Some Aussie High Schools Moving To Two Devices Per Child

sholto writes "One laptop per child is so last year. Private secondary schools in New South Wales, Australia are in discussions to upgrade their wireless networks so they can handle the strain of supporting a two-to-one ratio — a laptop and tablet for every student."

Comments

Public Funds

[bbqsrc]

Let's see the supporters of the public education system bitch that the private system is abusing public funding to give better services to their students than the public system. They will bitch, and the private system will abuse the funds. Ah NSW.

Re:Public Funds

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree with you here. Government waste stems from a combination of lack of caring oversight and political not business based decision making. They just don't care if the money gets used properly or if any value is given back to the tax base. If you handover the funds to a private business and the owner of that business doesn't care about the above and no one is making sure that his bottom line is effected then the business will became as bad or worse then the government run one. I personally think that private business can do a better job at running various services but only if the government does it's job of punishing business when they don't fulfill their contracts. To put it simply: Business work effectively in a competitive environment where the bad business go bankrupt.

haha

[scum-e-bag]

Yeah. Take that you poverty stricken public schools.

Re:haha

[donscarletti]

Well, as someone who went through K-12 in the NSW public school system, I believe that a parent should have the right to get the same amount of government funding to educate their child be it at a public or any other school that teaches an approved curriculum. The bulk of private schools are not exceedingly affluent, some have a smaller total funding per student than state schools. Some private schools have money to blow on oversized network infrastructure, but this is not a typical one.

During my education in the public school system, I saw 50% or more of the teachers being quite good. Most of the principals I saw were promoted far above their level of incompetence and the bureaucracy who control the money seem to be composed of exactly those people who know so little about teaching that they cannot survive in a classroom and thusly continue to invest in exactly the opposite things to what children need to learn. These people need less money, not more. All that is needed is for the teachers and students to be given more options as to where to go.

Re:haha

[tophermeyer]

Well, as someone who went through K-12 in the NSW public school system, I believe that a parent should have the right to get the same amount of government funding to educate their child be it at a public or any other school that teaches an approved curriculum.

I live in the US, in the state of Massachusetts. We have this thing called charter schools, which in theory is mainly that. These are small, selective, mission based schools that rely on public funding. The problem is that these schools tend to receive more funding per child than the public schools. Parents of course want their kids to go to these charter schools, and (rightly IMO) raise hell when their kids are rejected.

If your ultimate goal is having each child receive the same amount of funding, then the only really fair option is state run public schools. If the objective is making sure everyone receives an effective education then you can create multiple different school systems. In my opinion we need to get politicians thinking in terms of quality of education rather than simply in terms of dollars spent per child.

I was fortunate. The local public school where I grew up was terrible (this was in rural Maine, which is itself sub-par by national standards). My parents were able to afford to send me to a private school. Of course they were still obligated to fund the public school with their taxes.

Re:haha

[hitmark]

quality of education, like wealth creation of a nation, is bordering on impossible to measure directly.

How does this aid in education

[jellomizer]

What I would like to know. How does this technology aid in education... Yes the student can access some information faster, and do some research, or if your books were ebook they can search for terms faster, so they are not flipping pages while there is a lecture... But does this justify the cost. I don't think so. I am a big fan of technology, I used computers when I was a kid to improve my education. But I am a rare case, I am a geek, I dug in and wanted to figure it out. For most students it will just be more of an internet based distraction.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect it means the primary (intended) devices will continue to work with all the iPhones cruising campus.

Re:How does this aid in education

[cappp]

Thing is, there's plenty of evidance that the wired-classroom really isn't all that great. Back in 2007 the NYTimes did a report on schools phasing computers back out of the classroom

After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none,” said Mark Lawson, the school board president here in Liverpool, one of the first districts in New York State to experiment with putting technology directly into students’ hands. “The teachers were telling us when there’s a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the way. It’s a distraction to the educational process.”

