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Laptops Required for Freshmen
An anonymous reader writes "Indiana State University will become the first public university in the state to require all students to have notebook computers, beginning with incoming freshmen in fall 2007. Guess which laptop is the preferred one..." I started bringing laptops to class around my Junior year. I'm unconvinced that they helped me with my grades.
Great. Now more people can watch anime during class.
Progress!
Maybe if you used the laptop instead of just bringing it to class :-p
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If I can google during a test :)
This must be stopped now. If this continues, then they may start telling students where to live, or what books to buy.
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So they can share music, movies, pr0n, all wirelessly?
Or so they can sit in class and play online games while the prof is droning on and on?
Why is this necessary?
= Grow a brain...
What if I want a Mac? Do they require you have a ThinkPad? Do they pay for it? Seems retarded. I've always seen ThinkPads as...junk.
I'm not quite sure why this article is a big deal? As far as I know a number of schools have been requiring laptops for years. I know UNC-Chapel Hill has for maybe 5 years now (while its neighbor Duke gives incoming freshman ipods)
~shrug~
You're required to have a thunkpad.
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And in breaking news, laptop computer theft suddenly surpasses bicycle theft at the university. Details at eleven.
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I won't deny that Thinkpads are nice PC laptops, but it sounds like they're really pushing them on the students. They shouldn't give just one recommendation. They should be offering a set of basic system requirements that student laptops should meet or exceed in order to get them through four or five years of college, and give Mac, Linux and Windows recommendations, along with other software they should have. Something like this can only be attributed to the fact that IU must have gotten a sweetheart deal from Lenovo to push their stuff on the students.
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Thinkpads may be more expensive than your run of the mill Best Buy laptop but you're paying for quality. The school has probably tested several manufacturers and found that thinkpads will cause the least support headache. Sadly, trends in laptops seem to favor cheap over durable.
There is nothing wrong with suggesting a laptop with a good support track record, lots of academic/scientific software available, and and wide user base. As long as they don't punish people for reconfiguring their machines (which I highly doubt they will.)
-dave
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It'll be another "let's use all proprietary windows intel only tools" scam.
I only got my laptop in the second half of my program and frankly aside from giving me something to do during class (e.g. read slashdot) it didn't help. I did most of my lab work at home and very little on the laptop at school.
Now if this uni went the way of OSS and used proper open source networking resources then I may be in favour of it...
But knowing most unis they're just a money pit so who do you think they'll align with.
Tom
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Although the article reads like one big advertisment, I've always liked the thinkpads. I bought mine while the line was still under IBM. Does anyone have experience with Levano??
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I did not have a laptop for the first 3 years of college and did very well. Once I did get one, I because very distracted! Free wireless in class was just too tempting to get on IRC,AIM, or whatever and chat it up with friends. I probably would have got more out of those classes had I not had a laptop. :)
Once Windows emulation is working well, though, I think a MacBook (Pro or not) would be a better choice. Fewer security issues, better GUI and applications, and it runs more software. Apple is sure looking good these days... :-)
MacBooks might even be less expensive!
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I know someone is going to bring up the topic of laptops being easy to steal and stuff, but at my school, all students are required to register their MAC address before they are able to connect to the network. Your MAC address is then assigned to a hostname based on your user ID (example: studentid.uncg.edu), so it is relatively easy to track down stolen laptops.
iPods and cameras, on the other hand, are a different story.
Through Access Connections, students and faculty will be able to seamlessly move from classes to dorm rooms
Through the ancient and hallowed technology known as 'feet', students and faculty will be able to seamlessly move from classes to dorm rooms
Fixed.
I currently attend University and in every single lecture I attend there are at least 30 people with laptops. Those 30 people spend most of their lecture on MSN, checking their email, or playing games instead of actually paying attention. Although not every single one of them does this, you can definetly see a pattern that those with laptops/wifi access are more likely to goof off during lectures. What's really that wrong with paper and pen anyway? If it ain't broke don't fix it
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Ok, I guess I'm finally getting into the "old-fogie" age of 37, and it's pointless to get into the whole "I graduated from college with a Computer Science degree, and I never even owned a PC!" argument, but I at least have to wonder what's the big deal with having a laptop?
Surely I, even in my old age, can understand the need for a computer of some kind at home or in the dorm to do whatever needs to be done during the course of a semester, but for what reason would I want or need to lug a laptop around campus all day? And if I don't have to be portable, then why would I need a laptop? Why is a desktop unacceptable?
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I think Laptops could really help students be productive- they could check email, work on projects and post on Slashdot during what would otherwise be wasted class time.
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This is ridiculous! Do they really expect people to not play quake or read /. during class. Also, expect lessons to be punctutated with that annoying 'DING!' alert box noise every few minutes. I just don't understand; they ban cellphones because they're disruptive, but now -require- laptops... wtf?
Has anyone else had similar experiences?
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Will the university be paying for these laptops if students aren't able to afford them?
Also, the decision that all students require laptops is baffling. I'm a maths with physics undergraduate and I manage perfectly well with a desktop, and to be honest, I don't think it would affect my work much if I had to do without it.
...they want to standardise the hardware/software configuration so they can support it?
Will they be required to bring it with them to class? Will it have to have WiFi and a P4/G5 processor. Will it have to run windows? What happens when it gets stolen? Do you get kicked out until you buy a new one?
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Anyone else think the whole article read as little more than a free advertisment for Lenovo & Thinkpads?
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its not so much that the laptops help with learning.. they just tend to make class more fun.
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In general this seems like a bad idea. Laptops in class are usually distracting to both students who are and aren't using them. I hate hearing clicking all around me while in class and I usually see people on AIM or reading slashdot instead of listening to the lecture.
But yesterday I saw something that made me feel a little better about laptops in classes. I was in a class on distributed programming and sitting next to a guy with a laptop. The professor mentioned something about how a protocol with 64 bit something was good for 2^32 uses before it reused numbers with some peer. The guy next to me raised his hand and asked why 2^32, and the professor mentioned the birthday paradox. As class proceeded, the guy looked up the birthday paradox on google. Of course, this made him miss the next part of the lecture...
Gotta agree. There's still WAY too much voodoo involved with switching from networks and even just changing any network settings on a PC. These things weren't bad under OS 9 (When Windows still needed a restart for basic stuff like this), but I can't see it getting much better than how OS X and my Macs do it. I've never had to find a fucking driver or figure out which card I was trying to use.
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Requiring a laptop will not help a student get better grades. Far too often people don't realize that a computer is just a tool which enables you to do something else more efficient. It is not the end all solution to every problem. Unless the computer is needed in the class or you suck at hand-writing notes there is no need for it (and no, IM the cute girl one row over doesn't count as a need). I've had quite a few college classes and I am willing to say less than 5% need a laptop as a course requirement. This seems more like the school is saying we are on the cutting edge because every student uses a laptop. Big whip, show me where this is definately improving grades, quality of work or anything else.
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It might be useful if all of your class books were available in a searchable format. And it would be good if you could get access to the notes given in class, as some teachers write too fast, and immediately erase after writing.
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An anonymous reader writes "Indiana State University will become the first public university in the state to require all students to have notebook computers, beginning with incoming freshmen in fall 2007. Guess which laptop is the preferred one..." I started bringing laptops to class around my Junior year. I'm unconvinced that they helped me with my grades.
Bring/take, PowerBook/Chinese rebranded ThinkPad, notebook/laptop
Its all the same.
BTW, don't a number of universities require notebooks already? I know my local state funded one does.
no need to worry about viruses, adware, spyware, malware...
as user-friendly as Windows, as secure as BSD Unix.
I had my own computer at college. It totally helped me with my education. I learned all about Gordon Freeman, Tony Hawk, and p2p file-sharing...
Paul Grosfield - the quicker picker upper.
Your powerbook doesn't require any software (help) to use a wireless network? What magical box is this?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Thinkpads have been my favourite laptops for the past 5 years. They are rock solid, easy to maintain and have all the fun tools you need to stay connected. Plus the titanium inner chasis makes them solid without any of the creaking or flex I find on ALL other laptops, including my ibooks. 5 hour battery time and the best keyboard around makes them perfect. Nice try fanboy, but you ain't teh shit.
My son goes to Centennary College in NJ, and they hand out laptops to all incoming students before the first day of class. He happened to get a Thinkpad, but his friend got an HP. The whole place is wired/unwired. Don't know if it helps their learning, but it does seem to make it easier to swap email and do reports in a consistent (M$) manner.
... I'm trying to listen to the lecturer.
That's very nice that your Stinkpads need help to do that. My Powerbook does automatically it without any help.
Jesus, talk about smug. That's great if you, as a college freshman, could afford an overpriced Apple. Maybe you should have some pity on us poor, working class people. Hell, I've been out of school for 10 years, and I still can't afford an Apple.
I don't respond to AC's.
"The notebook initiative gives us an opportunity to use technology to support learner-centered, knowledge-centered, assessment-centered and community-centered learning environments. It is a window of opportunity for true innovation. Lenovo ThinkPad will be an excellent partner in our strategies to expand the learning environment of ISU," Powers said.
Is it just me, or does this quote sound like it was generated by this?
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
Laptops don't help in lectures. I've not seen one professor who has ever asked me to bring one to a lecture, and hearing the tap-tap-tap of someone not even looking up from their screen must be distracting. People with laptops, even with best intentions, have their attention split two ways, and it doesn't work. If you want to absorb what you're being told in lectures, pen and paper, or better, pre-printed lecture notes and annotating them helps you stay focused on the lecturer.
What the uni really wants is for students without computers to not have an excuse to dodge certain things. Most universities force you to check your email and so forth, and I know a lot of departments (even classical ones such as History) that will only accept typed essays. Campus IT provisions usually vary quite widely, in both their scale and availability. Students without computers are definitely disadvantaged, if my campus computer suite shuts at 9PM, I'm going to be SOL.
The laptop is just because it's easier to fit into dorms, and lug from home to uni and back again. I know my uni has been recommending laptops over desktops for years, soley for the ease of transport aspect.
Interesting. My powerbook won't remember my home network connection details after I connect it to a diffent secure network. My dell has no problems at all...
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Requiring laptops could be seen as a necessary step to create a consistent learning environment. When you have a school such that many or most of the students have and would rather be doing work on their own computers it can be difficult to create a class structure that is balanced. On one hand, if you just require students to do the work using software only available on campus computers then those many students with their own hardware have to come to their work on campus ANYWAYS or else have to purchase the software. On the other, if students are permitted to use laptops in class and the professor has done things to support this such as making class notes available online then those without laptops are at a distinct disadvantage.
But the software can often be much too expensive. Some universities solve this by participating in the MSDN Academic Alliance, but of course that only helps with Microsoft software, and does not include Office.
Another way to go is to require everybody get all the software so that the school can a volume discount and the cost can be spread across the student body. But to require students to get the software you need to require that they have a computer it can run on. If you're going to require computers anyways it is tempting to require laptops because of their versatility. And yes, universities requiring a particular brand smacks of inside interests, but it has the legitimate benefit of giving professors and TAs a relatively consistent base to work with and makes it more likely they'll be able to trouble-shoot problems.
All that said - I did not particularly like what requiring laptops did to my undergraduate university. It stripped away a lot of the feeling of community students got from working in campus labs, and basically pushed the campus from a Unix campus to a Windows campus. In the time I was there I watched the Computer Science program go from training computer scientists to training Microsoft Drones. It also is not clear to me that having a laptop did anything particularly useful in contributing to my education that a desktop wouldn't have.
The notebook initiative gives us an opportunity to use technology to support learner-centered, knowledge-centered, assessment-centered and community-centered learning environments. It is a window of opportunity for true innovation.
---The above statement really doesn't tell us anything IMHO.
The problem is that there is a potential to suddenly lose all of your work on a laptop, whereas if you had written it all down, you would still have instant access to it on paper.
I never had a laptop in college and just wrote everything down. Not only did it help me learn to listen to the instructor, but it also helped me to take better notes overall.
Laptops provide too many other features (IM, internet, email, games, etc.) that could potentially be very distracting to the average student.
That being said, the Lenovo was a good choice for the model.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Then reading the article might be good advice, given that it's Lenovo they've chosen, not Dell.
Yes, but they look like plastic dipped concrete slabs. Hell, even Dull have dropped their chunky black plastic-fantastic range and offer something a little more visually appealing than a spray painted brick.
IBM execs have recently moved to lighting their Stogey's with thousand dollar bills instead of the common hundred ordinarily used.
Err, yes PowerBooks switch networks automatically just like the Thinkpad does. You still have to enter the network keys and any other required information to set things up. After that the prefered network gets used. I've configured wireless networking on both of the systems in question. There really isn't anything magical or special about either. Thus I have to label your statement as pointless Mac Fanboy Babble.
Northern Michigan University has been requiring laptops since 2000 and there are other universities that have required them before that.
I'll admit that the laptops at NMU are leased and students must lease a laptop as opposed to having their own, but the way in which the OP is written, it is misleading.
and I haven't even read the article! I guess I was to quick to judge DELL's involvement in this conspiracy to corrupt our youth.
I started bringing laptops to class around my Junior year. I'm unconvinced that they helped me with my grades.
Laptops aren't supposed to "help you with your grades". Taking a hard math class isn't going to "help you with your grades" either. The purpose of university is that you learn things. Not even useful or practical things in general, but the kinds of things that you need in order to be a scholar. Computer use is in that category. And, incidentally, it happens to be even useful and practical.
"That's very nice that your Stinkpads need help to do that. My Powerbook does automatically it without any help."
:D
Wander by my dorm room sometime. Park outside and use my connection for a few minutes and I can really show you why that's a bad idea
A computer should never ever ever ever ever ever connect to a network without the users authorization. In a wired network that authorization is often just plugging the cable in. In a wireless network there has to be some level of user authorization at the OS or you will eventually have your computer broken into, data sniffed out, and any other countless possibilities.
Recommendations and requirements are there to make the university IT department's life easier. They can at least have disk images handy for Windows maintenance tasks--you know, format and reinstalls!--and not worry too much about breaking things.
Frankly, I'm disappointed. Wake me up when a university begins to require that all students at least dual-boot into a standard university Linux or BSD distribution, and that they be using the "preferred" OS when connected to the university network. That'll take a bite out of the malware drones, for sure.
Some of that is ok, and some of it I'd say is actually negative, but none of it strikes me as justification for demanding that all students have laptops. What is their real motivation for requiring laptops?
I think it's a lot of herd behavior. Everybody's going digital, so it must be good.
Or perhaps I'm a luddite and just don't know it.
sigs, as if you care.
