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South Carolina To Give 1 Laptop Per School Child
ruphus13 sends in an OStatic article outlining the plans of the state of South Carolina, inspired by the One Laptop Per Child project, to provide laptops to local elementary school children. "The South Carolina Department of Education and the non-profit Palmetto Project have teamed up to get a laptop in the hands of every elementary school student in South Carolina... The OLPC/SC hopes to distribute as many as 50,000 laptops this spring to eligible students. The effort is underwritten and managed by the Palmetto Project, whose mission is to 'put new and creative ideas to work in South Carolina.' While low-performing school districts with limited resources are a special focus for the OLPC/SC, the group is adamant on one point: There are no free laptops. In order to receive a laptop, children need to give a small monetary donation — the project coordinators say a dollar or two is sufficient."It's not obvious from browsing around the OLPC/SC site what software the XO laptops will be running; but by following links one gets the impression that they will be powered by Linux, not XP.
Obviously, one cannot be sure if it is a good idea or not without real world testing, which hasn't happened yet; but the OLPC project is specifically designed with those concerns in mind.
A great deal of effort in both hardware and software design(ie. mesh networking, robust and easily repaired design, the bitfrost security model, the "school server" mechanism, easy system state restoration tools, etc.) was dedicated to making the cost and complexity of infrastructure and administration as low as possible. The system is designed to be usable without a class of dedicated technicians and network managers. With the mesh stuff, you can cut back substantially on access point density and ethernet cabling. With bitfrost, school server backups, and system state restoration, you can mostly leave administration in the hands to the students, with the option of easily blanking them if the student screws up.
I'm not saying that it is certain to work; but OLPC is designed with exactly those concerns in mind. Also, if a district is currently "low-performing" it already needs a new teaching plan, because the status quo isn't cutting it.
I don't think the troll mod is fair. Parent was making a pretty good joke playing off the GP's post. Miss South Carolina or whatever was the one who talked about "we US Americans" and "THE Iraq." Remember?
Aimee Teegarden "Recent polls have shown that a fifth of Americans can't locate the US on a world map. Why do you think this is?"
Miss South Carolina Lauren Caitlin Upton
"I personally believe, that U.S. Americans,
are unable to do so,
because uh,
some, people out there, in our nation donâ(TM)t have maps.
and uh...
I believe that our education like such as in South Africa,
and the Iraq,
everywhere like such as...
and, I believe they should uh,
our education over here,
in the U.S. should help the U.S.
or should help South Africa,
and should help the Iraq and Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future,
for us."
Host Mario Lopez "Thank you very much South Carolina."
I don't even know where to start...
I agree with your overall assessment of South Carolina, having lived here for the past 15 years. There are clearly cultural issues that need to be overcome before any education initiative will be effective here.
South Carolina is strangely bipolar when it comes to education. The majority of the public schools seem to exist to maintain the status quo, teach to the PACT(1) test (or whatever its replacement is called), and keep the teachers employed through whatever means are leagal. South Carolina spends a very high percentage of taxes on education (as shown on the tax bills for property taxes as well as explained in state income tax booklets) yet we have some of the worst schools in the country. Apparently, Inez Tennebaum, our Secretary of Education for far too long, was publicly ridiculed on TV for her failures and she honestly thought she was doing a good job. Pretty sad, IMHO.
However, South Carolina also has some interesting charter schools - the good ones (e.g. Blythe Academy of Languages in Greenville) are in the wealthier neighbourhoods (no surprises there). There has been a large number of "online" charter schools lately. Unfortunately, the one we experienced with our son was run as effectively as a regular South Carolina public school. (In other words, it was pathetic.) I teach in an on-line program as well as on-campus at a large university, and I thought that the on-line charter school would be a good idea. I still think it could be, if done correctly.
There are many private schools in SC, catering to the wealthy. Some of them have tutions that are more than the state universities. (Surprisingly, some of the state universities in SC are very good, such as Clemson University and the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.)
Homeschooling is tolerated, barely. The majority of homeschoolers I have encountered do it for religious, rather than academic, reasons. We homeschool for academic reasons becasuse the SC schools are so bad. It is against SC law to segregate students (at least in the lower grades) by ability because someone decided it was discriminatory due to the fact that there were disproportionally fewer minority students in the advanced classes. Therefore, rather than look for a reason _why_ there were fewer minority students in the advanced classes they just decided that the practice of allowing gifted students to work at a more challenging pace without being held back by average students was racial discrimination.
