Continued Opposition To Laptops in Schools

theskeptic writes "The WSJ has an article about opposition to programs that provide laptops to 6-8th grade kids. Detractors say that the kids are wasting too much time online browsing dangerous sites, instant messaging friends, and posting to Myspace. Parents are worried that serious learning is being neglected in the quest to 'dazzle up presentations with fancy fonts instead of digging through library books.' Some parents however are 'enthusiastic laptop proponents,' one saying the laptop has helped her twelve-year-old son 'master critical professional skills like how to compile a PowerPoint presentation.'" Gaaah.

Comments

Much ado about nothing?

[TripMaster Monkey]

It sounds like the vast majority of problems that this program is encountering could be solved by a halfway competent network administrator applying some basic restrictions.

(Hey....I'm a halfway competent network administrator...where do I send my resume? ^_^)

Seriously, though, a combination of Group Policy restrictions, a firewall at the school, and perhaps the use of a content filtering product like WebSense would instantly solve about 99% of the current issues, while causing relatively few problems in return. Sure, there's going to be a few hardcore users that manage to get around the system, but I think that if the student is savvy enough to outwit the Network admin, the school guidance counselor needs to talk to him/her about the various exciting and rewarding opportunities in the field of Information Technology. After all, hacking is an education in itself...a clever sysadmin would post rewards to any student who could game his system and show his work, so the sysadmin could plug the identified security holes.

Re:Much ado about nothing?

[kthejoker]

Ridiculous. Almost all behavioral problems ARE related to boring lectures. See this article. Boys are treated different in our new reverse affirmative action educational system.

Aggressive, rational-dominated, left-brained boys are given short shrift.
They are punished for questioning anything, particularly the purpose of assignments.
They are forced to adopt coping mechanisms that are inappropriate for school.

Boys are troublemakers, girls are not.

The flipside: girls are subservient, obedient "yes men" in the world of schooling. They do everything without question. They don't like to think for themselves, because it posits them as disobedient.

It's practically Freudian, the difference in "looking for approval" between boys and girls.

In the early half of the 20th century, most schoolteachers were female, and lived in a pre-feminist world. They taught to boys and girls, cajoled them both, catered to them individually if need be, and especially tolerated some of the more "wild side" of "boys will be boys" attitude.

Today's female teachers have grown up not only deifying their own equality cum superiority as canon, but also with a wanton disregard for "cutting someone slack" and, more importantly, the individual nature of students. Thus upon entering the classroom, they immediately identify their problems, which *surprise surprise* are always boys.

So, is this the answer then? Boys are just more problematic than girls, by an astounding margin? Or, in fact, are boys being emasculated and marginalized in the classroom? There is a lot of good literature on this, by the way. Check out "Raising Cain", or "Johnny Won't Read" or any other number of scholarly books on the increasing condescension and inflexibility displayed towards the male psyche in America's classroom.

Back to the topic, boring lectures are just the tip of the iceberg. They constitute a perpetual pattern of overinvolvement on the part of the teacher. Education after 13 used to consist of the Socratic method and a whole lot of "personal reading." They expected results, but they did not predetermine them.

Welcome to the 21st century of education. It's going to get worse, too.

Re:Filmstrips

[MBCook]

I was in a small private middle/highschool years ago and they decided to do a laptop program. Now I loved it (it meant I got a laptop), but that didn't make them useful. For computer classes, the students used... the school computers (because they couldn't afford to give out the software they used). For most classes you weren't allowed to use them. The classes that really didn't make much use of them. I remember our science class. The laptops were used for typing up lab reports and notes and definition lists. None of them were due in class so while we could type them up and turn them in, there was no need to if you could look busy enough to not annoy the teacher. This was quite a while ago (Pentium MMX 266 was new for laptops, about '98 or so?) so chatting wasn't too big of a problem (ICQ was the big one then). But the kids used them to play games (Solitare, etc because they couldn't play many real games) or just surf the net (good thing they put those network jacks everywhere) and e-mail. I shudder to think what MySpace would have wrought.

As a kid I enjoyed it, because I the kind who used it for school and learning on my own. For 98% of the students there, the laptops were an expensive waste and often a distraction when used. Plus they were heavy.

A good computer lab and a good teacher will do far more for most students than giving them laptops will. Require them to have desktops and home and give THOSE out if little Billy "must" have a computer. Take all that laptop money and make more computer labs. If you are going to spend $1000 on each student to give them a laptop, get a computer for every forth kid in the school that's really nice with great software for $2000. That costs half as much and is probably better for everyone. Spend the rest on a good admin and a couple of very competent computer teachers.

critical professional skills?? bullshit

[HelloKitty]

>> critical professional skills

these parents have no idea what "critical professional skills" are... sure, maybe if your career goal is to be some kind of personal assistant for powerpoint, then yeah, ok... but powerpoint? critical? really?

but damn, you can learn powerpoint on your own, it's not that difficult... and certainly not worth spending the amount on a laptop...

now... if you said learning c++ was a critical professional skill, sure, that makes sense... but why can't the kid do this at home?

don't get me wrong, I like the idea of laptops in class, but only as a fast way to take notes in class, or convenience of keeping all your data and projects in once place (productivity tool)... considering the big distraction they can be, maybe for learning software or programming languages kids should use computer labs or the laptop at home only? But that doesn't even seem to fix everything...

school is about rigid regementation, partly to get the unfocused kids to focus (common theory of the school catering to the slowest)... having a laptop in the classroom presents a huge hole if websites, IM, or even a more interesting personal project is distracting the user...

this may sound lame, but maybe there needs to be some technology added here to force the laptops into a state where only relevent work is happening. something as simple as the teacher being able to see all screens to police the students to be on topic... or better yet, have in classroom computers with a good centralized user account system (i.e. linux with NFS mounted user accounts)...