Because you think Thinkpads are cheap? What world do you live in?
Maybe the reason for ThinkPads (am I the only one who dislikes CamelCase?) is that they typically don't have the mid- to high-end graphics cards needed to play modern games?
If it'll run Mathematica it'll run Solitaire, a SNES emulator, etc., just fine -- but if all of a sudden you have a bunch of students with Radeon X700's in class, expect to see ssid's named "AdHocForUT2004DuringPHYS101" in lecture halls.
Back in the day of 486's my school wanted me to pay $80 for an "Approved" NIC to connect to the school's network.
I couldn't afford it, I went dumpster diving, found an external Hayes 28.8
after 30 minutes of using a little war dialing program
I found a connection to the network
I learned more about computers and networking that year just out of pure curiosity and a desire to NOT
pay the $80....
now they've jacked up the price to an entire laptop...
why do universities put up more barriers to entry for those whom don't have mommy and daddy's checkbook?
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has required laptops since 1999, and schools who are looking to follow suit should follow the lessons learned from RPI and other schools who already have long-standing laptop requirements. Some things to keep in mind:
1) Even if lab classes are notebook-only, the school will need a few desktop systems in the lab for students who are having problems with their laptops.
2) Software licensing was a huge issue at RPI, with much of the engineering department, for instance, was paying for programs they didn't use because they were for other majors. Make sure that licensing is done at the lowest level possible. Also, having the students using open source programs like Openoffice for document types as a convention could eventually ween the school off expensive licensing programs.
3) Replacement programs... I was forced to get my second lappy off Ebay b/c we didn't have a very good replacement program. It should be expected that each student will be going through at last 1 laptop upgrade while they are at school.
4) Hardware packages... We all had the same 1-size-fits-all choice, so when I got my first lappy, I had to upgrade my ram and hard drive within a year. I recommend offering two packages, one the basic for most students, and a better hardware package for the students who want/need more.
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I can see an arguement from a practical standpoint for requiring notebooks, but this is not the angle taken most places. Given that most courses and communications are at least partly online, without ready access to a computer you're placed at a disadvantage, nevermind the ability to network with peers.
From an educational angle - at least in engineering - I'm not sure about the value. Engineering basics haven't changed in 100 years, and the advanced topics usually require specialty lab hardware, software, or some combination thereof.
One thing I wished was available was all my textbooks in PDF format, not some DRM crippleware crap. Lugging around a lot of books is NOT fun. My solution to this was to scan relevant chapters and take them with me in an image format for the road. This isn't going to happen until the basic textbooks are open.. I'm not sure why you need a new edition of a intro calc text every few years. Other, than of course the obvious.
The other, more nefarious side of me wonders if these notebooks are actually new, or are off-lease returns from corporations.
..don't panic
"I've never had to find a fucking driver or figure out which card I was trying to use." Under a few different windows OS: neither have I. I don't know what voodoo you are referencing. Could you please give examples? Thank You.
That's very nice that your Stinkpads need help to do that.
Your rhetorical expertise stuns me. Your ability to argue a rational case without resorting to childish insults is truly exemplary.
My Powerbook does automatically it without any help.
Whoa, you mean it magically works out which of the several wireless networks in range is the one you want to connect to, and telepathically plucks any passwords or keys you need from the administrator's brain?! I knew Apple hardware had supernatural capabilities, but this is incredible!
By the way, if your laptop is automatically connecting to any network it finds without asking, you could accidentally be committing computer trespass and theft of service. You need to make sure you aren't using people's internet connections without permission. I suggest you check up on that.
I don't know about you but I'll take functionality over aesthetics any day. Anyway, I quite *like* the simple black brick look, but I think that's just me :)
Silly rabbit
Check the box marked "Remember this password etc. in the keychain" when you log on.
Mac OS X asks your permission before it joins an unsecure network.
Something's messed up with your system. That's not how it works; the auto-switching features of OS X are quite "smart" in my experience (assuming you have it set up to join any available network when no preferred ones are connected). I think the default is to prompt the user when connecting to a non-whitelisted, unencrypted network, however.
That said, my corporate laptop doesn't do a horrible job of WLAN management either, although I use a 3rd party program rather than the built-in Windows tools to manage different connection profiles (it also turns the VPN on if I'm not on the corporate subnet).
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Does automatically it correct your grammar too?
That's exactly what I was thinking. Even a used ThinkPad is way out of my price range.
I know of at least two universities in Montreal (Polytechnique and HEC) that have required all their students to own a laptop for at least 5 years now.
Because you think Thinkpads are cheap? What world do you live in?
Cheapest Thinkpad: $750
Cheapest Powerbook: $1750
That's $1000. Go away.
I don't respond to AC's.
OS X detects all networks and prompts the user to "trust" open networks.
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Northern Michigan University has been doing something like this since 2000: http://www.nmu.edu/academics/tlc.htm
In fact, they even reference adapting the idea from similar programs in Wake Forest University and University of Minnesota-Crookston.
Will they (the university) be supplying a compliment of software to make the laptop useable in class? If not, then I would find another university to attend. Just another way for them to make students buy something for school. The books are expensive enough without making them buy software every semister because its the new version. I bet it looked good on paper though. Not to mention the fact that if the university tries to do everything on the laptop, what if someone's laptop goes down, is in the shop, breaks completely, then what??
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
My question: How can they really say this? I get the idea lots of places are still recommending Thinkpads because traditonally, they have done so and been pleased with their quality and ruggedness. But all of that was before IBM sold out to Lenovo. Now, they're being mass produced in China for the first time, and all I've seen from *any* laptop assembled in China is a worse than average level of quality control.
In fact, Apple's new MacBook Pro marks the first time one of their machines has been assembled in China, and reports are already trickling in with issues like integrated iSight cameras that aren't functioning, a "known issue" according to Apple where some units report no battery is connected even when it is installed and charged, and in my own case, a MacBook Pro that just arrived on my doorstep, direct from Shanghai, completely dead on arrival. Still others report problems with audio distortion out of the right speaker, overall poor volume levels compared to previous generation Powerbooks, and a high-pitched whine from the LCD panels.
Opting for Chinese assembly seems to me like a good recipe for a drop in overall quality, no matter how respected your initial design may be.
I'm unconvinced that they helped me with my grades.
I've found just the opposite. I started bringing a laptop to class during the second half of my university career. I'm just finishing up now, and the difference it has made has been quite remarkable. Lecture slides have always been made available via PDFs on the class websites, but if you wanted to make notes you had to print the slides off and write on them. I've found I react much better to an electronic environment where you can take notes directly on the PDF with annotations. The only case where this doesn't work is math courses that use non-ascii symbols.
I found that when I had to take notes on printed paper, the paper would get lost, chewed, and become completely disorganized in a matter of weeks. Come finals, I'd be left with a gigantic stack of paper that meant absolutely nothing to me. Once I started annotating PDFs, my electronic housekeeping instinct kicked in. I automatically organized everything by course, and then by different areas of each course (ie, projects, notes, assignments, midterms, finals, etc...). I found the electronic method of organization to be MUCH easier to deal with than the paper method.
Plus my laptop reminds me of calendar appointments, provides me quick and easy access to the course newsgroups, websites, my email, and google at any time in any place on campus. It has made organization MUCH easier and allowed me to focus on my studies. My grades reflect it too. After buying a notebook, my average increased 10%. I attribute this to the fact that I was actually able to study from notes I made during class, instead of looking hopelessly at the pile of paper and turning directly to the textbooks.
And the best part is that instead of carrying around ~1000 pages of handwritten mess, all this fits into something the size of a small textbook.
I suppose it's a matter of preference. I found that it did wonders for me.
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/A ppleStore.woa/wo/StoreReentry.wo?family=iBook
Cheapest Apple portable. $999 ($899 for education purchasers, which a student would obviously qualify for).
You don't have to get a Powerbook (or a MacBook Pro, now) to get the wireless ease of OS X... hell, a clamshell iBook from a couple years ago could do that (albeit painfully slowly by today's standards).
Who said they support the systems? The article simply says that students are required to have one, not that they will support them. If the institution doesn't own the laptop, they can't install images becaues they don't own the licenses to windows/office/etc.
Now, if they wree forcing a standard linux install, that would be a different story, but since the article isn't titled "Linux required for Freshmen", that's not very likely.
LOL. That's a nice troll, but anybody who wants can look at the Thinkpad website and the iBook website and see that the prices are about the same. Sure, the SHITTIEST Stinkpad costs "$750" but it weighs a pound more and has half the RAM! And, the VERY FIRST upgrade to it puts you over $1200. Nice!
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
First, I think some of this is missing the point. Laptops are not just to take notes, infact I think taking copious notes defeats the purpose of class. Besides, how would laptops help taking notes in chemistry, where you need to draw stuctures quickly.
Laptops really help both students and teachers when it comes to exams. My wife recently went back to school and had the option of taking essay tests (law school) on paper or on a laptop. After taking a 3 hour exam by hand, her hands were so cramped because she was not used to writing that much, since nowdays we do all our writing on computer.
Second, when I went to school, many people (depending on the class) did crossword puzzels in the campus newspaper durring class. Sure the laptop will make worse, but if you are there to learn and know you need to study to pass the test, they you will quickly learn to put the laptop away or not play durring the hour of class.
Back in my day, when I wanted journals, I'd use the mainframe terminal session to request books via the Inter-Library Service (usually stuff translated from Russian, who were the leaders in rhizobiology research). The bound journals would arrive on a truck within about a week or two, the Libraries would email me, and I would go check it out, photocopy the article I needed, then return it. "Wow, how convenient," I thought.
Today, my wife is in her PhD. program, and when she needs a journal article, she requests it via a web page. If there's an electronic version available, she downloads the PDF. If there isn't, someone at a library (part of the ILS consortium) scans the article and makes it available for her to download! "Holy crap!," I thought. Talk about service! It's that sort of application acts as a stellar "electronic knowledge gateway" that validates having a network-capable laptop computer. Never mind the availability of courseware management systems and online learning tools many campuses employ today.
Besides, our student surveys have shown that most students already own computers when they arrive, and a good portion of those have laptops.
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Hm? As far as 'PC's go, under windows OR linux, I've never not understood the really quite basic steps to changing network params.
On the flip side, the Macs on my network frequently stop talking to anyone but each other. So elitist!
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no hidden comments and I only mod UP
Compared to the cost of a 4yr undergrad education, that's a pretty menial difference :-) Add it onto your loan!
This is an attempt for the university to reduce its own costs. Losts of big universities have lots of big public computer labs for their students. When I was in college in the late 90's, they were a necessity because most college students still did not have their own computers. Now almost every student has their own pc/mac of some sort so the public labs sit largely empty. Univ of Indiana is realizing this and sees no reason to keep them open. Now I am suprised that they are requiring Notebooks, I agree, they can be distracting in class, same as cell phones or anything else. They should just require a computer of some sort. Let the student decide if a notebook would be a benefit or detriment to them in class.
I started bringing laptops to class around my Junior year. I'm unconvinced that they helped me with my grades.
But how did they help your WoW framerate?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
OK, Firsta disclaimer: When I went to a University, the only "laptop" that existed was a tray table you used when you were sick, and a "calculator" was also called a "slide rule". Anyway...
:)
In my opinion, there would only be one way a laptop would be useful, and that's if every one of your text books could be loaded on it electronically, thereby avoiding the need to lug books around all day to class. Of course, in the real world, this would create a problem, because publishers would put DRM on their ebooks, and make sure you couldn't buy and sell second hand texts. You have that problem to some extent now, of course. I remember a teacher who made sure to check each student's text book on the first day of class, to make sure it was the latest one. It turned out he was getting a cut from the publisher of everything sold by the campus book store in an under-the-table deal. A second teacher did the same thing, but he co-authored the book. I think he taught the Business Ethics class
Anyway, I question the need for forcing students to spend even more of their hard-earned money on a specific hardware/OS combination on something that really serves no purpose. Of course, I'd say the same thing about a college education in general, but I digress. If they want to use a computer for their term papers, fine. If they want to live in the previous century and use a typewriter (they still make them, right?), then more power to them.
I can see only very limited benefits to doing this, none of them for the student.
And for crying' out loud, don't enable wifi or cell phone reception in the classroom, either! Students don't need it, and the teachers don't (or shouldn't) want it. Teachers have enough to worry about as is.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
The state being Indiana...
You oversell the simplicity of the technology. In order to accomplish this using feet, we've got to get dressed, potentially against all sorts of different weather conditions. The shoes alone run, like $40 for a generic pair and $65 for something decent, just to get started! Then you have all the virus protection expenses incurred indirectly by the University -- people to clean the floors and prevent the spread of athlete's foot, and so on.
The cost of moving through the university using a series of interleaving virtual reality films is less costly, involving only a central set of accessible data. Students can take classes remotely, transportation and parking become non-issues, the buildings need less upkeep... I see no advantage to this "feet" idea, next to wifi at least. Might as well run a steam railway through all the classrooms, as long as we're advocating obsolete tech.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Cheapest Ford: $11,000
Cheapest Porsche: $45,000
That's $34,000. Go away.
Don't spout numbers without comparing Specs.
This can cause some interestig backlash... Yeah, sure youre in class to "learn", but 30+ wifi enabled laptops (?) in one area could be very interesting, especially with "Vistas" automatic peer-peer networkworking, throw in a LAN/PEER torrent seed locator... hmmmm
-- I Dont Deserve A Sig I Have Bad Karma
I attend school at MSOE Where Laptops are not just required, you have to lease the damn things from the school (they're HP/Compaq laptops). There IS a decent amount of theft, but generally it's one of two things
:) ). But the power-supply pin on my laptop FELL OFF recently and so I took the beast in to get repaired (we're currently on break week). The laptop the school makes me lease is a HP Compaq nw8240. The loaner they gave me is a HP Compaq nw8000. I wouldn't really care about getting an older laptop (even if I hadn't gotten used to the wide-screen laptop), but they GIMP the loaners now because of the theiving! The wireless NICs don't work. You can't put the suckers in higher than 1024x768 resolution, and apparently other things... (I haven't used it much as it's craptacular). I imagine these are all software things and I could just blow the image away and put Linux on it... I'm just too lazy to do that for a laptop I shouldn't have longer than about a week or two.
:) ). There's occasionally the guy that steals his buddy's laptop to sell on Ebay to score some [insert drug type here] or to pay for tuition, but this is very uncommon. As it is, with a population of about 2000 students (all with laptops), the rate of laptop theft if about 1/month. Bike thefts, OTOH, are around 3/month.