I doubt those laptops will go anywhere but to public school kids.
(1) PAlmetto Achievement Test - the state created exam given to children every few years with the reported purpose of determining how well the schools are doing. Unfortunately, the teachers teach to the test instead of educating the children.
I find it interesting that the CAPTCHA for this post is "converse", which, beside its usual meaning, happens to be the name of a very good private all-women's college (Converse College) in Spartanburg, SC.
>We go thorugh 300-400 pages a week printing at home, and several hundred dollar in ink anually.
Pro-tip: Don't use an inkjet printer for this!!!11!!1
Here's what you must do today:
- Buy used older HP Laserjet. Preferably a 4 or 5, although it's not all that important (just toner is cheaper for 600 dpi printers). You would probably benefit from a LaserJet 5si, since it takes HUGE toner carts.
- Buy a toner refill kit (JFGI).
- Buy toner.
Your cost for toner just went from several hundred dollars a year to a $200 initial investment + $40 of toner a year. Your cost per page for toner just plummeted to under 0.5 cents per page, even less if you print in economy mode. Refilling is relatively easy, although a bit messy. Considering you'll only need to do it once a year and the cost savings involved, a bit of mess is not a big deal. You should be able to refill the toner cart 4 or 5 times before you need to replace the drum (~$40 cost).
Best part? Your handouts won't run when they get wet.
You can thank me next year. :)
You mean, like, such as, "The Iraq."
I'm an XO owner... "...now needs to have the power capabilities to also handle 20-30 laptops as well." -- XOs are specifically designed to use minimal power - you can run 20 XOs at less than the energy requirements for a TV, and they can be charged up in rotation while students do other things, then used 'cord-free'. "How about network connectivity?" --Xos have built in wifi mesh networking, and any installation of an XO cluster includes a local server that administers the wifi logins, long term data storage, web filtering, the chat and project collaboration system, the email system. "How about all of the volume licensing agreements?" --The XOs run Linux, with the Sugar GUI - it is 100% open source, free, and being maintained and updated continuously. As the students learn they can also install other flavors of Linux/Unix. "anti-virus clients, patch management systems, etc. are all done by volume. Who is going to pay for the additional licenses for these systems?" -- All handled gratis by the Linux community - you can upgrade the XO automatically from the desktop, use the YUM repository for applications, and the OLPC and Sugar foundations are constantly adding new and imporved apps and functionality. And Linux does not need antivirus (at least not in my experience). "Maintenance? Is the grant going to give us enough spare laptops to cover for children while they're laptops are down for repair, students who forget laptops, etc? What about the increased workload of an already-thing IT department covering the additional laptops that will, in all likelihood, break more often?" -- The XO clusters in third world countries have 8 year old girls repairing, maintaining, and upgrading XOs. The OLPC project was _really_well_thought_out_ before they went into production. The figured from the start that the entire system from end to end needed to be such that the children could handle the majority of the administration themselves. "And as for the Linux? I'm a FOSS advocate, run nix at home, etc. But you have to realize that *most* school/district IT departments are staffed by folks who were the most technologically proficient users at the time the equipment was installed, e.g. the librarian who knew how to install MS Office got promoted to be the head of the district IT department. Sorry, but supporting (or even running) Linux for a lot of these folks is over their heads." -- The Sugar GUI will handle that, most kids will be quite happy to stay in the Sugar environment, and the activities and apps available there will provide all the functionality they need; and the nerdcore kids that want to go deeper have the option to - the XO drops with everything required for a kid to go from computer illiterate to writing HTML, PHP, Pearl, and Javascript. The kids will teach themselves. "Is all of this worth it to give young students laptops? Will this really foster that much additional learning?" -- In schools as bad as these sound like, if even 10% of the kids that get XOs use them to their full potential it will be worth it. "Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that someone is trying to promote the technology. Unfortunately there are a lot more pressing matters to take care of in SC schools and a lot of issues to tackle before this could be successfully implemented." -- The XOs will last the kids for years, and once integrated into the 'school life' they will replace a lot of paper, pens, textbooks, etc.
If no one has your back, time to move your back.