A research paper noted that

we also demonstrate that the introduction of home computer technology is associated with modest but statistically significant and persistent negative impacts on student math and reading test scores. Further evidence suggests that providing universal access to home computers and high-speed internet access would broaden, rather than narrow, math and reading achievement gaps.

A further NYTimes article noted that

Ofer Malamud, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago, is the co-author of a study that investigated educational outcomes after low-income families received vouchers to help them buy computers. “We found a negative effect on academic achievement,” he said. “I was surprised, but as we presented our findings at various seminars, people in the audience said they weren’t surprised, given their own experiences with their school-age children.”

Professors are also banning laptops from their classes. All in all there doesn't seem to be any actual evidance that kids benefit from the use of laptops et al in class. That's not saying they don't benefit from the use of technology in the learning process, but the use of individual laptops and Ipads and all that has so far been shown to be somewhat counter-productive.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

TCO has the potential to be lower with tablets than textbooks (especially at private schools where they are less likely to be destroyed). We are probably not there yet, but someone has to be the early adopter. Some nice uses of technology are having homework assignments posted online, saving a (admittedly small) amount of instruction time. The ability to easily revise papers is also a big plus with technology. Stuff from the last 5 years is probably not what makes tech great for education. It is the stuff from 15-20 years ago that is finally mature enough and the faculty is comfortable enough to easily incorporate that ill make the difference.

Re:How does this aid in education

[xnpu]

It's not that every student has to use 2 devices. It's about making sure the network has sufficient capacity. You don't want to run into situations where a student cannot log on to the network and participate in his class, because some other guy decided to walk around with 2 phones instead of one. Dealing with capacity issues during class, THAT would be a distraction and a waste of time/money. Upgrading the WiFi network is, relatively speaking, a cheap way to avoid technology from becoming a real disruption.

Needless to say, the teachers can still limit/control technology use in their classroom as they see fit, but they can't control the guy in the other class from having the wifi-enabled phones in his pocket and taking away the network capacity they needed for class.

Re:How does this aid in education

[xnpu]

This is largely because tests are still designed for non-wired classrooms.

Math and physics don't require a computer? True, until you get an actual job that is.

Re:How does this aid in education

[opposabledumbs]

Think about it less in terms of "How are we using this to help the students learn?" and more in terms of "How do I get a webcam in every student's bedroom?"

As recent forays into, and furores over, how this kind of tech is used in schools have demonstrated, teachers don't seem to be terribly good with handling these devices when they're in the hands of a student group.

Re:How does this aid in education

[princee]

It doesn't aid thier education at all. The kids spend more time working out how to use the device than actually doing work and then they use it for purposes other than school work. My daughter through her school has a macbook and I think the main function it is used for is sharing pictures, movies and songs and not actual school work.

I went to a big presentation at the school last year on the introduction of laptops and none of the staff that were involved in the decision process even had a clue, including the so called IT staff. They talked about new means of communications, facebook, msn, twitter, sms etc but really had no idea what relevance or meaning this had to education. I believe this is just more evidance of the decline in the quality of education and how schools are letting are kids down. Rather than improving the quality of staff and concentrating on educating the kids they want a device to be a baby sitter so they can employ less staff. The funding of staff comes from school fees and the government and if the school puts up fees everyone complains but if they now add a new line to your invoice for $100 per term for a laptop or make parents buy them it's seen as being progressive.

Re:How does this aid in education

[adolf]

I'm not a kid. I'm not going to school. I won't be going to school. I haven't seen a classroom proper in 17 years.

But I was a kid once; an atypical kid like many here on Slashdot, but a kid nonetheless. I remember being a kid.

And as a kid, I had real problems in school. I hated duplication of effort. I was terrible and slow at writing. I used to be admonished by my teachers:

"You can't use a computer to do that work."

"But are my answers correct?"

"Well yes, they are. But you can't rely on a computer, because when there's a problem to solve, there won't always be a computer around to help you figure it out."