Either it's some random person from the neighborhood (not a student) who wanders into a school building, finds a laptop someone left ungaurded, yoinks it, and then runs (with no time to turn the laptop off, let alone the wireless).
Or, it's students who need their laptops repaired. The tech-support guys tend to need your laptop for a week or two for even the simplest repairs, so students tend to wait until between quarters (think short semesters, with pathetically small breaks in between them, oh and there's three of them, not four) to turn in their laptop for repair. What happens? The student's grades come back during the break and the results are bad. They have to leave the school. So this angry, bitter, ex-student now is SUPPOSED to return the LOANER laptop they got when they turned in their regular laptop. Instead, a lot (apparently) simply keep the loaner whilst giving the school a one-finger salute.
I wouldn't really care about the theivery (especially the first kind, as I only leave my laptop alone in LOCKED labs with security cameras pointing at it.. and I back-up my stuff
My point of this post is that Theiving of a students' laptops are almost always done by non-students (If you are a student, you've already got a laptop
A zenith notebook was my laptop in college. It had 256k ram, 2 low density floppy drives monocrome srceen (very nice though)and no harddrive. I think it had an 8087 at 4 mhz. 2 low density floppys can hold a boot ms dos disk, that can store a few "pfs write" documents and a disk for the wordprocessor. For spreadsheets I had to go to the computer lab and us one of the windows 3.1 and lotus 123.
The notebook was big, but it had the best keyboard of any notebook I've ever used
Those were the days.
bah..Thinkpads..
And this is relevant why? The cheapest one is the only one they can afford. It's that simple. The fact that upgrading it is expensive just further locks them to the cheapest one available, it doesn't vindicate the fact that most laptops are more expensive.
And next time you try to make fun of "trolls", I'd advise you not to use the word "Stinkpad", or capitalise the word "shittiest". :)
DIFFERENT GUI. Not necessarily "better".
Like KDE vs Gnome. It's all about personal preference.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
But you can afford to reboot? Format and reinstall? Play hide and go seek with Trojans, worms and virusus?
Honestly - how much more are Macs when you no longer have to do such a thing. I'm a developer and when I saw that the developer tools were FREE, the Mac instantly became $2,000 less than a PC to me.
Maybe you're not looking at TOTAL cost. Besides, I'm also concerned as to where you're looking at prices. The last time I looked (about a month ago) the iBooks were less then a Dell (A powerbook or macbook is twice the computer as any Dell, so you can't compare those).
Wake Forest is the original ThinkPad university. They just renewed their contract for another ten years about a year or so ago, shortly before the ThinkPads were sold to Lenovo. They're also dumping all sorts of cash into "cutting-edge" stuff like "pervasive computing" and "multimodal" the like... much of this was my internship last summer. [/plug]
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
... until the professors know what to do with them.
At MS State, they've been requiring laptops of all students in the engineering department since 1999. I bring my laptop to every class, lab, etc. In the classroom though, its usually not that much help. Occasionally the teacher will say something that I will further investigate online or if I'm lost I can get another perspective of it. Most of the time though its assignments for other classes, email, or slashdot.
Labs are an entirely different story. Most of the labs in the CS and ECE departments require the use of a laptop. Sure, everything *could* be done on a desktop, but you won't be around a TA or other students to learn that the datasheet for the widget has a typo, or, in theory, you can do this, but that usually results in an explosive failure, etc. Also, I can have *my* development environment with me everywhere. I don't have to sit and fight the machines that are locked down, worry about going over my quota, or finding a program that does what I want without admin privileges.
The biggest benefit is for group projects. A group meeting without laptops won't consist of much actual work being done in my experience. A good example is the software engineering lab I'm in right now, when we're figuring out how we want to write our documents, we have to make sure they conform to IEEE standards. I certainly find it wasteful for each of us to print out *ALL* the applicable standards, memos from the client, class assignments, etc to be a meaningful participant in the group discussion. With laptops I can have all those resources available, search the PDFs for exactly where I want to go without flipping and scanning, etc.
All the comments about it being a tool are exactly true. For me the laptop has been a wonderful tool, but I really wonder how much an art major is going to care for this tool. Especially when a laptop probably equals the amount of supplies they have to buy!
It's freshperson, you insensitive clod!
Sad but true. "Debt tickles!"
Absolutely pissed me off, especially given the legality of the situation. I was, fortunately, watching the machine at the time, otherwise the results could have been embarassing.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
-1, Troll.
I'm a college student, and I use a Thinkpad which I put OpenBSD on. It's actually a bit surprising, even to me, but I find that a simple "dhclient ipw0" command allows me to connect almost instantly to access points that my friends with Macs and even Thinkpads on Windows have trouble connecting to (or can't), with their "automated" (but clearly not-completely-functional) config tools.
Nice try. Thinkpads are basically the same price as iBooks. In fact if you spec them out, the ThinkPads can be more expensive for about the same level of hardware.
The base-model iBook is $999, an equivalent ThinkPad is an R- or Z-series "Value" model, $1299 or $1499, respectively. The only way you can get a ThinkPad for less than the price of an iBook is with a crippled configuration (the R-series "Economy" model: XP Home Edition and only 256MB RAM with at least 64MB being used by the video controller).
Neither of the sites will let me deep-link to the configurations, but they're easy to find. Apple's is from the Apple Store, then click on iBook, the ThinkPads are from Lenovo's Products page and then click on ThinkPads.
Quality PC laptops are not necessarily cheaper than Apple. And I've used some of the "non quality" off-brand PC laptops, and I'd prefer never to go there again. Frankly they're so much trouble I'd say students would be better off with a spiral notebook and a #2 pencil.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
There have been many laptop projects over the years. One of the attractions for the schools is the idea of saving money by not having to put in computer labs full of desktops. The experience is that this saving doesn't happen. The school doesn't actually save any money by making the students supply their own laptops.
So now it comes down to a question about the quality of education. There's no evidence that laptops help there either.
Converting course material to electronic form takes lots of time and you usually get little benefit so it doesn't help the profs.
It seems like a pointless exercise.
Until recently, I had to keep a .txt file with network settings of various places because they didn't all use DHCP, and windows had no way of asking me "where are you plugged in today?" Even now, the "alternate configuration" is buried pretty damn deep in the network configuration.
The wireless stuff (at least in XPSP2, I didn't start using wireless until a little bit ago) is decent, as long as I remember to keep only one network in each location preferred. Sometimes the solar winds blow just right and the computer gets a whiff of the AP in the other annex of the building.
Strangely enough, I've never had problems with Wifi on XP, although I've only used it post-SP2. It's certainly no more difficult than it is on OSX (and it's easier than PocketPC, which is the only other platform I've used it on, but that's largely because entering passwords with a stylus is hilariously futile when your writing is like mine).
A laptop is useful for some but not for others
I used my 17" PowerBook G4 during the two and a half years of getting my MBA*, and I found it invaluable. I used it in three ways:
First, I converted the professor's inevitable PowerPoint presentations into PDFs and used Acrobat to take notes. (Admittedly I prefer when professors don't use PowerPoint. Do it on a marker board if you must write something. PPT is too lazy.)
Second, I used an application called InkBook along with a cheapo Wacom tablet which allowed me to do sketches and take notes which were parsed into English, a la the Newton of yore.
Third, I would often receive case studies as a PDF, so I could quickly take notes and refer back to them during class.
The benefit was I didn't have to carry around a folder with a bunch of paper notes, and I can refer to my notes even to this day. I'm very comfortable with using a computer as my primary tool during class, as I suspect many on Slashdot may agree.
However, I noticed that while everyone in class had a computer, few used it the way I did.
There was a lot of reading emails, playing games, or browsing the web during class (admittedly, when I got bored, I did that, too). Although some people took notes in PowerPoint, many people just printed stuff out and hand wrote their notes, so their laptop was just for messing around. If that's the case, then I don't see a benefit with requiring students to have a computer. If the person isn't comfortable with it, and the class isn't significantly enhanced by using it, then there's no point.
Plus, I'd be pissed if my school forced me to use a laptop of their choosing, rather than what I believe works best for me.
__
*hey! before you harass me, consider my relatively low Slashdot user ID. I will accept the taunting and mockings from only 87991 other users.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
I think this is a step forward, there were several times when I wished we could use programs such as Matlab in class, instead of a TI89 or similar. Our school doesn't require computers in class, so while we could use Matlab to do our homework, we couldn't use them on quizzes and exams. Requiring laptops would allow professors to let us use more powerful programs rather than having to resort to the clunky 89.
As far as Thinkpad goes I agree with other posters that it should just be a minimum requirement but I have a feeling the school can offer them at a discout to its students and that it will simplify repairs too, laptops are much easier to break than calculators.
Are you sure thats the first. I think that the College of William and Mary will start requiring next year. Virginia Tech already requires for most of the majors.
Virgina Tech is doing the same thing starting next year. Currently they are stongly recommended, but will become mandatory this fall.
http://www.compreq.vt.edu/specs.html
Others are cited additional universities with similar programs. The only other one I had previous knowledge of is at Northern Michigan University, where students are required to lease a laptop from the university. Is there some sort of qualifier I missed that makes Indiana State first at something? Such as 'first to require laptops in the state' or 'first to require laptops with capable of playing the latest FPS'.
I used to be a *HUGE* fan of the Thinkpads, and was a little worried when I heard that IBM was selling off the brand. Those fears were confirmed when I saw some of the new Thinkpads in the local big-chain office supply store. I typically judge the quality of a laptop by the quality of it's external construction, and the quality of the case on the new Thinkpad was one of the poorest I've ever seen in a laptop! I don't know if all the new Lenovo Thinkpads are this bad, but you can be sure that I'm not going to even think about ordering one of their higher-end machines without getting a chance to give it a thorough going over! -p.
I can't type on laptop keyboards to well, I wonder if they will mind if I bring the keyboard from my IBM 5150. Ahhh, I LOVE that sound! The keys actually have weight to them. Nothing like the tactile feedback from those 5lb monsters.
Of course, this was when you could actually bludgeon someone to death with your keyboard. Try that now with one of the new ones and they will just shatter into peices without inflicting any damage. Pfft!
All kidding aside, if a WiFi college started handing out preconfigured laptops, think of all the folding / genome decoding / other collective computing that could be done while all the sorority girls are busy IM'ing each other in class...
Being a student that attended a private university where laptops were assigned to every student, I can support the statement that they really don't help at all. Professors in a large portion of classes actually would ban students from using laptops in class because of the effects they have on test scores (they obviously aren't used for JUST taking notes). Having wireless internet right in front of you in the classroom is like being in an entirely different place, occasionally catching something the professors says in the background. Scores have dropped so much for the university the only reason for keeping the laptop program is for university marketing purposes (enroll here, get a laptop), which I know is different from the case in Indiana. Nonetheless, laptops (along with wireless internet) strongly affect performance in school, without a doubt.
My school (http://poly.edu/ has had the mandatory laptop deal for sometime now. They used to "give" every student a Thinkpad with wifi since our entire campus is wireless. Now students can purchase any laptop they wish. I must say that sometimes its the worst idea to have an all wireless campus because many people use it to chat during class, or play games, and that's very annoying when I'm paying $40,000 a year for that class and its being interrupted by someone playing WoW. Other than that, it's been very helpful.
This sounds like a known bug in some versions of the Airport software. You can fix it by re-running the Network Setup Assistant. From the Terminal run, open /System/Library/CoreServices/Network\ Setup\ Assistant.app. Then recreate all your connections. For some reason simply removing and recreatng the connections in Internet Connect or System Preferrences does not fix it, but running the setup Asistant does. Probably deletes some preference file. I never really investigated the details.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
"Cheapest Ford: $11,000
Cheapest Porsche: $45,000
That's $34,000. Go away.
Don't spout numbers without comparing Specs."
But if all you need to do is drive to and from class, what's the point of spending another $34,000?
Just like there is no point in spending an extra $1000 on a laptop when all you need is a web browser and an office suite.
Ehh, As a graphic design student, now a grad student, I've been asked to pony up and buy Apple hardware for years.
;)
Quite honestly, after considering I fill out a yearly FAFSA, usually getting tuition comp'ed, and occasionally taking a loan, the cost of Apple hardware isn't that bad. The hardware lasts forever, it has a relatively high resale value, and I can always role it into a loan.
This year I finally got rid of my -5 year old- dual 450 G4. I would've kept the machine except I needed to get something portable. It ran Tiger and CS2 quite well.
I easily sold it on Craig's list for $450 bucks. Moreover, I got my new PB with a $200 something dollar student discount, a free iPod mini, and a free awesome Canon printer that has been printing TONS of full color documents for 8 months on the original ink cartridge. That alone is a blessing.
Out of pocket a new 15in PW cost me around $1100 - $1200 (taking into account the sale of my old mac and the sale of the new iPod I didn't need). $1200 ain't too bad for a piece of hardware I can see using productively for another 4 years.
Although this Intel switch could through a wretch into that 4 year plan
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
In 1986 I joined the first class at the U.S. Air Force Academy to be issued computers (Zenith Z-248 80286 desktops, to be exact). "Issued" means we had to get it and it came out of our pay. I think we were the first campus to extend network* to every dorm room.
* The network had an inbound coax cable and an outbound cable, both of which had to be plugged into a "Network Interface Device" which plugged into the computer with a serial cable.
Bigtime Consulting - "We're the best because we cost the most"
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IBM (or Lenovo) Thinkpads have something called "Thinkvantage Security Chip" that encrypts your harddrive at BIOS level. If enabled, will render the laptop useless to the thief or buyer when the laptop is powered down.
And btw, Lenovo's new thinkpads aren't thinkpads, it's their own R&D and thinkpad _labeled_ laptops. There is no IBM engineering in those plastic shells.
Why the hell bother buying books if you can get a pdf version for cheaper and use your laptop in class. I think its good tech is being pushed in into education. In todays world computer skills are a muist and In know plenty of recent college grads that can still barely check thier email much less set it up. I think PC skills should be taught starting K. It would definately ease the woes of all IT guys out there. I know it would help me, well once those kids were grown and in the work force any way.
WTF?
I love my iBook... it's enough to get my schoolwork done, wireless everywhere across campus (even supports 802.1x authentication for WiFi), and it didn't cost a fortune. I used my education discount --- which got me a discount on AppleCare too, now if I run my laptop over with a buldozer I can just bring it to the Genius bar...
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Maybe in the US. Here in Canada, HEC (École des Hautes Études Commerciales) has been having mandatory laptops for many years, and it works great.
