuted for a felony case of computer tresspassing-- note that the laptop belongs to the parents in this case)? Or is the mere threat of that enough to force a compromise?

I certainly would be willing to try. And if they did try to read the files on my computer (as the parent) I would most certainly file charges. Especially after the previous mess with children charged with felonies for breaking into their school laptops to actually make them functional.

Re:why are you comparing book prices to laptop pri

[serutan]

Maybe I misunderstood but the article says the school is going to "hand" each student an $850 laptop for the whole year. Sounds to me like the students don't have to pay for them. They are just being issued like public schools issue textbooks.

Here's tThe part that gets me:
the move to electronic materials gets teachers away from the habit of simply marching through a textbook each year.

Like hell. Uninspired teachers who simply trudge through a curriculum, or essentially read the textbook to the students, will do the same thing whether the material is on paper or on a series of websites. Probably sounds good in a school board meeting though.

Right tool the right purpose

[Tungbo]

When the students have reach a level where they can synthesize ideas from different sources and reach their own conclusion, then you are absolutely right. But do you really think HS physics students should read Newton's writing? Should 1st course calculus focus on reading Leibniz?

As for using the Internet, your teacher can still print texts from the Internet and give them as handouts to students. Laptops wouldn't be needed.

If you just throw the students onto the internet, you'll get papers detailing the "Impact of the Cthulu cult on ancient gaelic culture"!

"Think hard about why software engineers don't have a union."