Which, of course, was bullshit. Not long after I gave up on school altogether, computers were crawling out of the woodwork. By the time I became an adult and started making real money doing real things for real people, they were ubiquitous.

Nowadays, I carry a computer in my pants pocket that does things which were unimaginable when I was a kid. I use it all the time. And I keep a laptop nearby. These are tools that I use to help me in my professional career, which involves solving real problems in the real world.

Keeping computers out of a classroom is the same as depriving a mechanic the use of a wrench while insisting that they figure out some more archaic fashion in which to adjust a bolt. It's a useful tool now, it will continue to be useful later, and kids might as well familiarize themselves with using the tools available to them to solve problems as early as possible.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Netshroud]

A technology-centric education requires a different teaching approach. Simply adding technology into the mix of the current approach is bound to fail.

Re:How does this aid in education

[wvmarle]

In the classroom there is no room for computers for studying physics or maths. Leave those to the workplace (and then likely only the workplace of university or higher educated people). E-textbooks may be an exception, but those are a mere replacement of paper books.

Before you can use said computer you will have to understand the underlying math and physics. You still have to understand the laws of physics, and how to solve an integral. Without that knowledge computers are useless, and probably only get in the way of the actual understanding of what's going on.

The second step is indeed doing physics simulations and mathematical simulations, that is where the computers come in: but only in the second part, the simulation part. The result of a simulation is only as good as the input - if the researcher doesn't understand what they are doing then they can never make a good simulation.

Not to mention that even if the computers come to the classroom (simple simulations can be illustrative), the software used and taught to the students will be outdated at best by the time they get a job. If the job uses the same simulation package in the first place. This teaching how the software works thus becomes a waste of time.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Bodrius]

Short answer is: we haven't figured out how to do this properly yet.

It took us a few hundred (or thousand?) years of experience with books to make them a constructive part of education, it looks like we'll need a few decades to internalize how to use the interwebs properly.

I have no doubt all this technology will help in education in the long term - the ability of the Internet to connect an individual to both knowledge and data is beyond Vannebar's wildest visions of Xanadu. Even in the most banal sense it is an improvement by raising the bar for often-sub-par educational books and material; consider also the potential for liberating the student for self-directed research and 'jumping ahead of the class' without disconnecting himself from, or derailing, the current lecture - currently we penalize our brightest students by forcing them to wait for the rest of the class to catch up. I'd have loved to have a laptop with web access in high school - then whenever that happened I could have researched tangents and connections from the current topic out of curiosity, instead of finding another opportunity to learn how to sleep with my eyes open. Books don't really scale very well in that way, by reasons of cost and plain physical mass.

But a completely undirected and unrestricted experience is the anti-thesis of education - as it's typically used it offers all the possible distractions without the guidance or focus to understand the necessary material. And as long as the 'learning generation' is a decade ahead of the 'teaching generation' it is bound to stay that way. I don't think it's even a matter of 'understanding computers' as the geek crowd tends to assume; at some point I thought that way, but these days I'm convinced things are moving fast enough that new generations 'get' these technologies fundamentally differently, so it is very naive to think 'we adults' can figure out how to best use tech for our children's education without being hopelessly irrelevant to their own experience unless things stabilize a bit.

It's not that the technologies are that different anymore, it's that the quantitative barriers go away very quickly and each generation cares about and prioritizes technology uses that at some point would have been shallow, or even risible (tweeter anyone?), with unexpected benefits and side-effects... even if we come up with a far more comprehensive and clueful plan to leverage tech in modern education, by the time it's implemented by any national educational system it will be as quaint and irrelevant as France's Minitel system is today.

Re:How does this aid in education

[cappp]

Which is a great point - the articles mentioned that computer literacy certainly increased in the students but at the cost of other academic areas. It's a complicated question and a lot of the decline can probably be linked to unfamiliarity - teachers being unsure of how to include the systems in their lessons, poor parental involvement, a lack of guidelines for use, and inappropriate inclusion. Unfortunately there's no data to support that inference.