Now it also says
"When we announced the Notebook Initiative last September, we pledged that our students would receive high quality, business-grade laptops worthy of the investment they and their parents are making in an ISU education," said C. Jack Maynard
So we are to assume the cost of each laptop, is tacked onto a students tuition fee. Maybe the school will get a bulk discount, maybe not.
Now this brings up some questions and concerns. Based on what I know of my own state, state based universities are generally "cheaper" in terms of tuition, housing, food etc than more popular Ivy League schools. I'm sure it will cost a shit load less to go to Indiana State than it would to go to say, Harvard or Yale. Read on..
Cost is going to be a major factor. Many of us have been college students or still are. Raise of hands how many of us were or still are, on the extremely slim "college budget"? Now while we're still taking a tally of things, how many of us have mom & pop paying for school? And finally of those having mom & pop pay for it, how many of your parents will be able to afford an additional, oh we'll estimate $1000, tacked onto your tution?
Before you answer the last question consider this:
From the ISU website
Housing Fees and Advantage Meal Plan:
$2,807.55 per semester
$5,615.10 per year
Indiana Resident:
Above 18 hours = $3,356.00 per semester
12 - 18 hours = $2,878.00 per semester
0 - 11.5 hours = $208.00 per credit hour
Now if you view their website you see it's actually cheaper, to live on campus, by several thousand dollars. They actually charge more, if you live off campus. Based on a 3 month class schedule (off of their site) minus weekends and no holidays there are roughly 66 days of class the school offers. Based on a 3 hour class schedule (this is more of a guess, personally I wouldn't take more than three college courses at once) this comes to slightly less than 22 hours of class time.
So based on their prices, 22 hours would cost at least $3,400 (per semester). Maybe more. Toss in room and food, you are looking at over $12,450 (1 years worth, which is two semesters, of lodging and 1 years worth of classes, again two semesters).
So let's assume, again, that since this is a state school it is cheaper. I'm sure other schools charge much more per year. Now there are probably either three reasons you are going to a State University;
1) it's all your parents could afford other than community college or you got a scholarship/student loans (more on this later)
2) you got rejected by ivy league schools and/or couldn't make the grades for them
3) you for some reason find a program or class or series of classes a State school offers that others don't
If it's two, cost probably isn't an issue. If it's 3, then thats a maybe. But if it's 1, this IS an issue.
If you parent's couldn't afford an top dollar ivy league school, but didn't want you in community college, then this is probably where you end up. So that extra $800-1000 you have to spend on tuition for the laptop could literally be the bank breaker.
Same with scholarships or student loans. I know plenty of people who had to have their own equipment for many science courses, who had most of their tuition paid for by student loans. Loans which would not cover extra costs such as those equipment. Same thing could happen here. Trust me, student loan organizations say they are out to help but they are legalized loan sharks. They aren't going to sink money into something they don't think is nesscary. I needed my own Osciloscope (bad spelling I know) for various digital electronics courses. My student loans would not cover such costs, so I had to pay out of my own pocket (a hefty sum indeed) for it or I failed the cours
Aw Frell this
Guess which laptop is the preferred one...
Students attending IU revel in the intellectual freedom liberal democracy brings: freedom of expression, descent, association, the open exchange of ideas. The use of the laptop computer is a symbol of this pinnacle of freedom, an enabler for students to do more, go further. How ironic that the laptop IU mandates is built by a company (Lenovo) that gains a competative advantage by being based in a country that practices child and slave labor, censorship, political repression, and currency manipulation. All for a 15% discount. There is no underestimating America's love of the "deal" and how deeply it can corrupt.
an ill wind that blows no good
A lot of comments seem to be saying that the school should just offer a set of requirements that the laptop must meet and then let the student choose whatever brand they want. The problem with that is that since the school *requires* laptops, they are also probably supporting the laptops. If that is the case they would be insane to support whatever the student decided to buy. They would have to standardize on one brand and stick with it just to keep the support headache to a minimum. I haven't read the article, so I don't know for a fact that the school does support the laptops. But I imagine they do....
I'm very responsible, when ever something goes wrong they always say I'm responsible.
In that case, get a $400 used iBook, like I did.
Pre-sp2, XP's built in wifi support was BAD. Horribly, HORRIBLY bad.
..of tequila to all my classes and i goot edjibicated gooder.
These laptops are just a distraction and excuse for kids to play video games during class. They're also easy to steal.
They would do students a much better service and cost savings by requiring a desktop or not specifying a laptop.
Yeah, this is a load of bullshit, forcing people to use Windows on a Thinkpad when there's a perfectly good alternate laptop to be had.
This industry was way more fucking interesting before the consensus decided that the Great Computer Wars were over and we should just topple over to Microsoft's whims.
You can configure Panther to only connect to trusted networks, too.
From $1,999:
But best of all... It runs OS X, Linux and even that other O/S (at high speed) if you're desperate.
you had me at #!
So I've heard, that's why I specifically mentioned I was using SP2 when I played with it. :)
I'm unconvinced that they helped me with my grades.
:)
I know that bringing my laptop to class helped me. Aside from allowing me to play Solitaire (or the obligatory surfing Slashdot) when the topic was boring, it is the very reason that I got an A+ in Physics.
Taking notes on my laptop meant that I didn't have to worry about sloppy handwriting. Plus, since I couldn't draw any associated graphs or diagrams in real time, I would have to draw them in a book, mark the place in my notes, and go later into a paint program and re-draw the graphs, then insert them. Doing this made me pay extra attention to the graphs, and forced me to re-read my notes as I insert.
It didn't hurt that the professor gave me some extra credit because of the effort I put into it.
I found that people often brought laptops into dull humanities courses, where they proved quite useful to me. I would sit behind someone who was playing Unreal Tournament or Flight Simulator and tune out the bullshit lectures.
"... I'm convinced it helped me with my grades."
were those good grades, or bad ones?
Specs:
Can travel at the maximum legal limit in all states:
Ford: YES
Porsche: YES
Refuelable at all gas stations in the US
Ford: YES
Porsche: YES (but requires "special" premium gas at extra cost)
Passenger capacity
Ford: 4
Porsche: 2
Legal on all roads in US
Ford: YES
Porsche: YES
Servicable at most local service stations and dealers
Ford: Yes, extensive dealer network in almost every city
Porsche: No, limited dealer network, hard to find parts
Tell me again about those specs? Just like apple... except the macs can't fuel up with "standard" gas--- need special software.
I don't think it's to "help" the student, but rather to "help" the university afford the costs of buying thousands of public computers every few years. Pawn the cost off onto the students (not like they don't do it via tuition hikes anyways, but it's less staff they need as well to maintain them, and you can always get students to do the phone tech support for the laptops.)
This really doesn't have anything to do with improving the student's college experience. In fact, I doubt they'll be making any real changes to the curriculum to incorporate laptops into classes, and I think the value of using laptops during class is marginal at best. This is all about making the school look better. I remember a number of years ago that some poll or survery found that more NC State students had computers than UNC students. So what does UNC do? They require all incoming freshmen to have a computer. UNC wins because they won't look "bad" for having "technologically backward" students, and they get to make money by selling the computers. My understanding is that the classroom experience didn't shift much (if any) to incorporate the computers into learning. I mean, for the past ten years students probably have had to use computers to some extent just to do their work, so this really doesn't change anything. It's all about making the school look better and cashing in.
Having a laptop can be very usefull. Requiring students to purchase one, and more importantly a specific brand, is a bit questionable. I can see requiring a computer of some sort. They should be free to use whatever brand they want though. The school won't provide support for it anyway (even if they say they will, they won't).
I made it through my undergrad just fine without a laptop. I always lived near/on campus so my computer was close, and there are machines all over campus anyway. A laptop would have been nice, that I will grant. Now I commute a good 40 minutes to campus for grad school. Having a laptop now is great. I always have all of my files, the same software, etc. with me. Since I never know how long I will be somewhere it helps to have the flexibility. I could still make do without it though.
I am a Mac user but work for an IT dept. at a college. I am very impressed with Lenovo notebooks. The salesperson showing them to us poured water in the keyboard while it was running and even stood on it at one point. The things are very durable. Secondly IBM has partnered with a company to provide most textbooks electronically. Third, they offer school Computer Science departments free training, course material, and access to a mainframe to get students to go the mainframe programmer/administrator route. Adds up to some sweet deals. They also offer significant discounts if you go the wireless campus route with them. They also have sensors built in that help it know when to park the hard drive heads in case of a fall. You can use this feature to control Tux racer by moving your laptop around. ;-)
"The notebook initiative gives us an opportunity to use technology to support learner-centered, knowledge-centered, assessment-centered and community-centered learning environments."
How opportune.
Because I hate it when my learning environment has decentralized learners.
When I was in university, I got by just fine with a PII desktop system that I had for years. Allowed me to check my e-mail and ran Office 97 fine. Now that I have a job, I have a more expensive computer that allows me to play games. Why on earth would I have needed an expensive laptop?
What does this mean?
The notebook initiative gives us an opportunity to use technology to support learner-centered, knowledge-centered, assessment-centered and community-centered learning environments. It is a window of opportunity for true innovation. Lenovo ThinkPad will be an excellent partner in our strategies to expand the learning environment of ISU.
What on earth is 'community-centred learning'? How does it help me write my paper on Tolstoy? Forcing students to buy laptops is so utterly arrogant; it's management droids buying into the latest hype.
You want to improve learning? How about making attendance mandatory? How about attacking plagiarism? How about reducing tuition fees? I had to work 20 hours a week to pay for my education; wouldn't those 20 hours have been better spent studying? Isn't that a bit more 'learner-centred'? Bah.
Any laptop that plays Counter Strike should do fine.. Thanks.
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
Wow? It even guesses the WEP keys for wireless networks? Really?
I'm impressed.
I guess you have Thinkpads beat.
Because the only setup I ever had to do to was to enter the userid/passwords for our Cisco LEAP wireless network.
It automagically switches networks as needed, just like your Mac.
JoAnn
You forgot;
Gets you laid
Ford: NO
Porsche: YES
home
ISU chose Lenovo because of its superior service and support, the quality of ThinkPad notebooks and the advanced wireless capabilities of the PCs.
ThinkPads help simplify the network connectivity process through ThinkVantage Access Connections 4.1, which helps mobile users set up and automatically switch from one available network connection to the next.
Umm... the DLINK pcmcia card that I had in my notebook in 2002 had the same ability...Nothing that advanced about it anymore.
But on the issue of having a laptop in school, it was quite helpful. Its so hard to find a free computer in school. And then you have to deal with the fact that a lot of stuff is disabled. And then also the issue of finding that piece of software to do your project. Too much BS. Having a laptop is the way to go. But what about classes that need special software? Not everyone can afford to just buy all the software needed for school.
They require you to buy a thinkpad.
RHIT has requried laptops since 1995 -- and had computers (NeXT boxes/pizza boxes) on probably half of all classroom desks since 1991. The amount of learning in the computer enabled clasrooms blows away anything that can be done in a traditional pen and pencil classroom.
That being said, you have to have the professors, infrastructure, and desire to do it. IMHO ISU is better positioned to pursue this than most public universities. I wish them luck as I think this will serve student's well in the long term.
If you don't like the policy, I assume there are more than enough other colleges/universities to choose from...
Guess which laptop is the preferred one...
Macbook Pro?
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (where I attended, also in Terre Haute) has required all students purchase the school sanctioned laptop for that year since 1995 or 1996. Spending $4,000 on the laptop plus $225 per year for maintenance fee was pretty insane. I did end up going through 2 motherboards and 3 CD-ROM drives, which were replaced for free, but not going with Acer would have solved most of that problem. The Thinkpad should be much more resilient, great choice by ISU.
The merits of laptops in the classroom were dubious. There were a few classes where they were VERY useful or even necessary, but they were few enough that having them in a "computer lab" would have probably sufficed. I think it makes sense to go to requiring that students have a computer, but making them buy a (presumably) overpriced laptop is not necessary.
Somethings wrong with slashdot lately. 200+ comments all rated at 1 or 2?
Are there just not enough moderators? i know i havent had mod points in at least half a year. For the last week or so ive seen so many stories with hundreds of comments but few modded up. what gives?
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Laptops are great in lecture - when things get slow my notebook gave me the opportunity to email, IM, surf, or play games. And my professors all thought I was just taking great notes! Without the distraction I would have paid more attention and done better on the tests. Having a computer with my own copy of needed software (Visual Studio and Dr. Scheme) allowed me to complete assignments at my convenience instead of working around lab availability, but a much cheaper dekstop system at home would have provided the same benefit. Sure it was helpful to have everything loaded in my notebook when I wanted to go to the professor's office for extra help. But it was just as easy to bring a floppy or a memory key to the office. And I am somebody who had owned a computer for more than a decade before going to college; I was frustrated and amazed by students who did not know how to bring up a directory from a command prompt, or who did not even know how to turn the thing on. Requiring the luddites of the school population to have notebooks is a recipe for disaster.
From what I've seen in class, laptops serve as nothing but a distraction to both the kids using them and the kids sitting behind them.
Do they also require an external drive to backup the laptop? Do they require a 3 week course that teaches the students how to backup their laptop? Do they explain to the students that, with all the running around students do, the will most likely drop their laptop, or have their laptop stolen, resulting in loss of work, lower grades and loss of money? Did they retro-fit all their desks and library tables with loops to thread their laptop locks through so the student can take a piss break without having their laptop walk off? Do they require laptop locks? I bet not. I bet they just throw on their plaid used car salesman style pants and sell sell sell the laptop!
I study at a university which requires that all students have their own computers (laptops or desktops). About 90-95% have laptops, and so I know what this measure looks like.
In general it doesn't help at all, but quite the contrary. The usefulness for certain purposes, in particular the better note-taking efficiency for "text-only" classes (e.g. no math formulas and the like), are BY FAR outweighed by the misuse of the technology. Most undergraduates don't have nearly enough self-discipline to resists the temptation of firing up [insert messenger here] and enjoying the wireless network in every lecture hall. They don't pay attention, and it ends up hurting them badly. In fact, some professors see this and get annoyed enough to ban laptops during their lectures!
So this requirement is not effective at all, and I fail to see a serious advantage of a laptop over a desktop in a university setting; at least serious enough to make the former mandatory. On the other hand, it could be a clever publicity move. When everyone has a laptop, more people start using the cool-looking machines in that sunny grassland, back against a tree, just in time for that viewbook photo, or for that curious prospective student visiting the campus. Technology and happy users sure impresses outsiders!
