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Alabama Schools to be First in US to Get XO Laptop
CountryGeek passed us a link to a story in the Birmingham News, saying that schools in the Alabama city will be the first US students to make use of the XO laptop. The piece touches on a bit of the project's history, and seems to indicate the Birmingham school district is ready to make a serious commitment to these devices. "Langford has asked the City Council to approve $7 million for the laptops and a scholarship program that would give Birmingham students with a C average or above a scholarship to college or tech school of their choice. The City Council has not yet approved the funding. The rugged, waterproof computers will be distributed to students on April 15, Langford said, and children will be allowed to take them home. If a computer is lost, the school system can disable it, rendering it useless, Langford said. Students will turn in their computers at the end of their eighth-grade year."
What part of: "The City Council has not yet approved the funding." = "schools in the Alabama city will be the first US students to make use of the XO laptop."
I think the point is to encourage all students to consider post-secondary education, whether that's college or tech school. It's a fine idea -- I imagine that 'C' performers, in many areas, are seldomly encouraged to go on with their education/training after HS graduation.
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I have not even heard a convincing argument of why young children need to use computers. What can a 10-year-old learn on a computer that A) actually needs to be taught in elementary school (as opposed to high school) and B) actually requires the computer to be taught effectively. Given child labor laws, the "need computer skills for the workplace" argument does not hold up in my opinion (for high school, sure, not not elementary school!)
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Developing countries have been the focus, but the project has never ruled out working with school authorities anywhere in the world. What they ruled out was mass retail sale in developed countries as an early focus.
OTOH, there is a break from the earlier articulations of the principles of the project here, and its not in the fact that its in a developed country, its in the "Students will turn in their computers at the end of their eighth-grade year" part.
go to the Delta areas of MS and some counties in AL. Poverty, STDs, teen pregnancy, HS graduation/college acceptance rates, life expectancies are among the worst in the nation. Do you think it's right to just ignore these areas for any sort of advancement?
I'd bet you can find similar rates in Newark, NJ which isn't far from me and is very urban.
Although people like to generalize about the southern states having substandard schooling, I'm sure there are communities in every state that could use some help.
No, and we're doing them any favors by pushing everyone through high school regardless of ability either. My mother works at a community college, and the number of kids that have to go straight into remedial english and math is appalling. But we don't want to hurt anyone's feelings... no, it's better to let the real world do that. Then there's no one that can be pointed to as "the problem".
Here's something else I don't understand. What is this country's aversion to vocational schools/training? We as a society seem to look down on such training, but I'll gladly pay someone many tens of dollars per hour to make my car go, make my AC work, fix plumbing, rewire my house, add an addition to the dwelling, etc. There is nothing wrong with this. You don't like school, but think cars are fun? Hello mechanic work. It just seems silly, these people are as important to our economy and every day life as the surgeons.
"We can either compete with the other 49 states for jobs or we can do nothing and compete with China and Mexico."
errr... the other 49 states are competing for jobs with China and Mexico....
Well, clearly, you are performing at below expected level, so wouldn't get the scholarship.
The laptops are universal, and not a reward. The scholarships are for C average or better, and are arguably not a "reward" either, so much as a recognition that either college or technical school is as necessary as a highschool diploma was a few decades ago, and the area wants to improve its economic condition, it would be desirable for the baseline to be moved up to include being able to attend one of those institutions.
Yeah, sure, its a change, but there was a time when education beyond the eighth grade was exceptional and only open to those with wealth or who impressed a wealthy benefactor with their performance. Heck, there was a time that that was true of formal schooling period. The baseline moves.
"University" != "college" != "college or technical school".
These laptops are more then capable to launch a space-shuttle (after all, they use computer from the 80's)
This is a feel-good measure, nothing more. Tossing a laptop into a mix of bad teachers, and bad schools is not going to improve anything. There are several major problems, none of them technology related, that have made public education a colossal failure:
1) Most of the people who are teaching subjects, have their primary education in "education."
2) Teacher's unions.
3) School policies that don't allow proper discipline for disruptive students.
4) A legal system that actually listens to parents who sue when schools properly punish their kids for misbehaving.
5) Government monopolies that make it financially impossible for most parents to afford to send their kids to private schools or homeschool them.
But it's ok, technology will save the day. It couldn't do a damn thing for other social problems like pirating copyrighted materials, but it'll be able to take on... entrenched bureaucracies, good ol'boy networks, unions, crufty legal codes and parents who have no ability to hold their kids responsible for their behavior and are willing to shout and sue at the drop of a dime. Go technology, you modern day messiah of secular America.
I can't decide whether or not I agree with you. On the one hand, I have no difficulty imagining how computers could hinder education rather than help. People have a tendency to think that our education problem with somehow magically be solved if you just throw computers at the problem, when in fact the most important thing children can get is personal attention from parents and teachers.
On the other hand, our society (and economy) are becoming increasingly dependent on computers. Children who grow up without computers lack experience, which then puts them at a disadvantage later in life. Also, I think the Internet is an amazing tool for communication and discovery, and an Internet-connected child might have far more opportunities to broaden their minds than would otherwise be possible.
Interacting with a computer is one of the fastest ways to become literate.
If you're literate, you can teach yourself anything you can find a source for.
If this computer can teach kids to read and write while they're having fun with it, that, by itself, justifies putting it in their hands. Anything else it can teach them is a bonus.
*sigh* back to work...
No, you've got it all wrong. Because all of our lower-education but higher-paying jobs are moving away, we need more people to go to college. We can't afford to relegate all of our C students to truck drivers and welders, as you say: those jobs are going to be filled by D and F students, dropouts, and immigrants.