Re:How does this aid in education

[drsmithy]

Math and physics don't require a computer? True, until you get an actual job that is.

What "Math and Physics" job [that requires a computer] do you think a 17 year old is going to get straight out of High School ?

Re:How does this aid in education

[Genda]

Are you kidding? Have you seen the load of books kids are dragging to school these days? There is real concern that children are getting injured by carrying more book weight than is physically appropriate for them. Having the ability to carry an entire library in a tablet is a huge advance. Add to that, multimedia educational materials, interactive games and puzzles, team education and tools designed to teach kids how to collaborate in their problem solving... Photography, Videography, Computer Art, Music Composition, imagine the possibilities. There is so much these devices can support that you couldn't do any other way.

Anyone who's read Stevenson's "Diamond Age", see's that we are quick approaching a time when an inexpensive tablet can help a young person become virtually anything they can dream of. We simply need to create interactive tools that rise to the challenge of inspiring and enlightening our progeny.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Fjandr]

Just like any other tool, students should be taught how to use them and allowed to use them where appropriate. When learning the mechanics of things, there are good examples of situations where computers do more harm than good. If an assignment can be completed without an ounce of effort to understand it, simply by relying on technology, allowing technology is undermining the entire point of education. Many, if not most, students will do the absolute minimum required unless they have good reason to do otherwise. Students who pursue knowledge for its' own sake are rare. Children are typically intellectually lazy unless they have had a love of learning instilled in them by their parents, or are one of the extraordinary rarities where those qualities occur absent any articulable outside influence.

So yes, there are numerous examples of places where a ban on technology is idiotic. There are also numerous examples of places where the allowance of the use of technology is equally idiotic. The issue isn't black-or-white.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

The obvious solution if that's the case would be to not give the kids the WiFi pass key, just enter it for them in their laptop (primary device) and their iPhones will have to use the data connection. I suspect upgrading the infrastructure to handle more WiFi capacity is probably the cheaper option, though - you only have to do it once, then you're just paying a slightly higher bandwidth fee, if you go the other route that's a massive ongoing manual job (you'd have to enter all the fresh keys every year, then as people got new laptops or had to restore their systems, through the year too).

Re:How does this aid in education

[bored_engineer]

In (my) engineering world, if you need the highly complex models that programmers can provide (such as a collision model) then you need much more mathematics than primary and secondary schools can provide, in order to understand the work you're doing.

It seems that teachers continually try to meld computers into homework and into the school day, but I fail to see where anything but formatting in the finished product is improved. More frankly, I've not yet seen any work (5th grade, so far) that would require anything more complex than a typewriter, a library and a dictionary. While they can be provided more efficiently today, there's nothing about a modern primary or secondary education that changes 2+2, or f(x)/(1+x)dx. My opinion (though perhaps faulty) remains that computers aren't needed for most primary and secondary education.

All of that said, my oldest is writing his most recent book report with Lyx, and I expect to buy soon, barring a veto by my spouse, a mindstorms robotic kit for my youngest. (The kid is wicked smart; takes after his lovely mother more than his stunted dad [me].)

Re:How does this aid in education

[c0lo]

Children are typically intellectually lazy

On the contrary, kids are the biggest learners. They become intellectually lazy because how the schooling is organized - no education, but taming^H^H^H^H^H training (be good, fit in standards, otherwise will feed you with Ritalin... later, after being promoted with your batch, you'll be a great fool^H^H^H tool for the society).
There's somebody else saying it better than me.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

Some simple simulations can be fantastic aids. I remember when I was a kid writing a BASIC program on a BBC B to demonstrate longitudinal waves. A bunch of vertical lines, each moving horizontally as x_i = a * i + sin(t + b * i). The middle one was coloured differently to the rest. You could see the wave moving across the screen, and you could see that each "particle" stayed where it was. It showed what was going on much better than a Slinky.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really rather easy -

The kids all have usernames and passwords on the school network

Set up a RADIUS server hooked in to your LDAP, Active Directory, NIS, whatever you want to use

Set up the Wireless Access Points to use RADIUS, but ONLY LET THAT USER LOG ON ONCE AT ONE TIME. So they can use the wireless on their iphone if they like, or they can use their laptop, but not both.

