An iPod For Every Kid In Michigan

mikesd81 writes "Over at C|Net there is an article about Michigan spending $38 million to distribute an iPod to every kid, for learning purposes. From the article: 'On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music player.' The plan included measures to tax soda and satellite TV services to pay for it, among other things, to raise funds. If you recall, Duke University tried something like this with mixed results. How financially strained will Michigan residents feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else's kid an iPod?"

Comments

really?

[sam.thorogood]

Please allow me to contribute the obligatory "yes, because blackboards and chalk have clearly failed us" response.

Re:really?

[fishthegeek]

Observationally, as a teacher I would like to suggest that the kids could try these revolutionary ideas instead:

Take notes.
Read their textbooks.
Email the teacher (my kids do this one a lot)
Actually pay attention.

I see this as giving the kids a device they won't use for the purpose intended (for the most part anyway), and as just another silly idea from the Ivory Tower folks. This won't save one ream of paper IMHO. Schools burn through paper like you wouldn't believe.

Re:really?

[MidnightBrewer]

As a teacher, I completely believe you. I also agree that I would sooner see this as a pay raise for me than spent on an iPod that will get lost, stolen, or broken within six months and never hold even one lecture related to class. The irony of this kind of idea is that they'll give these kids the iPods and completely fail to give the schools the resources to record and publish anything that could go on the iPods. Do the schools also get recording equipment? Does anybody at the school know how to make a website, or an RSS feed?

The only thing the kids are going to learn is that the government really does waste their parents' tax money on cool stuff.

Re:really?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

> nobody's yet figured out a way to make 30 copies and then take the blackboards home with them

Mmmm...I'm guessing you never went to school so you don't know how it works.

Umm..

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not spend the money on text books or library books or classrooms or teachers? Or all four?

Re:Umm..

[hey!]

Well, the idea is that they'll be used kind of like text books, I guess.

WRT to teachers, of course that's the best and surest way to improve education. Lower class size. If class size wasn't important than the elite in this country wouldn't be sending their kids to prep schools where classes are four or five students sitting around a table with a teacher.

While increasing the number of qualified teaches is almost a surefire way of improving education, it's also the most expensive. Since it's the most expensive thing you deal with, often money is well spent just to improve the effectiveness of our use of teacher time. This means hiring aides to handle non-teaching chores, specialists in math and reading and so forth.

My attitude toward something like this is like my attitude towards an Iraq troop surge: the idea itself is neither nor good nor bad, it depends on whether you have a credible plan to use them. I'm not saying that the iPod idea is a good one, but it is not necessarily bad. Just because iPods are a lot of fun doesn't mean they can't be used as serious educational tools. If money is tight, then creative ideas for marginal improvements are actually more worth looking at. If we were swimming in dough, the answer to the best use of our dough would be simple: reduce class sizes.

I have a feeling that the idea will go down in flames, because the public instinct is exactly the opposite. When we're flush, we might consider something like this. When money is tight, we obsess about things we can't afford.

Who will monitor the usage?

[ShadowFalls]

It is hard to see how they could keep these iPods from being used for purposes other than educational. Who pays for stolen ones or broken ones? Some parents can't afford one to give to their kids on their own, to replace one would be atrocious. In the end, this is just more politicians wasting time on things that do not really matter instead of focusing on the things that do.

This is a horrible idea.

[forkazoo]

Or, at least, it is a horrible idea unless I can manage to be declared eligible.

Seriously, how about spending the millions of dollars on teachers? I just can't see any real requirement for a DAP for educational purposes. Want the students to be able to listen to lectures as home? Put MP3's on the school website and let students listen to them at the computer or put them on their own DAP. Need students to be able to listen to audio on their own while in class? 30 million dollars buys a lot of blank CD-R's, and CD players are a hell of a lot less expensive than iPods.

30 million dollars also buys a hell of a lot of teacher bonuses. IMNSHO, Investing in teachers will have more of a benefit than whatever hair brained scheme they have cooked up for the iPods.

Re:This is a horrible idea.