Florida State University beats Indiana State by a year...
m l
From: http://president.fsu.edu/pages/state_of_uni_04.ht
"As part of the admission contract, next year's freshman class will be required to bring a computer to campus. In the fall of 2006, entering freshman will be required to bring a laptop to campus with an approved academic software package."
So it looks as though the TribStar, like Slashdot, accepts product trolling as "news" stories.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Silly Windows users. Having trouble finding the greek letters during lecture? Equation Editor got you down? The solution is simple! Just format the hd, install and modern Linux distro and take your notes in LaTeX format using vi or emacs. Once you've learned the syntax it'll be a snap.
Actually, I bet the campus book-store will still do a brisk market in good, old-fashioned paper notebooks for precisely this reason. Pen and paper is still a good solution for some tasks.
Winona State University in Minnesota has been a "laptop university" for at least 5 years. All incoming students get a laptop (currently a Gateway Tablet PC or Apple iBook G4), which they can trade in after two years. They're actually just paying to lease it with their fees, but when they graduate they can pay the balance and keep it.
Well... maybe if I get more table space. Frankly, I'd like it if the profs had emailed me lecture notes and added material, or just posted it on the class web page. Why my comptuer needs to be in the room is another question. Perhaps some interesting participation apps can be worked in, but I think the clickers I've seen do the trick nicely.
For me, the key was having a paper notebook to write in. For some reason the act of writing something down greatly helps me remember it. Typing doesn't have as strong as an effect. Actually reviewing my notes later? Ha! My handwriting is terrible and I'm not a good note taker. But having that space on the desk / table for notebook, paper and pen to write down the key points of what was said was critical to my success.
For my first two years of law school I took a laptop to class. I'm utterly unconvinced that they helped me with grades. Laptops do allow students to take more verbose notes, as one can type faster than he can write. However I did not find this to be a benefit. If anything, greater verbosity to review for exams turned out to be a hinderance.
My last year of law school I got tired of carrying around my Dell clunkster. Some people had Palms and folding keyboards that they used to take notes. I considered going this route, but decided to reject it to try an alternative on a trial basis: pens and spiral notebooks. Light, easy to carry, no technical failures. It worked great.
On distractions: yes, sure, some people will use laptops to play games in class. These are the same people who would otherwise be daydreaming or drawing doodles. With pen and paper, I would daydream and draw doodles.
Finally though, laptops have the potential to improve class interactions and learning experiences. In law school a few students would use IM during class. Sure, sometimes they were gossiping, but often they were helping each other with the material that was being discussed. Another neat idea would be to have a chat room for the class, going on at the same time as the lecture.
But for the most part, class is just a waste of time anyway. Just a rehashing of reading material. In those cases laptops won't help anything.
Penny - plain text accounting
And that, for me, would be a potential problem. What if, as an incoming freshman, I already have my own laptop (I'm sure some do, its just a question of how many)? Do I get that portion of my fee/tuition dollar refunded?
I can see then need for security on the University Network to combat Zombies and standardization to deal with PEBCAC, but much of this could be dealt with by requiring those with their own laptops to install a "Network Access/Security Package," which should be (and probably isn't) a requirement in the contract with Lenovo for the few incoming freshmen that do have their own laptops. Statistically speaking, more and more will come with their own with each passing year anyway. Lenovo is probably making a tidy sum with this deal; they may have made a healthy donation to the University as well.
As competition amoung higher ed institutions becomes more fierce, the power of choice could do little else but help here. My guess is that Indiana State just doesnt want to be bothered with it and Lenovo is happy to have the extra (albeit involuntary) sales.
Of course, if such an "opt-out" choice exists, I retract all of the above.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
Trying to deliver a lecture over the sound of 250+ students typing away on their laptops
I wouldn't say it helped my grades and I wouldn't say it helped them.
I would, however, say that it helped my menagerie of diablo 2 characters. No longer did I have to ponder whether or not I needed to attend a given lecture. I could go and if it was a load of boring information, I could just sit in the back and play.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
FTFA:
"Through Access Connections, students and faculty will be able to seamlessly move from classes to dorm rooms and wired to wireless environments.
I thought the point of wireless was to _not_ be wired.
I believe they should make every student buy a subscription to Wired magazine and buy an annual Starbucks plan to get wired on caffeine.
There is a whole secondary industry devoted to buying and selling student loans. By law they're not allowed to raise your interest rate, which is generally about what you'd pay for a car loan. It's deferred until you're no longer in school (with loopholes for some teachers, volunteers, military, etc.).
The loan market works like other loan markets. An interesting feature of these loans, though, are that if you default they can go after your tax refund or even get a lien on your paycheck. (In the U.S., money is taken out of worker's paychecks to pre-pay income taxes, and if there is an overage you get money back. That refund makes people tolerate the system, since they think they're getting a gift from the government.) Also, the loans follow you through bankruptcy.
Some states don't participate in the secondary markets, and some only partially do (selling your loan if you move out of state, for example).
The big reason companies want to buy student loans is that they can sell you a consolidation loan, which doesn't have the same features as a regular student loan. The consolidation loans carry a lower nominal interest rate, which the fine print says will go up in six months or balloon to some outrageous figure like 29% if you skip a payment.
sigs, as if you care.
since they can chat wirelessly and play World of Warcraft.
When I went to college (2000-2004) my school required students to have an IBM T-series laptop. This allowed for labs for computer science classes that I took to be held in any room with internet connections rather than in a computer lab. It also allowed for people to come to class and not do work, which I thought was ridiculous since there was no attendance policy (why not just stay home?). While I see a laptop as a justifiable requirement for a tech school, I just don't see the necessity for someone who is majoring in many of the social sciences to need a computer in class. This will just prove to be another distraction.
On the other hand
Easy to do it on the back seat
Ford: YES
Porsche: NO
From System Preferences:
"Airport will connect to the first available (preferred) network in the list. If none are available, Airport will ask before joining an open network."
If you click Options, "If no preferred networks are found:"
* Ask before joining an open network (default)
* Automatically join an open network
* Keep searching for preferred networks
I attended Niagara College last year for a computer engineering course, to my dismay they would not allow us to use computers to type out any in school work for fear of plagiarism.
I was extremely annoyed as I am one of those stubborn people with absolutely horrible hand writing. I was even using my laptop in math.
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
Dude. These things suck. There's no trackpad, just a touchpoint "eraser" pointing device. I hate those things.
The computer will be obsolete by the time you really need the processor speeds and ram (assuming your an engineering student or cs student).
So you can get a crappy $900 laptop that has a limited warranty, bad storage, unreliable parts, poor batter life, no dvd.
Or for $300 less for $600 you can get last years state of the art powerbook or and old IBM thinkpad with a 1.6ghz processor. The units would come with 512 megs of ram, dvd player, high definition wide screen, good battery life, wifi, and quality parts to make sure it would last to your senior year.
Yes the cpu would be lower but like a car its better to buy a good quality brand used with 20-40k miles vs a brand new Kia or some crappy car for the same price. Maintance will be cheaper with the quality used one if the miles aren't too high. Same principle not to mention the car is nicer.
http://saveie6.com/
If it has to be a Wintel laptop, I always recommend a Thinkpad. The are one of the few laptop vendors that try to pack as much power they can in a small frame. The computers are alway reliable and well built. I have not bought since the Lenovo takeover but it appears that they have not change anything from the IBM designs.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
The world is full of clock-punchers. If you just do a reasonable job, use a spell-checker, and do work that needs to be done (not just what was asked for) you will do well.
The larger the organization, the less you need to do. The trap, however is that you become one of them. If that happens, you too can be a whiner and complain about people who do get stuff done.
The parent post cites Tetris; If it weren't that, it would most likely be planing the next "re-org" or mindlessly filling in "progress" in their Project charts, without reguard to reality...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
For my security class, it was mixed. Sure, I was able to wikipedia whatever the professor was talking about and add to the discussion, but a lot of time I spent on it was playing poker.
Same with my political science class. Added to the discussion, but when the professor got out her soapbox, it was good to check out slashdot or whatever.
For my software design class, it was a savior. It was one of those classes where the professor was someone with no industry experience in the past 15 years who insisted that he knew better than us how things went in industry. (Famous quote: "The waterfall model is by far the most common method" - I haven't seen it used in any of the three jobs that I've had). I would have skipped, but he did attendance checks. I tried sleeping, but he kept yelling at us for falling asleap. Before class, I'd just load up on anime and not have that hour and a half be a total waste.
Same with my senior design class. Someone whose industry experience was 2 years in the electrical power industry in the 1970s trying to teach a bunch of Computer Engineers how things were done. Two hours of my life every week that I'll never get back. Partially saved.
in short, I think this will put the burden on professors to give a good presentation and not just waste students time. You hear that, Professor Mitra and Lamont? If you gave relivant information instead of wasting our time, you wouldn't have to take attendance because students would actually want to show up to your class. Laptops just give us students another way to skip without taking the grade hit.
Could have been 'Made in the USA'
You get what you pay for. The higher-end T and X Series are solid road-warrior machines. They always have been and have not changed. The lower-end R and Z Series (the ones at Office Depot) have always been lower-end plasticky product lines.
SirWired
Link: The Carolina Computing Initiative.
-Will
"Interesting side note: as a head without a body, I envy the dead."
I was the student rep on a technology adivisory committee my senior year, and one of the things the Nursing dean tried to push through was requiring all students have laptops. It turned out the main motivation was a standardized test the nursing students had to take by computer, and it was tough to arrange it with the small labs we had available. Some professors wanted to use them in lectures, too, but the main thing was the nursing school. Financial aid would be made available for one purchase during undergrad.
It took some vocalizing, but with a little bit of feedback from other students, I was able to convince them that requiring laptops for everyone was needless, when only a limited set of students would benefit from them. They had a vision of recruitment brochures showing students browsing via wireless while drinking coffee on the quad, whereas I had visions of science students trying to take notes and not be able to keep up with their professor because Microsoft Equation Editor is tough to use, or engineering seniors trying to do CAD with a 4 year old integrated graphics card, batteries dying during lectures, and no more computer labs to send students to when viruses crashed their personal computer because they won't run windows update (hello, the blaster patch came out two years ago!).
In the end, they figured out how ridiculous it was to force laptops into circulation, and that they were not the optimum solution for everything (gee, I thought people only bought desktops because they were cheaper...). Instead, financial aid is available up to a set limit for a one-time computer purchase of the student's choice. Sadly though, I don't doubt that some future student on that committee, this year or later on, will face the question of mandatory laptops and think it sounds like a great idea.
How is it the first? My university, Clemson University (public btw), has required them for the last two years. Bad journalism here folks.
Cheapest iBook = $949, 6hr battery, XGA
Cheapest Thinkpad = $749 +$50 (512MB) +$100 (XPPro) = $899 still no firewire, a pound heavier, 4hr battery, WXGA
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
What's wrong with the way the Thinkpad looks? Are looks more important than functionality?
I don't care that my thinkpad looks like a black concrete slab. It works. It works better than every other laptop I have worked with. And when it doesn't work, IBM's service is second to none.
My Sysadmin Blog
Are you attempting to say that the above Ford is not cheaper than the above Porsche?
So the Porsche is better. But the Ford is cheaper. Someone was trying to say he couldn't afford a new Powerbook. He wasn't trying to say that the Powerbook was a ripoff and should cost $750 like the lowest-end Thinkpad.
Go away.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
This could be OK, but would require maturity that your average college student doesn't possess. I just started going back to college, laptop in hand (dumpster-dived T20/T21). It has been a great tool for me. I can do maple in my Calc II class, for example. For loosely organized classes (read: pointless liberal arts junk), I can get my homework done or work on the tutorial CD that came with the book.
If the textbook industry wasn't such a racket, you could get PDFs of the books and not need to lug around a bunch of textbooks with you. I'd love that! They could sell the PDFs for half of the print book price, or just include them with the print book. It'll never happen, though.
This space for rent.
anyway, so, was that guy from Indiana or what?
College isn't tough enough that they now want to set up an environment where the kids will spend 50 classroom minutes sending IM's.....
Unless the computer is needed in the class...
I think you just touched on the reason why this can be a positive step forward. To this point, a professor could not expect that every student had immediate access to a computer (ever been in a lab during finals week?). With this requirement, every professor can now tailor their lesson plans and lectures to take advantage of the laptops, without penalizing the students who may not have had them before.
Has anyone done any research into how well the brain retains information written down with pen and paper as opposed to typed on a keyboard? In my experience, any class in which is focused on me writing notes I perform better in. My brain remembers a lot simply from the act of writing it down.
I have mixed feelings about technology in the classroom. PowerPoint presentations encourage lazier students like me to just sit back and watch the PowerPoint, instead of actively taking notes. It certainly encourages half of my class to leave in the middle because they think they could just download the notes later instead. Also, I can guarantee that if I was given a laptop, I would use it to play games and surf the net.
Anyway, all this is relatively moot to me, because I believe the majority of learning is done through homework assignments, which in my area of study, civil engineering, takes the form of hand-written problem-solving and analysis.
It's the my dick is smaller than your dick game! I'm currently in the lead! :)
this is just one of the many publicity stunts pulled by ISU over the years. In Indiana the joke is ISU == I Screwed Up... it's not a good school at all, and they should put more effort in improving their academics than in trying to grab headlines with some dumb 21st century education initiative after another.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Like a pen and paper, yes you have yo use it for it to be effective. But why slow down those who are able to use it to maximize there education? By making it a requirement those who don't use all the available tools can't say "we didnt knwo you needed one". By making a laptop a requirement more research oriented or individual interactive aids etc. can be used.
.. maybe cause the lessons werent geared around it and also maybe you didnt get enough research assigments (only covered topics researchable at the library without much computer time needed etc). There was a time when calculators and slide rules weren't allowed in school. But by allowing these tools it was found more advanced topics can be taught. As technology advances .. advanced topics will require laptops. That is, math,. physics, chemistry class may require running and programming simulations etc.
It's not just about better grades (many classes are "curved" anyway). It's about being able to teach more.
You didnt find a laptop useful in junior high
The sole reason schools require computers is so parents can deduct them on taxes, and poorer students can get financial aid to cover the cost. Any administrator will tell you as much off the record, unless they think you're a spy. They specify a brand and model so they can get a sweetheart deal with the manufacturer, to make it more affordable for the students who need financial aid to buy one, and maybe because they plan to offer on-site hardware support.
If there's dirty dealin' here, it's because the recipient of the contract offered the most to the administrators and not the lowest price to the students for the specifications given. Is there any reason to believe that's going on? I mean, when the write-up said, "Guess who..." my first thought was Dell. Did Lenovo become the Red Menace after all?