= Zero administration, secure network, with a managed number of devices.

Re:How does this aid in education

[TapeCutter]

40yrs ago when I started high school they told me boys were not allowed to learn how to type because only girls grew up to be typists. The typewritter is now dead and all but forgotten but the skill of touch typing would sure have come in handy over the last 20yrs as a developer.

Computers are a universal tool, keeping kids away from them makes as much sense as keeping kids away from crayons and paste.

Re:How does this aid in education

[wvmarle]

I never said they should be kept away from computers, just that physics and maths classes are not the place to teach how to work with a computer, and computers do not really have a place there. That're classes where you have to learn how to do maths, and how to do physics, and the way to understand what that is, is not done inside of some physics or maths simulation software.

Even calculators have don't have a place in maths classes, they are however very useful for physics, and maybe applied maths, where actual calculations are done. But most maths classes there is not even place for a calculator, as a lot of maths is not about numbers. And the parts that are about numbers are where students learn how to calculate without the use of a calculator.

Computer lessons are important too - but they belong in computer classes. Where people learn about the computer. Hopefully also the basics about hardware (what is a processor doing, what is memory for, just the basics), but also typing lessons (for some reason touch typing classes have all but disappeared, as if it's irrelevant nowadays), word processing, whatever.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is, there's plenty of evidance that the wired-classroom really isn't all that great.

Poor spelling and grammar are part of the "evidance"?

Re:How does this aid in education

[sweet dolly]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGszA07PqVs

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

Distance education would benefit greatly, especially in niche subjects. Imagine trying to get a class of 2 pupils in physics or french in a small country town - basically you cannot.

With a more connected school, the possibilities are endless in being able to deliver all sorts of previously unavailable classes to interested but isolated people. Australia has one of the lowest population densities on the planet, so it is little wonder that this will be useful.

Re:How does this aid in education

[longlongago]

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Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm? Sorry, I was playing farmville online. You were saying that technology was the best learning tool ever?

Re:How does this aid in education

[Noughmad]

Perfectly correct, and thanks for the links.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

"the introduction of home computer technology is associated with modest but statistically significant and persistent negative impacts on student math and reading test scores."

I suspect a similar thing may have happened back when the television was becoming commonplace. Give students something that's actually fun, like TV or games, and they'll be suddenly spending a lot less time revising.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

Even calculators have don't have a place in maths classes, they are however very useful for physics, and maybe applied maths, where actual calculations are done. But most maths classes there is not even place for a calculator, as a lot of maths is not about numbers.

If by "most math classes" you mean "most math classes by your third year as a math major in college," then yes. Otherwise, no. And, honestly, when you're learning to do stuff like derivatives the long way (f'(x) = lim h->0 [(f(x+h)-f(x))/h]), among various other operations that contain numbers but can easily fill a page, having a four-function or scientific calculator is nice. That way, you're testing if the student understands the concept, not their ability to not make a single basic arithmetic mistake among hundreds of calculations, especially if you're throwing them curveballs. (My calc teacher had us doing derivatives with multiple terms in the numerator and denominator that looked like (132.4x^8-10.7x^1.6)^(1/3).)

I never said they should be kept away from computers, just that physics and maths classes are not the place to teach how to work with a computer, and computers do not really have a place there. That're classes where you have to learn how to do maths, and how to do physics, and the way to understand what that is, is not done inside of some physics or maths simulation software.

And that's the common misconception, and it's where tablet computers can come into play. You absolutely cannot type math equations into Word or whatever fast enough to take notes. But on a tablet that has a pen, you can certainly write fast enough. That's how I took the vast majority of my notes all through college as a math/mechanical engineering double major. It was fantastic. Outside of computers, I'm a very disorganized person. When I took notes in a notebook back in high school, inevitably, halfway through the class, the notebook would be in terrible condition, pages would be falling out, and I'd lose exactly the pages I'd need for whatever I was doing. With a computer? Not a problem.