[PhoenixAtlantios]

It's sad that I managed to decipher IMNSHO without pausing to process it, even though I've never seen it before. The Internet has corrupted me =(

I have to agree with the idea of investing money in teachers instead of the students though. Plans to give students free iPods and PSPs just seem to be extremely short sighted, as when given the choice between working and playing games/music I'm fairly sure I know which one most teenagers would choose. Giving the teachers laptops, maybe giving them Broadband for free at home, etc. would likely have a more beneficial effect on learning.

Re:This is a horrible idea.

[DavidTC]

I like how people, when talking about how much teachers work, love to mention the fact they're only working 9 months a year. And then add in 'and holidays'. Um, no, not 'and holidays'. Teachers have to work 190 days or so, which barely fits in 9 months without holidays. School years are actually 10 months, with a month of holidays spaced in there.

So your calculations about summer school are entirely off. If the 10 month year paid 54 thousand, then summer school would be maybe another 11 thousand, so we're talking about 65 thousand there. And this completely ignores the fact that teachers can't just 'decide' to teach summer school. Maybe one out of ten teachers is wanted for summer school. And, no, they can't run out and get a job elsewhere, because that's exactly the wrong time of year to be looking for jobs. They're competing with high school students.

And they completely ignores the fact they do without a lunch hour. It's more a lunch 20 minutes, and lower grade teachers eat with their class, so it's not a break at all.

'Traditional' 9-5 day is 8 hours minus an hour for lunch is 7 hours times 20 days a month times 12 months, for 1680 hours a year.

Teacher 7:30-3:30 day is 8 hours times 190 days. That's 1520 hour, or a single month extra. Of course, a lot of teachers come in around 7 instead, or leave about 4. My mother did both, for ten years, and barely had time to do all the work required of her. I saw plenty of other teachers that did that too. Even if they don't show up for themselves extra, teachers end up hanging around before and after school for quite a lot of school-required functions, from monitoring students before classes to parent/teacher conferences to PTA meetings to after-school clubs.

Of course, people in other contract jobs work extra too, but usually not consistently. Maybe once a year they end up working a 12-hour a day week.

Oh, and teachers don't get any sick days or personal leave days. Well, they do, but they have to pay their replacement, which no one in any other job has to do. Just like no other eight hour job doesn't have a lunch break.

Teachers work weird times, compared to other jobs, but pretending they work less actual amounts of time is just ignorance. They may work 190 days a years instead of the 240 days that other contract workers do, but that doesn't have any bearing on the actual hours spent, which often is about the same amount other contract workers work.

And the reason you hear about underpaid teachers is that, in many parts of the country, they still are. Michigan, however, is not one of those places.

... higher taxes to buy someone else's kid ...

[pedantic bore]

They'll probably feel the same way that they do about paying higher taxes to give someone else's kid a better education, or some else's parents a better senior center, or the people on a different street a better sidewalk...

Part of being a community is pooling resources in to help others. Even if you don't have any children of your own, for example, someone paid for your schooling, and when you're an adult you pay it back.

Of course, then there are the endless arguments about exactly how this money should be spent...

Re:Some points

[tidewaterblues]

Lucky for me I happen to be a Michigan resident living in a strained economic area. I can attest fully that this idea is beyond moronic in our current economic climate.

I work in higher education IT, and I have a fair idea about what does and does not work in the classroom. This is yet another example of people believing that throwing technology at students will make them learn better. We have done this on a grand national scale to the tune of billion of dollars in various programs, and so far it has not had a measurable impact. Where I work we just had one of the major DOE education program spends thousands of dollars on an enormous wide-format printer for underprivileged students. So that they can print posters. Posters. In college. This is their idea of a sound technological investment in education. Not to mention that we already had one just like it.

The fact of the matter is that no one "gets it" when it comes to technology in the classroom. An until they do, crap like this will keep creeping into legislation. The only silver lining about this is that there is no way in hell the governor will sign this measure into law.

Incomplete support

[halalay]

I expect that teachers will be given one day of training on incorporating the use of iPods into their teaching, provided no other resources or time to do successful incorporation, be blamed when the program flops, and be that much more reluctant to invest themselves in other new and promising tech initiatives in education.