Professors who'd prefer you bring your laptop for class are, in my experience, a minority. I've yet to meet one who would affirmatively say to bring one. I can't imagine someone would make you leave lecture if you didn't have it with you.
One might ask the same about birds. What ARE birds? We just don't know.
The article actually says "First University in Indiana".
I live in MI and Western Michigan University has required its Freshmen to have a laptop since 2004. This is old news.
Universities want to make sure that their students understand that a computer is a necessity for going to college and not to spend that two grand on booze and partying.
It's a good requirement, each college student should have a laptop.
So about 3 and a half years ago, I got myself a laptop (ibook g3-700). I wanted to be able to write philosophy and psych papers and do CS programming assignments anywhere I was.
... the whole bit. It was great ... even the coffee shops and some of the restaurants off campus have wireless, so you could do just about anything anywhere.
The semester after I got it, I used it for EVERYTHING. I was taking notes on it, working on homeworks and projects, writing papers
But as I used it, I slowly came to grips with a simple fact: when the laptop is out, there's more interesting things to do than pay attention to most professors. Sure, there's the rare exception where the prof's really interesting, or I'm really into the material... but for the most part, I'd follow random digressive thoughts (that on paper would be a note to look into later), and stop paying attention to the prof.
Last semester, after five semesters of using it for every class, my laptop ran into hardware problems. It's well out of warranty, and would be nontrivial to repair or replace. So I stopped using it, transferred my data off of it, and I grabbed a tablet of paper. The latter half of that semester, and all this semester so far without it, I've found I take better notes in class, I follow the material and discussions better in general and I'm more into the subject matter at hand. I think that not carrying my laptop has a significant bit to do with this, and I find myself not really missing the perpetual interruption (and REALLY not missing the five extra pounds in my backpack).
I think this invasion of technology into activities that don't require it is a terrible thing. It's way too easy, on a campus with ubiquitous wireless, to find something more interesting than the prof or the course material, and takes a LOT of self-discipline to skip that temptation in favor of actually devoting all of your attention to a topic.
I'd like to see a counter-insurgency: profs banning laptops and newspapers in their classes, to drag people into paying attention and taking notes. After all, if you're surfing the net or doing the latest crossword, you might as well not be there anyway.
And i assume there is a 'blessed' model, so the school can get their kickbacks on each sale?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If the person isn't comfortable with it, and the class isn't significantly enhanced by using it, then there's no point.
Maybe the point is that the student *should* be comfortable with a computer. That may seem strange to a tech. savy crowd, or go against the idea of all youth knowing IM slang instictivly, but there are many students who (like math) don't know about computers, are afraid of them, and don't want to learn about them.
I go to a small state school in Southern Ohio (Shawnee State Uni)
It is NOT a requirment to have a laptop for any classes. However
1) you can borrow a laptop at the library (and for use ONLY in the library)
2) They are currently installing campus wide wireless, and have it up and working in about half the buildings right now, and it should be up everywhere by the end of the year.
3) If you want, you CAN use financial aid to pay for a computer. HEll, you can use financial aid to pay for anything. I use it to pay for my rent, groceries and everything. There aren't any good jobs around here, so I basically take out as much as I would if I lived on campus from student loans, but then they cut me a check for about 2 grand a quarter that I use to pay for rent, food, utilities, sometimes clothes, and stuff like that. I don't neccessitate alot of gas money or anything because I live about 10 blocks from campus and can ride my bike there when its above freezing.
I do work on campus as a tutor and Student assistant, but I don't make too much, about 50$ a month, and that is basically my beer and snack food fund.
I am in the an engineering degree, Gaming and Simulation design engineering to be exact, and we are asked to have either a laptop or a small ITX computer. There are labs, and if you have the ITX computer you can just plug it into the keyboard, mouse, monitor and network jacks.
I have a laptop, but I never take it to class. I find it pointless. We have class in computer labs, every bit of software I need is already there, I don't have to use a 15" screen and touchpad, and I can save my notes that I type in class to my FTP server at home, or if thats down, email them to myself.
Most of the time I don't take anything to class other than myself.
The way I feel is, a properly configured campus wouldn't NEED laptops. Put cheap desktop computers in every lab, make it so you can save to a central server, and once your home, you can FTP in and get your files. Thats how we have it set up in my engineering building. Very time saving, and you don't have to lug around 7 or 8 pounds of gear.
This is nothing new, perhaps on public institutions, but other Colleges have been doing that a long time ago.
Well, I remember when my friend went to College at Boston University with his trusty university required laptop. A top of the line Toshiba 286 with grey LCD monitor purchased through the institution. When my friend told me about this requirement, I thought that it was a silly idea. I think he flunk and moved back to a instate College a couple of years later. This was in 1985.
Anyway, when I went to College for my Computer Engineering Degree, I was not required a laptop, I spent endless night in the computer center hacking UNIX code on a top of the line 3B15 mini computer while listening to heavy metal music to keep us awake (it was funny when you started yelling at the ROTC dudes that were doing PT early in the morning in front of the building).
Later on I saved enough money to purchase an 8088 PC Clone so I could run SPICE simulations and run Turbo Pascal at home with two floppy drives and 512K of RAM. It stayed at home, it was there when I needed at night, during the day I did my work at the computer center. I was not required to have a laptop, but having a computer can be really handy if you do have the need.
At the end, I managed to go through college without a laptop, graudate and have a job (so far). I guess that at the end, a laptop in College was not all that important.
I'm also not sure if it is all that handy nowadays. It's a drag to carry, the small ones are hard to type, you have to be a touch typist to be efficient while notes, they're distracting to your peers with the clickity-clak, they present a temptation to do other stuff in class and they could jeopardize your personal safety (I read in the news that a study group got mugged in a college classroom and the first thing that got stolen were their laptops and palmtops). I'm not sure if I would have wanted to have something else to worry about while in College.
So... How come this is newsworthy? Just because it is the first State College to implement such a policy? Well, I guess they're really behind the 8th ball.
Vi havas e-poston.
slap. haha, i'm rick james bitch.
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
This is a trend. My state college has instituted a similar program, to be instituted fall of 2006.
I don't understand it myself. It seems like most students who sit in class with laptops play games more than anything else.
The investigative newspaper I work for will be printing an article soon after break about it. It seems like IT just wants to limit their support tickets to Thinkpads. It's actually a pretty shitty program in that respect too--you essentially have to have a Thinkpad.
A notebook computer requirement is in effect for students entering the College of William and Mary in the fall of 2006. Through the myNotebook program, incoming students may purchase a ThinkPad notebook computer ensuring access to the computer technology which is essential for academic success. ThinkPads purchased through this program will connect seamlessly to the W&M network, include four-year warranty and accidental damage coverage, and be eligible for on-campus service and repair.
Yikes.
"the wireless ease of OS X"
jesus fucking christ you astroturfing asshole. shut the fuck up. are you quoting a goddamn press release or are you just a shill? i like macs as much as anybody but that phrase is CLEARLY a marketing shit-stain on a glossy pamphlet.
wake the fuck up and go out into the sun. and for once leave your apple devices at home...you need some goddamn fresh air.
Did anyone read this and think it said lapdances required for freshman!?!?!?!?! OMG!! Lmfao!
So here's your syllogism:
1. Computers are tools that help you be more efficient.
2. Computers do not help you get better grades.
3. Working more efficiently in school does not help you get better grades.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
It's not his fault you work at McDonalds. I kid. I kid.
People are always hoping for an end-all be-all solution, but you're absolutely right a laptop in one kid's hands is a powerful versitle tool, in another kid's grasp it's just a very large calculator, an expensive notebook, and a collection of prodigious time-wasters.
Anyone who whines about being modded down should be.
"Guess which laptop is the preferred one..."
Since I was not in the room with you when you typed that, I don't know if you meant "Guess which laptop is the preferred one... yay!" or "Guess which laptop is the preferred one... boo!" For any who are interested: it's a ThinkPad, by Lenovo. And the ThinkPad is a good, solid, stable laptop - I have one myself - and supports Linux very well. And the X-series offers a tablet version, which also supports Linux.
Since this is a Linux-friendly group, I will assume you meant "Guess which laptop is the preferred one... yay!"
If you use it as an audio recorder, then leave it alone once it's recording, or use it to project motions being debated, it can be a handy tool for the secretary of a meeting in a formal meeting.
I go to Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) and they've required all students to have laptops for quite some time now...
Lets see... here is lenovo's press release: http://www.lenovo.com/news/us/en/2006/01/ind_state .html
I have reproduced the article here, with italics for word for word sections from the press release:
Indiana State University has selected the Lenovo ThinkPad as its preferred computer for students and faculty as the university moves toward becoming a notebook institution.
Developed by IBM, the ThinkPad is now manufactured and marketed by Lenovo, the world's third-largest personal computing company after its acquisition of IBM's personal computer business in 2005.
ISU will become the first public university in the state to require all students to have notebook computers, beginning with incoming freshmen in fall 2007.
The university is one of a handful of institutions nationally, including the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Clemson University, to institute similar mobile computing initiatives.
"When we announced the Notebook Initiative last September, we pledged that our students would receive high quality, business-grade laptops worthy of the investment they and their parents are making in an ISU education," said C. Jack Maynard, ISU provost and vice president for academic affairs. "The selection of the Lenovo ThinkPad fulfills that pledge."
ISU chose Lenovo because of its superior service and support, the quality of ThinkPad notebooks and the advanced wireless capabilities of the PCs.
(some parts skipped by article in their grab from the press release...)
ThinkPads help simplify the network connectivity process through ThinkVantage Access Connections 4.1, which helps mobile users set up and automatically switch from one available network connection to the next.
Through Access Connections, students and faculty will be able to seamlessly move from classes to dorm rooms and wired to wireless environments.
The widespread use of laptop technology will leverage the power of mobile computing to provide campuswide access through the university's extensive wireless network, said Susan Powers, professor of curriculum, instruction and media technology and chairwoman of ISU's notebook implementation committee.
"The notebook initiative gives us an opportunity to use technology to support learner-centered, knowledge-centered, assessment-centered and community-centered learning environments. It is a window of opportunity for true innovation. Lenovo ThinkPad will be an excellent partner in our strategies to expand the learning environment of ISU," Powers said.
Isn't this unethical journalism, or am I simply old fashioned in my my thinking?
All students should be required to carry a [insert.biggest.lobbyist.laptop.manufacturer.name. here] Laptop...
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
When I started www.bentley.edu in 1993, all freshman were required to have laptops. The college had reasonable lease rates for people who couldn't afford to buy one. All dorm rooms were also wired with ethernet.
Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
So I take it that you drive a Geo Metro?
I could have purchased one used for about $1500. I didn't, instead I drive a Saturn Luxury Edition. Likewise I don't buy that rockgut whiskey they sell at Safeway for $10 a fifth, I drink GlenFiddich.
Oh, and the PowerBooks cost more because they're the "Portable Workstation" models. The consumer models are called iBooks and they cost about $1k.
BTW, What's the horseshit with the special software?
ALL OSes need "special" software... that is... software that's compiled to run on the OS/hardware combo in question.
Or is it the "special" proprietary software like M$ Office, Adobe Photoshop, or Print Shop?
Or maybe the "special" software that comes with the system, like the iLife suite?
Or maybe it's the "special" software that I like so much like iTerm, VideoLan Client, Fire (multi-protocol IM), Firefox, Sed/Awk (regex rules), or some other piece of software infected with that viral GPL license....
Maybe it is the first university in Indiana to require laptops, but my daughter is applying to colleges right now, and one of her choices (Fitchburg State University in Fitchburg, MA) requires all fresh-people to have laptops. I had just gotten her a nice AMD64 desktop for Christmas for college, and got the desktop instead of a laptop explicitly because I was worried about thefts. Oh well, whats another $500 or so.....
But a Ford already was as fast as a horse'n'buggy 100 years ago!
Surely no one needs the added benefits of airbags, driver impact cell, crumple zone, bumpers, fuel efficiency, hood, roof, catalytic converter, and so on, because you can get to school with a horse, too!
Why the fuck do you care what someone drives to school?
Do you feel he doesn't deserve that Porsche?
We have people at our school who drive up in Hummers. I think it's wasteful, but if they can afford it: I say let them blow their (or their parent's) savings on that.
It just isn't my business to tell other people what to drive.
P.S. Last time I checked you could install a whole bunch of non-Apple approved software like *BSD, GNU/Linux, and so on.
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Takes 18 seconds to steal a laptop :)
Now I have no reason not to go to class, I can surf porn IN class!
They own some stock?
What?
To that tech school on the other side of town, Rose-Hulman. They've required school-standard laptops since before I was a freshman there, I think around 1998 or so.
the article doesn't say if a specific thinkpad model was chosen, nor could I find the info on the indiana state website. As mentioned here http://www.tonymcfadden.net/tpmvendors.html, lot's of thinkpad models already come shipped with an "atmel", which is a TPM 1.2 chip... a fritz chip... buyers beware!
Indiana State University will become the first public university in the state...
According to the Yahoo! Directory for such things, there's a whole five of them. Wow.
Frankly, I just don't see the point in this requirement. You shouldn't need anything for class other than a writing device, some paper and possibly your textbook (not needed in most of my classes). Even in computer science classes, there's no real need to have computers present just as there's no real need to have a typewriter for English class or beakers, pipettes and a bunsen burner for chemistry class (theory, not lab).
I can't help but wonder if the University will use the fact that all students have laptops to eliminate any public computer labs and the associated staff. The cynic in me thinks this is nothing more than an attempt to push the University's costs onto the students.
I hate when people bring laptops to class. Its like having a woodpecker in class. I have enough trouble paying attention as it is. Besides, no class session requires more than a page or two of handwritten notes, yet somehow people manage to type all the way through the class. I don't know how they get anything from the lecture when they can't just listen. If you want a complete transcript of the lecture than bring a tape recorder and type it in after. good study/review method anyway
Usually around the holidays though. The system maintains a constant number of people with mod points when a lot of those people don't use them for a while we hit a dry spell. In a day or two when their mod points expire and the points are given to other people we will go back to normal. It's just something you have to deal with until the system corrects it self.
That pedantic crap out of the way, I'd like to state one thing that drove me nuts in college were teachers who taught based on the book material.
Even more fun were the ones that did that and took attendance. If you're assigning me reading, I'll do the reading. If I heard the professor parroting what I'd read prior to the class, though, I'd shut off, do something else (normally defacing property in the school; I was a dick) and I'd never go to the class again except at test days.