Now, did it distract me sometimes, with access to the internet and all of that? Yeah, it did. Would I have been paying attention if I had just a notebook in front of me? Probably not. I'd probably be doodling in the corners, turning words and such into silly math equations (dBatman/dx = Bruce Wayne), and planning for upcoming D&D sessions. But as far as helping me to stay organized and to still have easy access to all my notes by the end of the year, it was amazing.

And as one more point, people have different learning styles. Sure, for you and I, maybe the traditional model is fine. But I know several quite smart people who have a terrible time absorbing math/physics/whatever knowledge unless they understand what it's for. And computer simulations showing "See how we can use this differential equation to model flow through a pipe? Knowing how to work these equations is what allows engineers to design fluid systems to very tight specifications" can help them immensely. And as much as that can be done with a single, teacher/professor run computer, to be able to have that right in front of you to fiddle with on your own and explore that parts that you're curious about is an invaluable tool.

As a final thought, though, two computers per student is stupid and a waste of money. I have no idea what anyone could gain from that.

Re:How does this aid in education

[mjwalshe]

yeh I know as i was a dyslexic back in the 70s the school sugested I do typing CSE which I rejected as a "girls" subject - i am sure id be a better typist today if I had taken that.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

What I would like to know. How does this technology aid in education...

I agree with other repliers in that it probably doesn't. At most it helps in that kids only have to carry one device with multiple ePubs instead of a bunch of heavy text books.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

What I would like to know. How does this technology aid in education... Yes the student can access some information faster, and do some research, or if your books were ebook they can search for terms faster, so they are not flipping pages while there is a lecture... But does this justify the cost. I don't think so. I am a big fan of technology, I used computers when I was a kid to improve my education.

Not enough, apparently, as your grammar is pretty poor. Missing question marks, sentence fragments, etc. Sorry, but it's hard to ignore.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, because there's zero administration in running a RADIUS server for a few hundred children.

Re:How does this aid in education

[ffreeloader]

Yeah, this having two wireless devices is a huge problem. Like most kids, although I'm an old man, I'm a major bandwidth hog because I have multiple devices.

I simultaneously surf with both hands while at home or while using a public hotspot such as the public library. With my right hand I download files to my laptop while browsing /., and with my left I browse Groklaw on my Droid while downloading music to it. Furthermore, I speed read /. with my left eye and Groklaw with my right at the same time. If I had a third hand I'd simultaneously download and read ebooks on my iPad with my butt so I could use even more bandwidth.

Re:How does this aid in education

[TapeCutter]

We were literally not allowed to take typing or cooking classes, girls were not allowed to take woodwork or mechanical drawing classes. Boys and girls were not allowed to sit at the same desk and there were sexually segregated play areas. boys had cricket nets, girls had netball courts, etc, etc

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, since the U.S. is becoming a service economy, maybe we should put a grill and a fryer in every classroom so students can be taught how to flip hamburgers and cook fries. They really don't need them, until they get a job, that is.

Re:How does this aid in education

[TapeCutter]

My daughter was introduced to basic concept of algebra via a spreadsheet back in the 90's, it was the teacher's own method and personally I thought it was very effective.

I wasn't taught to use computers or calculators at school. I was however taught to use log tables and slide rules.

Re:How does this aid in education

[zippthorne]

The problem is a teacher that doesn't know what they're doing, not that you were correct in your solution. In your case, the computer is a great tool to help you solve problems, but it's also a crutch, and if leaned on too heavily, will result in your failure to actually learn the lesson. Which you'll need later if you want to make the computer really do some interesting things for you.