It's getting to the point where the college degree is a relatively unimpressive feat in today's world.
Don't sound so elitist. It's a good thing that a college degree is a common feat. For a lot of students, college is the first place that's going to make them think and work. If these C students can't do it, they'll drop out fast and become truck drivers. If, however, they are genuinely hard workers but just not bright, or bright but never motivated, they'll get out of college the tools they need to get a better job, live in a better place, have better health care, and raise kids able to get Bs and As and lead a better life.
Should every child go to college?
To reiterate: no. But, we need more than our B and A students going to college. Because the jobs left in our country require either no-skill or the education from a college degree, we need get our "average" student into college.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
I agree that, to a very large level, it is well-intentioned buy wasteful spending to cram computers into every classroom. I've personally been witness to hundreds of millions of dollar's worth of "network infrastructure upgrades" across several school districts, and it's a damn shame because nobody uses it. (Special "clean" power for computers installed in raceways with special orange outlets, 4 per workstation? The teacher plugged her mini fridge and coffee pot into one and used a chain of surge protectors from a normal wall outlet for the computers...)
Anyway, while a bit of a daydream I can see a potential at least.
1) The laptop as a replacement for textbooks. Able to be updated and searched. Also, carrying around one XO laptop is better than managing a half dozen books, and if the computers get recycled after 8th grade then the long term costs could level out.
2) It allows a student to keep more organized. Notes and assignments could be kept on the device and mirrored at a school or even district level server (the XO supports handwriting input). No more "forgetting your homework" since everything is in the computer. ("What happens if the student leaves it home" argument is irrelevant since that applies to notebooks too). Update school announcements and calendar events.
3) Media distribution to students. Imagine those typically boring films you had to watch, only being able to pause and rewind at your leisure and even take it home to study. Audio and video recordings/pictures from field trips or lessons. Combine this with those digital whiteboards and stream the info right to the laptops (already done in some places). A student could potentially take an entire day's worth of lessons home and replay them. Unit supports USB and wireless so storage isn't much of an issue on or off school grounds.
4) Parental monitoring. With the ability to record a log of daily use, if not entire lessons, the parents will have a better understanding of what goes on in the classroom (for better or worse). This assumes the parent actually bothers to access the laptop and check, of course, but it makes possible what is currently impossible or at least wildly impractical.
5) Electronic grading. With the ability to distribute and collect most assignments digitally, the entire process becomes simpler. One copy of an assignment can be distributed to any number of students and they can be submitted as soon as they are complete (cutoff times/due dates are easily implemented). Records of grades are easily maintained and accessed. Plagiarism is easier to detect using DIFF-like utilities, and I'd even support some kind of DRM-esque scheme to help detect or even prevent (something that is difficult to do with paper). Tests can be administered by providing a collection of questions that are presented in a different order for each student, with randomized answers for multiple-guess type exams. Beats scan-trons and makes cheating nearly impossible.
Again, all pure daydreaming on my part. None of this gets in the way of teaching the basics either, which I agree is most important. $200 per student seems a better deal than central labs, too. I've seen initiatives that have 1 computer for every 5 students, which is also about right for a computer lab since only one class can use it at a time. If the backend stuff is more or less the same, you can get five to ten $200 laptops for the cost of a single, normal desktop workstation - pretty significant savings - and each student has access all day.
=Smidge=
Airbus is about to start manufacturing aircraft in Alabama. ThyssenKrupp is well established. Mercedes makes cars their.
I was stationed in Alabama for a year. While there, I had a world-class Shakespearean theater at my back door. I loved living in Alabama.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
If you give everyone with a C or better average a scholarship to college or technical school, as the proposal described in TFA would, then those who have the performance to be admitted to college can use it to go to college (which most C students will not unless they have impressive test scores, extracurriculars, and/or demanding courses in which they got the Cs), and those who don't have the performance or inclination for college can use it to go to a technical school. So I don't see what you are objecting to: the proposal seems to have the effect you desire.
Personally, I don't draw a distinction between vocational training and college. College is a sort of vocational training for most people. So if you were to ask me if 100% of people should engage in some sort of post-secondary career education, I would say yes. Maybe that means grad school. Maybe that means an apprenticeship in the pipe-fitters' union. Society as a whole is better off when everyone is better educated in their field.
Hmmm, this is what happens when you lower the bar.
We're competing globally, so now the best of the best foreigners are winning over our C average. Yep, that piece o' paper can't mask the fact that an average Joe is just an average Joe.
Pushing our average through college with taxpayer monies still doesn't help them compete with the brightest from other countries if they are just average.
Everything I've heard is that Fark was founded in Nicholasville, Ky, about twenty miles down the road from me, by a guy now living in Fayette county by the name of Drew Curtis. I'd be interested in seeing your sources.
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
Standard paper textbooks
- Math: $100
- History: $100
- Language: $100
- Social Studies: $100
- Additional computers (per student): $50 (assuming student:machine ratio of 16 and an $800 Dell machine)
Total: $400
XO Laptop
- Laptop: $100
- Online textbook subscription: $100
- Additional computers (per student): $0
Total: $200
Seems pretty simple to me.
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1) The laptop as a replacement for textbooks. Able to be updated and searched. Also, carrying around one XO laptop is better than managing a half dozen books, and if the computers get recycled after 8th grade then the long term costs could level out.
If grade school textbooks are anything like college textbooks, an XO is worth about two or three textbooks. That's pretty amazing when you consider that every student takes about 8 classes per year. Using open textbooks could *save* money if the schools bought laptops.