I am a high school info tech teacher in Michigan. Some of my classes are currently working to produce podcasts to help improve their understanding of available resources to support their current and future learning and to increase the range of media that they can communicate through. I have only just heard of the iPod initiative. The research I share with my students shows that good podcasts take planning and use intelligent editing. Class lectures done in podcasts will be of no more value than current hard copy if the students don't listen to or view them.

iPods for learning have potential, but despite the good intentions, it currently is just another top down, half-baked solution to a serious problem. Past experience leads me to be very cynical of tech initiatives for education, not because they can't work, but because they are incompletely supported.

Cool, a second iPod, courtesy of the taxpayers!

[LaughingCoder]

As of 2003, there were 52 million school age children in the US (http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/censusstatistic/a/l atestpopcounts.htm).

As of the end of 2006, there were 42 million iPods sold (http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6416165.html )

It strikes me that a large percentage of the Michigan school kids probably already have iPods.

Re:I'm sorry, what?

[Lawrence_Bird]

soapbox mode is on

Er.. no. How many billions more dollars must be wasted on the 'education system' before people realize throwing money at it does no good - including pay for teachers.

The AFT teacher salary survey for the 2004-05 school year found that the average teacher salary was $47,602

Note that in 2005 the median household income was $46,300. [we'll assume teacher salaries are not so widely dispersed that the mean is a fair estimate of the median] Teachers get a tremendous benefits package and do not work a full year. The students educated before electronic blackboards, computers in every class, class size under 20, (insert stupid education metric here) managed to graducate high school and go on to such things as developing quantum mechanics, various field theories, nuclear weapons, man on moon, space probes,.... And until you actually pay for the little rugrats education by owning a property you will never fully understand just how much it costs. My latest assessment results in local school taxes in excess of the full year tuition at the state college. And before you claim the college is subsidized, so is the local school system. The system is horribly broke and it is time turn back the clock and revert to what once worked very well (note to parents: this might also include getting the balls to disciplining your child).

I wonder if there would be the same type...

[lord_mike]

...of outrage if the suggestion was to buy MacBooks for every classroom.

Probably not... although, I imagine that 30 years ago, there was probably some resistance to buying kids Apple II's in their schools, with the same old curmudgeon responses, "But the roads stink. We don't need more stuff in schools... bah!!!"

Yes, Michigan roads stink... I always know I've hit the Michigan border when I hear the "kerchunk, kerchunk" every few seconds... you can set a timer to it. Perhaps it's the fact that you guys drive like 90 MPH.

Michigan is in the same dire straights that Ohio is now, but it's not because of Jennifer Granholm or anything the state government did or did not do. The U.S. automobile industry is in the tanker, and the economy of Michigan feeds off of the Big 3. No amount of state intervention (or non-intervention) would have helped the situation. If you can blame anyone, blame our federal government, who has shown little interest in protecting American industries. Michigan is just feeling it's disastrous effects. Of course, political opponents are using this to their advantage. But, does anyone really believe that DeVos would have been able to improve anything?

This single line item in the budget that has everybody so in an uproar won't pass. It can't pass, since the state can't run a deficit like the feds... It sure struck a nerve, but unfairly so, I believe.

Thanks,

Mike

Re:You have got to be kidding..

[Dun Malg]

I don't live in Michigan, so I don't know if this would work, but here is my idea.

Implementing local sales taxes might create problems since the system is not set up to deal with that. However, what they can do is, if not already, create additional state sales tax rates.

Certain businesses would have a higher sales tax rate depending on the type of business.

Why? What possible justification is there for implementing a byzantine variable sales tax based on the type of business?

Perhaps superstores (like Wal-Mart) be subject to an addition 1 cent/dollar sales tax. Prices are low enough already, so this wouldn't be a big deal. Ah, they old misguided "they can afford it" reasoning. People don't always shop at Wal-Mart because they're cheapskates. Many people shop there because they have very little money. So essentially what you're proposing is a 1% tax on being poor. Way to go.

Restaurants would be subject to an addition 0.5 cent/dollar sales tax. Because only rich folks eat at restaurants. Especially fast food joints.

Restaurant deliveries would be subject to an addition 0.7 cent/dollar sales tax (on top of the above). Because only rich folks have pizzas delivered. Seriously, are you trying to drive every little chinese food and pizza shop out of business, leaving only Dominoes?

Etc. "Etc.", in other words "keep adding random taxes onto random businesses until we've either made up the deficit, or driven every last small business out of the state." You should run for state legislature. You'd fit right in.