The classes I loved were ones that not only addressed book material but went far beyond it into applications of said material in the world. If the class was 40% or less directly out of the book I was thrilled and would go all the time. As the number crept up to 100% I'd become more and more disgruntled. I can teach myself, thank you, and for a lot cheaper than $150-$250/cr hr.
Just the $.02 of a graduate.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
They require a laptop now.
Why?
They seem to have skipped that part.
Do you get textbooks now electronically without paying an arm and a leg?
Download or upload homework?
Have to have it to use the music service you have to pay for with tuition?!?
They require a laptop and it integrates seamlessly with the wireless network on campus to......... ?
If an extra pound bothers you, then lay off the twinkies. Half the RAM? How much RAM do you need to write papers and check email? We're talking about POOR, COLLEGE STUDENTS going to a PUBLIC UNIVERSITY.
I don't respond to AC's.
I'm sort of on the fence about whether or not it's fair to require students to have a laptop, it would be nice if the University or the state could subsidize at least a low end model that could reduce the cost to below say $500.
That being said I can see some real benefits, at least for the administration and faculty, for every student having a laptop. The University would not have to spend nearly as much on computer labs since every student will have their very own portable, wi-fi computer that they can use instead, (maybe they could use the savings to subsidize the laptops to an extent). Professors could have students bring their laptops to class on certain days if he wanted to have them use a certain program. As an engineer I can think of a ton of classes where we could have used this. Whenever we had to use Matlab, AutoCAD, Solidworks, Working Model, Labview, etc. we could never do it in class, either we had to all troop down to a lab somewhere or the Professor would give us some instructions and we would go home and do it. Also many professors are creating fairly extensive websites for their classes, having a laptop in class you could reference all this material at any time. I've also seen students in class using their laptops to record lectures, and even video record them using a portable webcam.
The more I think about it the more it actually does make sense. Just like a graphing calculator is pretty much a requirement nowadays for engineering students. I think in the future you'll see less of the big boxy computers in computer labs and more of students just having their own personal computer that they take around with them.
UNC Chapel Hill has required incoming freshmen to have laptops for at least the last five years. They give a minimum specifications list, but also have a university sponsored laptop program that sells IBM machines along with a nice warranty and insurance policy. Most students opt for the IBMs so they don't have to mess with it, and speaking as someone who works in the IT support department there, it sure makes life easy when you're troubleshooting problems.
I'm sure IBM (Lenovo, now) makes a pretty penny on it, though...
The university gets to brag about being high tech and leverage laptops for course work without ponying up the resources themselves. Poor students get yet another college bill to pay and probably not much educational payoff in the process. My old college came up with a "PCs required" policy with the outragious claim that poor students could just take out more financial aid to cover the costs. When will people understand that a lot of students are already on the borderline financially when it comes to affording college. The cost of this laptop might not sound like much to some, but there are thousands of students who will be deterred from higher education by this large of a nudge on their financial burden.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I went to the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology from 97-01. They've required the purchase of laptops since the mid 90s. Granted, it is a private school not public. I think the usefulness of a laptops in the classrooms can be determined by the courses in which you take. Being a science and engineering school, having a laptop in class was invaluable at Rose. We used them to record measurements using sonic sensors, applying complex mathematical algorithms in MatLab and Maple that a TI calculator couldn't dream of, and of course for all CS courses. Of course, there were some problem issues as well. During lectures, you could see students playing Quake, instant messaging and even watching porn. With a public school, there is more of a separation of subject matter than a private engineering school. I'd have to think that many of those students will never even use the laptops for more than personal use. Sure they may have to write a paper but that's what library computers are for. A student that doesn't have a real use for a laptop that can barely afford tuition is now forced to add a few thousand dollars more. That doesn't make sense. What the schools should really do is perhaps require certain degrees to acquire a laptop or computer. Then provide the rest of the students with the option of purchasing a laptop and spreading the cost over the four (or however many) years of tuition.
Yeah, it's the first state university in the state of Indiana, but it's definitely not the first.
I was a freshman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 5 years ago and we were required to have laptops as well. And yes, UNC is also a state university.
Thinkpads were also the preferred laptops there b/c there was an arrangment made with IBM at the time. For students who couldn't afford it, it was available as part of their financial aid.
This kind of thing is nothing big... RPI has required students to have a laptop for 6 years or something like that...::YAWN::
Sort of sad that the article did not mention anything about the Rose-Hulman laptop program. Not only have freshman been required to purchase laptops for seven or eight years now, but this is right in Indiana State's backyard.
I find it hard to believe that the ISU staff didn't make the five minute drive to check out Rose's program.
-It writes, rates, creates, even telecommunicates. Costs less, does more the Commodore 64. Compute's Gazette
It's actually a pretty sweet deal. Laptops will be included in the price of tuition. It's supposed to be a one time fee, and then for each semester you have your normal technology fee that colleges apply. Each year there after you are given the option to upgrade your laptop. From what I understood this was to be free or only a couple hundred dollar upgrade. However, since it's tacked onto tuition grants, student loans, etc... can be used to pay for the laptop.
There will be battery stations around campus in case you're in need for a charged battery before a class and didn't have time to charge. The campus is wireless of course. I also believe you get a choice in laptops ranging in price/performance.
The down side is you have to deal with campus tech support if you aren't savy enough.
That's funny I was "required" to have a laptop for Quinnipiac University last school year.
If my school had been telling me I had to take my laptop to class, then I'd probably be looking at two computers. If a computer is small enough to take everywhere, it probably doesn't have the resources for gaming, and compiling large programs would be a bear. Granted, I would have gone with a desktop for the second computer, as it's cheaper to get more power when it's not portable, but I wouldn't want my school telling me what needs my computer should meet.
Granted, the number of people in these circumstances will be relatively limited, but it still doesn't seem the university ought to be making such requirements.
I've seen it at a couple of Universities that they require the students of a particular college to buy laptops from the university. When I've seen it, the U sells ths LT to the student at greatly inflated prices - to the tune of $300-$500 more than the exact model computer direct from the manufacturer. Doesn't seem right, somehow.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
I don't at all like the idea of mandatory anything for colleges. If you want to go to college while living in a 10x10 sublet, then you ought to be able to do it. The important part is the academic knowledge and the degree, and whatever experience you get from co-ops or internships, provided that's even helpful to your field.
Piling on mandatory needs which incur costs, such as mandatory freshman housing or laptops, only makes college less accessible to more people. Is a kid working his way out of the inner city on a scholarship going to get his $1000 expense covered? Maybe not. Will it mean his scholarship runs out before he matriculates? Maybe.
That's not good for anyone.
If laptops are really that important that they need to be mandatory (when campus or library computing labs could easily make up for them), then the schools should provide them, instead of foisting these sorts of expenses upon the students. The days of college only being for middle and upper classes were, I thought, ancient history.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Both the students and the professors are pretty much universally against the laptop initiative, because we're mostly working class kids who can't afford a new laptop on top of tuition, books, and everything else. The president pushed this through with his lapdogs in the student government, and is using it to generate attention for the school, and as a bullet point in his marketing brochure, nothing more.
I grew up around Indiana State University.
First, know this: ISU is not Indiana University, they are completely different. IU is a Pretty Good School. ISU is a Bad School. I may be biased because I go to a good university, but, ISU is pretty (in)famously known as "I Screwed Up" because when the dumb people get dropped from a real school in Indiana, they go to ISU.
Now, that being said, this is just a publicity stunt to make ISU look cutting-edge, when, in reality, this is a university where the buildings are pretty scary-looking and the campus is located in a ghetto. Also, it smells bad.
Everyone talking about 'ghosting images to quickly repair f'd up machines' and whatnot: sorry, ISU's IT staff is hopeless. This will, undoubtedly, be a large clusterfuck.
Also keep in mind that Terre Haute and surrounding areas are known as economically depressed - having to purchase a laptop in order to attend ISU will be a significant hardship for many students.
Guess which laptop is the preferred one..."
you'd think they picked dell or something.
Supplies!
I'm a senior at ISU and totally agree. One more bullet point. That's all this not for profit corporation(notice I did not say Educational Institution) is. They just want to send more costs to students, and be "cutting-edge" while forcing students to take out a few more loans. Rediculous
I'm a part-time MBA student, and we are all required to purchase laptops. This is actually a good idea because they are useful for team projects, taking to the library, and so on, but lousy for using in the classroom. Initially some profs would require students to bring their laptops to class, but it turns out people were web surfing, IMing each other, checking personal email and so on, and not paying attention to the instructor. Eventually, many of the profs actually banned laptop use in the classroom for that reason.
Clayton College and State University in Morrow, GA required all students to have laptops starting in 1999. In fact they went one step further, They made it a point to buy all the laptops and give them to the students. Students had a $75 technology fee IIRC per semester, and were required to have their laptops available in class at anytime.
The biggest advantage was instructors/professors knew that all students had access to a computer. For the IT program it was nice simply because there was one less excuse for a student not to finish his or her work. For other programs, the laptop got in the way of the teaching. You had Instructors who were feeling obligated to find some use for the laptops in Math, Music, and Art classes, which didn't always lend a natural fit. The program was modified in 2002 so that students were required to purchase their own laptop. I was no longer involved at that point so I am not sure what happened after that, but I believe it was finally ended in 2004.
"The bass, the rock, the mic, the treble. I like my coffee black, just like my metal" - Mindless Self Indulgence
Ha, my highschool requires us to pay $80 a year to "rent" a laptop that you are required to carry with you at all times at school (and then lug it home for homework). It is a Dell Latitude laptop, and has a very tight group security policy. (And no, it doen't run on linux...) As a matter of fact, our entire county has recently made this change. Oh, and yes, this is a public school.
p.s. i did rtfa, and i do realize this is talking about a university, not a highschool, but i thought i would throw that out there.
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Having formerly been involved with network and lab support at a State university, It's entirely possible that the bean counters figured out its cheaper to have all the Students buy their own hardware, while all the schools need to do is foot the bill for a fancy wireless network. I suspect the support costs would be less as well, as opposed to running lots of cable everywhere. Just a thought :)
University of Minnesota (well, its Law School) has already started to require this. That is a public university.
It'd be fine if the required laptop eliminates the need to carry some books, but if it's one more thing to carry, no thanks!
Wonder how much lobbying power the textbook companies have at individual universities. No doubt they will fight any attempt to move to an all digital medium. Maybe they're just going to wait for Blue ray or some other media with better copy control... or they could go the route of the dongle, pop in your registered, serialized usb key and your good to go. But don't try to sell it back next year....
http://www.depauw.edu/laptop/
They're requiring 2006 freshmen to buy either a Dell or Apple laptop... Maybe I'm missing how Indiana State University requiring 2007 freshmen to do the same makes them the first?
The college I went to required all incoming students to have laptops beginning at least 6 years ago...
I am a final year student in the UK and I have had a laptop for the last 3 years. Looking back I remember there being a huge price range in laptops and a huge hardware spec. The investment I was about to make was a monumental one! I narrowed my search down to 2 machines. A sony PC and an Apple Powerbook, both around £2000. I chose the first 17 inch apple powebook because it looked nice, it was slim and made of aluminium and I hadn't heard of too many people saying they broke. I have used it every single day since! Apples protection plan it amazing, and lasts 3 years for an extra bit of cash. Also the machine still runs fine. The specs on my 3 year old mac are: 1ghz, 17 inch screen, 1GB ram, 60GB hard drive, bluetooth, airport, backlit keyboard, all sorts of inputs and outputs, 1 inch thick, reliable, etc etc. People are still spending good money today to have these specs. My point is, I think clever students might not choose the think pad. In addition to that they look horrible and dated already, what will they look like in 3 years? Nick
40 main AQ40 raid during boring classes. Awesome.
GCS/S d-x s+(+): a C++++$ UL+$ P+ L++$ !E--- W++@ N++>$ !o !K-- w++$ !O !M !V PS++>$ PE !Y PGP+ t+ 5++ X++ R tv b
Okay. This is the first public school in Indiana to require a laptop. Lots of schools have required students to own a laptop for a long time. I know that undergrad business programs have required it for 4 or 5 years now.
The public university I attend will begin to require incoming freshmen to own a laptop starting next fall. Their primary reason for this is that according to a survey, over 99% of students at the school own a computer of some sort, over 90% of which used laptops. The remaining 1 percent presumably could not afford a computer.
Because virtually all administrative tasks (registration, housing selection, turning in papers, etc.) occur via an online system, and that many reserarch assignments are much easeier via th einternet, students who do not own a computer are placed at a significant disadvantage. If students are not required to own a laptop, the school is not legally allowed to provide them with financial assistance to purchase one. I'm not sure how this works for private schools, but that's the way it goes for public schools. If your family is making just under $40,000 per year, purchasing a $2000 computer is simply not an option, even if you're being granted reduced tuition.
And of course, IT's job gets much easier, as everyone's on a standardized platform, and support costs are usually subsidized by the hardware vendor.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
The point of the university's policy isn't to get students to take them to class.
The point is to ensure all students have their own computer that is suitable for doing classwork, thereby eliminating the unfairness inherent when richer students can afford their own PC while poorer students have to compete for usage of underpowered lab computers.
If you're going to mandate that all students have their own computers, than it just makes sense to pick laptop over desktop. A laptop means you can work anywhere -- coffee shop, library, student center, dorm room, etc -- and it also means that if a teacher wants to do an interactive lesson now and then by stepping students through something on the computer, they can just ask students to bring their laptops to that lesson.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Laptops in every classroom could be helpful...assuming you type faster than you can write. Altho it would sure be annoying to hear umpteen students in the class click-click-clicking away. And anyway, who is paying for these laptops? Add that to the cost of books...unless they plan on putting the books on disk FOR this laptop. Hey there's an idea! Cut cost of printing books, sum it all up in the cost of a new laptop.
=*^.^*=
At my school, Milwaukee school of engineering, we have had the same policy since 1998. Every incoming freshman gets a laptop worth about $3500. The cost to the student is $900 a year. Then, Jr year, we trade in the old 2 year laptops and get brand new $3500 laptops which we again pay $900 a year and then get to keep when we graduate. The laptops come with a full 3 year warranty so unless the laptop is lost or stolen, the student is able to get their laptop repaired completely for free, this include accidental damage like a cracked LCD panel. At MSOE the students decide on the laptop for that year with administration approval. For the most part, we have gone with the HP mobile workstation line of laptops. Also, our campus is fully wireless in all buildings and in most spots had wired connections. As for laptop usage during class, it depends on the class. Some classes require the laptops for certain labs or they just need to have them daily for classes like Web Development. Other classes that do not require laptops people still bring them and take notes on them regularly, although some IMing/websurfing goes on during class, it's usually not a big problem. As for the software on the laptops, they include Windows XP pro, Office, Autocad, Matlab, Solid Works, And many other applications. Also, On many of the computers, A full and working install of Ubuntu Linux is set to duel boot with windows incase the students need to use Linux for some of their classes or just like Linux better then windows.