Maybe the goal should be, a computer in every classroom... and a computer at home for every child...
More expensive I know... but it would help to regement things... Clearly, having a laptop for each child IS important for those children who have limited access to a computer at home. At least this way, the student can learn computer skills on their own...

Another thought. Has anyone done research into whether having distracting things like laptops help kids multitask better and actually focus better? It may actually help students learn to tune out distractions... Again, I bet there's a percentage of students that mentally just can't handle this temptation... I wonder if laptops for kids actually polarize kids, making the ubergeeks brilliant and well prepared, and the distractable kids uber stupid...

This issue is apparently complex. :)

From personal experience...

[trivialscene]

Last year I taught at a private high school that required all of its students to purchase laptops. At first I thought it sounded like a great idea; how cutting-edge. But before the year was over, I came to see the whole program as a waste of the parents' and the school's money.

The issue isn't really anything from the technical end. IT had WebSense up and running, which blocked anything they deemed inappropriate for anyone connecting to the school's wireless (nevermind the few students who found ways around this). And IT could monitor what each computer logged into the system was up to at any point in time. They kept a record, so if a teacher suspected a student of doing anything unacceptable, but didn't want to make a big deal about it during class, all it took was an email: "What was Johnny doing between 1:15 and 1:30? Oh, playing a game? Thanks." And the next day the kid would get detention. As TripMaster Monkey said, a competent IT staff solved all of the problems from that end.

The issue is why is the program worthwhile? In what way does the education of the students become more successful by requiring their parents to spend xxxx dollars on a laptop for each of their children? And is it worth the hassle to the school's IT people?

Some might argue that it helps develop the students' computer skills. I'm not sure about national statistics, but I can assure you that every one of my students had at least one computer in their home. And trust me; they knew how to use it. Toting a laptop around campus all day didn't make them better users.

I have also heard arguments that each student having a computer affords for excellent instructional opportunities beyond the standard lecture and note-taking approach. Of course this is true, but I would have much rather had a projector in my room (which I did not) so that I could show visual aids from my computer. They are many ways to reach out to students with different learning styles and to make class more exciting that don't require every single child to have a laptop. And many ways that are less expensive.

In addition to the burden on IT of keeping up with the above-mentioned 'security measures', they had to employ one guy who did nothing but repair laptops (or send them off to be replaced) five days a week. That was his entire job. I've seen more laptops in multiple pieces, with broken/missing keys, and with cracked screens than I can count. Children in grade school do not need to be held responsible for keeping a laptop in running order. The average fifteen-year-old can barely be help responsible for walking across the room without tripping over his own feet. High school students rough house, drop things, are clumsy, are forgetful (I would never dream of leaving my computer on a bench for two hours), and just generally are not prepared to take care of these expensive pieces of equipment.

Most importantly, I know of very few teachers who in any way used the laptop capability regularly in their class. Some teachers forbid the students from using their computers during class, probably to reduce unacceptable use. I never had any problems with in-class laptop use because I taught physics and I don't know many people that can keep pace note-taking with that much mathematical notation (and 98% of the students couldn't type fast enough to keep pace in history class, either...so much for the 'saves paper from note-taking' argument), so if a laptop was out while I was teaching, knew someone was up to no good. The only time the computers ever saw the light of day in my room is when I didn't want to start on a new subject for the last five minutes of class, so I would let the kids work on WebAssign homework. As for lab data analysis, the upper-end TI's that all of the students had could do everything I needed, and if they couldn't, it's nothing that couldn't be done at home.

My point is: mandatory laptop programs in grade school have a short list of benefits which is overwhelmed by the subsequent detriments. The (questionable) honing of computer skills and introduction of new (seldom-used) teaching tools does not outweigh the cost to everyone involved and hassle to the IT group.

Degrees

[R3d M3rcury]

[...] Another idea would be to pay more money to lure in math and science teachers who actually have bachelor's degrees in their math or science.

Rubbish.

A teacher has to enjoy what they're teaching. A teacher has to be able to communicate not only the facts about what their teaching but their enjoyment of the subject matter. Whether they have a bachelors, masters, or PhD in the subject matter is inconsequential.

Do you need to know calculus to teach arithmetic, algebra, or geometry? Heck, if I had a bachelors degree in mathematics, I'd be bored stuff teaching kids algebra! I wouldn't be using my college education one damn bit!

My father was a high school math teacher for 21 years because he loved teaching math. He has a masters degree, which he got while teaching. He never used the math he learned getting his masters in the classroom. But most of his former students consider him to have been a good math teacher because he communicate his interest in math as well as the facts. He didn't suddenly become a better teacher because he had a masters degree.

You don't have to be a genius to be a high school teacher--it's high school! But you have to be able to interest others in what you're interested in. That's the hard part.