We've been discussing this at my campus, and one major argument for requiring laptops is that then students could use some loans with tight restrictions on what can be purchased (maybe Pell grants? I don't know the specifics)--ie only required materials. So if the university requires laptops, then perhaps students who would not otherwise get the laptops could. The issue regarding if it is appropriate to increase student dependence on student loans is a whole 'nother one...
Spare me the sob story; it wasn't that long ago that I was on the all-ramen diet at State U. If price is your only concern, they should get a Dell for only $500. Or go on eBay and buy a used notebook for $350 or $400. After all, you don't need a 5 hour battery life, 2GHz Pentium, or ultra high resolution screen to run Word, surf the internet or check your email. That is what a truly strapped student would do, unless they are a moron.
For those who are interested in dropping nearly a grand on a NEW notebook, the lowest-end Thinkpad does not really offer any "huge" price or value advantage over an iBook. When you're making an investment that big, a difference of a couple hundred bucks isn't much, and should be weighed against the difference in the value of the machine. Upgrading the Thinkpad to match/beat the iBook totally removes the price incentive, and it becomes a matter of preference, NOT an "obvious choice" or a fanboy rant like the GP would have you believe.
Personally, I like them both (esp. the thinkpad tablets!), and am just familiar enough with both lines to call "Bullshit" when somebody raves about how overpriced a Mac is compared to a Thinkpad. Looking over the prices today, I saw that things haven't changed THAT much since I bought an iBook 2 years ago as a starving grad student--after pricing it against (OMGZ!) Thinkpads.
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
Universities must maintain computer labs which are getting more and more expensive. The mandate for students to have their own computer will negate the need for computer labs mainted by the university. Because of the mandate, the school will provide financial aid for those to buy their own laptop.
It's all about money. I see it as a good thing.
Who actually uses the computer labs?
Yeah, well us facutly have a tough time sorting out HTML and TXT.
I agree with your point of not repeating what is written in the book. Teaching has to be more than that. But teachers need to follow the book. They need to at least basically agree on terminology and order of material. The job of the student is to read the book, and learn what he or she can. The job of the professor it to
a) Cheerlead to keep the students excited
b) Provide additional perspective on the material, and
c) go deeper when he/she can.
So I agree with you on that point. My point was that I don't need students to copy down every graph and equation that I put on the board if they have them in their book. And if students come to class having read the book, they can know what they do and don't have to write down.
For technical courses there is a lot of equations and such that would need to be entered in a lecture. I'm assuming that a professor will have course notes available but there will be gaps that are filled in during lecture. Entering equations via a keyboards sucks, I haven't found anything that really works.
Having a tablet pc (like a Thinkpad X41 or X60) would be useful in this. A slate tablet pc is rather useless to a student. It needs to be a hybrid tablet.
As some else mentioned, these are only tools but I think in technical courses it would useful.
Of course, software and such might be an issue. However, if the school is smart they have plenty of iron in the back that students can connect to and run the software they need.
And I do agree with your assessment of teaching. I just get bored sooo easily if there's no real expansion of the material (read: significant) that I either stop going or (in crueller cases) attempt to find ways to undermine the arguments presented and begin asking questions along those lines. Worked better in fluffy business classes than something like chemistry. It's damned hard to argue against covalent bonds. Unless you love Jesus.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I just graduated from ISU. And I wouldn't say all the students and faculty are against the laptop program. I think the laptop idea is a great idea. Today's society needs more interactivity at school with computers. It amazes me how many people who I've worked with in the past and present, who are in management positions, do not understand the concept of drag and drop... You would be suprised how little people know, even those who grew up with computers.
I'm sorry, but things need to advance, there are other universities out there, and scholarships that could be used toward this sort of thing. If you can't obtain financial aid of some sort, or a scholarship, or just don't want to get a laptop, then don't, go somewhere else. The fact is, they've done an excellent job so far of presenting the idea. You DO NOT have to purchase one of the laptops they list, you CAN use an Apple if you so desire. The only rule of thumb is you must meet minimum requirements.
TFA reads an awful lot like something straight from the vendor's marketting folk. It spends at least as much time talking about Lenovo as about the requirement. It even references Lenovo's web site instead of anything at the university for more information.
Thus, I'd be a bit hesitant to read anything much into the statement that Levorno is "preferred" unless I had something more specific from an impartial source. Note that "preferred" is not particularly close to "required". It might well mean nothing more than that the university has some special purchase deal with Lenovo and/or recommends them to students that don't have any idea what to choose. I just can't tell from thie article.
Not that I have anything in particular against Lenovo (other than being a stupid name). For a windows laptop, its not a bad choice. I have plenty against mandating any particular vendor, but it isn't clear to me that that is the case here, as much as TFA tries to make it sound like that.
I've been posting here with varying levels of intensity for a good few years now, and I have NEVER had mod points.
I metamoderate regularly, have good karma, and do not post excessively.
Something is definitely wrong with the mod points allocation system.
Read Pynchon.
I've never seen a point for a laptop in any of the classes I've taken, especially the higher level. When I'm taking a chemistry class, or a physics class, or a math class, or so on, there is no good way to quickly take notes when you need to write equations or draw structures. Even when I was taking English and German and other humanities classes, I still would never have used it. The only time I can think of using it would be those awful, large lectures that has a guy droning on at a PowerPoint for an hour, because then I could at least take notes inside the program if I could get the presentation beforehand.
UNC Chapel Hill Started this requirement, known as the Carolina Computing Initiative (CCI) in 2002. It has helped deliver more tools to aid in learning. Not everyone learns the same way, and thos elearning methods can be delivered on demand via web content or shared storage directories. Its another way of helping out the bell curve so to speak.
Maybe this is a first for public colleges, but I know Rensselaer has been requiring laptops for years. Probably others too.
I saved up enough for an 80286 towards the end of my first year.
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
i'm not too concerned if they don't support alternate platforms as long as they don't require you to use a specific one.
ie, i don't care if they won't come and help me do something on a linux or mac as long as they don't require me to use features that are specific to one (obviously usually windows) platform.
as to whether or not you are going to learn more or whatever because you have a computer is highly doubtful. however some things will be easier to do and you won't have to bum computer time off the libraries systems or a friends for important papers and whatnot...
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Is a specific OS required to be installed on the laptops? You know where I'm going here...
It really grinds me when educational institutions require the use of proprietary software and closed standards so I'm curious to know specifically what requirements must be met above and beyond mobile hardware. For instance, must all assignments be completed with The World's Most Popular Office Suite (tm) in addition to each student's owning a laptop?
Also, if you have two networks with the same name, e.g. 'Netgear', then OS X can get confused. I've only had this happen a few times, but it's really annoying. The simple solution is to make sure you name your routers appropriately.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
Well, you can't -- not exactly anyway. There's always room for argument in what hardware you compare.
However my point was that the only way you can get a ThinkPad that's less expensive than an iBook is to get a configuration that's below what's commonly considered to be acceptable (or at least, would be to me). I can't imagine running Windows XP in 192 MB of RAM; it would be torturous. If you want something less subjective, you could look around and find reviews of various Windows machines, and see what they recommend for minimum system requirements to run well, and then price out a system at that level, and compare it to an iBook. (The base model iBook is a quite acceptable Mac platform, as long as you don't want to do anything heavy-duty; although I suppose if you really didn't trust me on that either you'd have to look for trusted reviews there as well.)
I don't know how you'd go about comparing a Linux notebook to Apple, on price/performance grounds. There are so many variables on the Linux end (are you running fluxbox, or KDE? Is this going to be a lightweight vterm client, or do you want to run WoW in Wine?) that I don't think it would be possible. So I just stuck with Windows, because first of all that's what most buyers of PC laptops use, and second that's the only thing that Lenovo sells anyway.
Obviously it's always going to be apples-to-oranges, and in reality people choose their OS first and then buy a computer second, within a certain price range. But since the GP was bringing out the tired old line about Apple notebooks being so much more expensive than PCs, thus opening up the whole price-comparison can of worms, I felt that it was acceptable to make a comparison.
My point is only this: there are lots of things you can criticize Apple for (I do fairly frequently, and I own several), but the "bang for your buck" factor of their notebooks isn't really one of them, at least at the low end. Apple's entry-level gear is very competitive, price-wise. Whether you can use what they're offering because of software concerns however, is another question.
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When I started undergraduate law/science (in Aussieland, 16yo high school graduates can go straight into a law or medicine degree) I was so excited about my shiny laptop computer.
I think I took it to my first day of school, and no more.
Laptops are useless in lectures. They're too heavy to sit on the little desks properly. They slide off and especially in old theatres, the little desk goes down, taking the computer with it.
Laptops are awful for taking notes. You've got to start it up, get the right programme going (and it might crash etc) and then you're the dude tapping away in the theatre while everyone else is trying to listen to a lecturer with a funny accent talking about obscure technical stuff. Also, the screen is distracting.
Laptops don't last the day. You've got to do several hours of lectures, study and tutorials each day, and you might not have time to go home and plug in. There are hardly any plugs for computers in the library (but plenty of computers) and maybe one or two spare in an awkward corner of the computer lab.
My campus has no wireless anywhere. If you want internet/intranet/course stuff, you have to log in on one of the many computers in the many labs and libaries. So the only other option is to use 3G on my phone or network my phone to my computer - not worth it.
Computers are heavy but books are light.
Computers are fragile but books are not - spiral notebooks are not failsafe (the metal spiral thingy tends to get out of shape) but they're still an improvement and they only cost a dollar or two for your trouble. You can't get your backpack rained on if it's got a computer in it. You also can't throw it around, have it fall off a desk, or take your eyes off it for a second.
For maths/science lectures, you want to take your notes by hand so you can draw wavefunctions, enter equations with funny symbols and calculus etc. Otherwise you've got to spend a few minutes and take up more space with more gadgets and gizmos.
Filing paper is easier than filing computer files. Or, at least it's not harder.
I've got my own gorgeous Compaq widescreen notebook useful for surfing slashdot, obtaining class notes, participating in discussion (assignments and class material), getting maths things like trig identities, reading background info, buying textbooks from Amazon... just your normal student computer use. But as for taking notes and writing weekly assignments, I don't think it's worth my while. Even using TeXmacs for assignments, it's not worth taking the time (since most of my assignment work is scribbling and crossing out and scribbling again), better to save that formal stuff for only the biggest assignments and published works.
I've even found that at my university, it's not worth taking my own computer to computer labs. The computers at the lab can have all sorts of expensive IDEs and cool software that I can't afford. The exception is Scilab labs, where the advantage is computational crunch, but often you need Maple, Mathematica, Matlab and oh, maybe Fortran and Scilab within a year. Easier to just run them on the big computer which has all we need. There's an advantage in having a computer at home if you want to write at home, then ftp your files over to school and telnet in to run them.
So it helps to have your own computer, but it needn't be portable, and if you don't have one you can do just as well using the labs.
*#*#*#*#*#******* I love peanut butter sandwiches!
Thankfully, I graduate in a couple months.
http://outcampaign.org/
But only for a select group of students. I manage the technology for the College of Fine Arts at a Michigan University. Of all the students that come in we only require the graphic design students to purchase a laptop. Does it make sense to require a painter to buy a specific laptop? Not really. But for graphic Design it is a different case. Incoming freshmen take one year of foundation courses and gen-ed classes. In their sophomore year they apply to the Graphic Design Program and enter a very rigid course schedule where 2-3 classes a semester rely on computer usage. When they are accepted they are provided information about the computers along with various purchase stratedgies with discounts on software. Their assignments range from programs found in the Adobe CS package to the Macromedia Studio. It got to the point that there were so many classes being taught in the lab that there was no time for students to get in to do their assignments. So when It was time to upgrade the Lab computers, we decided to require graphic design student to purchase a Powerbook and outfitted a lab with keyboards, mice, and 20" displays for them to have class in. Then we were able to create a lab that cost less (iMacs) and open it back up for all the other Art students.
So if the program is thought out then there would be a benefit. If it is just mandated to all freshmen there might be cause for question.
KW
Something shiny! Over there!
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
For liberal arts classes, One Note absolutely rocks. You can record the lecture while you type and the recording is indexed according to your typing. You can go back later, click on your notes and tada, the lecture comes up at the appropriate time. VERY, VERY cool stuff.
For Math/Science, I think you would need a tablet to work effectively and be completely electronic. Drawing with a pad just doesn't work to well.
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I got accepted to ISU, I'm so ready to go and I'm going to be styling you my sweet laptop. Anyone know where I can get a wifi card for a Tandy 100?
Laptops are required at the High School where I teach. They are a tool like any other tool, and can enable enrichment in the classroom. A teacher can monitor laptop use in the classroom, if they just stay aware of their students . . . novel idea, yes?
I often have my students check facts through subscription databases, do music writing projects using Finale Notepad and Reason. Other teachers are able to do experiments in which the experiment paraphenalia connects right to the computer to collect data. Math classes use Mathematica.
We will be instituting a laptop program in our middle school next year.
I teach at a school where we have laptops in the HS and will institute a program in the middle school next year. Laptops are a tool. For those who think that it negatively impacts learning, learning is always impacted in classes where teachers are not aware of what their students are doing. In my class, student discussion is augmented by their ability to access subscription databases to check their facts, or even find facts to support their assertions. Our science deparments use experiment paraphenalia where the students plug in, data is collected. Mathematics classes use Mathematica. BTW, students at my school get into major universities (Harvard, Yale, U PENN, MIT, U of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon, Cal Tech, UC Berkeley, Stanford) many of them in mathematics and science.
Acadia has done this since 1996. However, it wasn't universal in 1996.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
I worked for a time at the 'Center for Instructional Technology' at UNC-Chapel Hill (as a student consultant) - this same program was instituted in 1999. Since, then at least 5+ public universities have instituted similiar programs. Another example of PR departments run amok ... Unbelievable
>> But if all you need to do is drive to and from class,
>> what's the point of spending another $34,000?
Cute coeds?
If you can stay calm, while all around you is chaos... then you probably haven't completely understood the question.
Hullo there. Just wondering what outliner you are using, as I've been looking far and wide for a good one (preferably cross-platform (but Win-only is okay), and definitely free (as in beer)).
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