Recall the parable of the butterfly

Re:How does this aid in education

[melikamp]

I disagree pretty much completely. A laptop or a smartphone is not a mere calculator, it's a personal mind extension. I feel good about making this prediction: most of these kids with laptops in class will go through the rest of their life with a general-purpose computer in their pocket. Let them use it however they want. If they get distracted by them, they simply won't learn and fail as they should. I would even allow computers during testing, as long as I can isolate them from Internet. We don't need to be oppressive: I think this problem can be mostly solved by redesigning the testing procedures.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me, Pedobear: How do you type so well with those big paws?

Re:How does this aid in education

[Maitri]

I think that you couldn't be more wrong - at least at the point where kids get taught physics as a separate class (generally at the high school level). Especially since you seem to think all computers can do is simulations. There are three main types of learners - folks who need to see stuff, folks who need to hear stuff, and folks that need to do stuff in order to really grasp a topic. Having computers in your classrooms can really help visual and kinesthetic learners.

I have a hard time visualizing 3D math based problems. I think that if some of the SAS software that is available today had been available when I was taking calculus I wouldn't have had nearly the problems imaging rotating formulas around an axis. About the only physics I was able to grasp were ones where we had done real life experiments like putting together race cars as a team and then using computers with peripherals that tracked velocity and speed and such. Even in less math based classes like chemistry we used temperature probes that plugged into computers and then we did all sorts of manipulation of the data. I got then when an exothermic reaction was. I might not have been using exactly the same equipment I would a year or two later in college but I have to say I was still ahead of the curve and wasn't at all intimidated by the equipment we did use. Then a couple of years later on the job the same was true again. (And some of the equipment hasn't changed that much, for instance pH meters and DO probes are still fairly similar to how they were 15 years ago or so when I used them in class.) When it came time to looking at an excel spread with thousands of data points that needed to be manipulated, I was finishing early and helping classmates in my physics labs. Granted I was lucky enough to be at a great high school (shout out here to all the Roanoke Valley Govenerds - I know there must be some of you on here) where the computers were truly integrated into the lessons for data gathering, manipulations, etc., but learning theory through experience can be really important for some types of learners - like me.

With how the fields of science and math are now, what you are saying is analogous to telling computer and programming teachers that they should teach theory only until programmers try to get jobs because the in vogue programming language of the day changes so quickly and those pesky computers are just going to get in the way of learning the theory. I'm not a programmer but even so I can only imagine what my boss would have said if I told him I hadn't used any of the software before coming to work here (I suspect I wouldn't have gotten hired and that he wouldn't be my boss right now).

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

You still have to understand the laws of physics, and how to solve an integral. Without that knowledge computers are useless, and probably only get in the way of the actual understanding of what's going on.

Wow fuck off.

Re:How does this aid in education

[c6gunner]

And then Germany invaded Poland, and everything changed ...

Re:How does this aid in education

[wisty]

That doesn't work. Sure, if kids were treated like responsible young adults (by everyone from their parents, to the police, to teachers, to the schooling system) then they would most likely act like responsible young adults. They aren't, and they don't.

Kids don't feel the consequences of their actions in the same way adults do. If you let them fail (as you suggest), the system will just push them up to the next level, or out into the scrap heap.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Voyager529]

This principle works, until it's coupled with a group of teachers who are slow to actually fail a child because the parents are quick to file a lawsuit. If high school kids want to spend their day on Facebook and fail their math class, fine. The issue is that the current crop of parents act like shielding their kids from consequences is helping them. Until that changes, tax dollars will pay for tech toys, kids will misuse them, test scores will drop, parents will threaten, teachers will give D+ grades to kids that don't deserve them, and politicians will once again lower the bar to get a passing grade in order to maintain property values amongst the local homeowners associations in order for them to get re-elected, and the cycle starts all over again.

Me personally, I like the way computers worked in the classroom in 1995. If you were done with your seatwork, you got to use the computer. It was up to you to figure out how to use it though, the teacher had no clue. It encouraged problem solving, critical thinking, and *real* cooperative learning. Admittedly we only played games on them once we figured out what we were doing, but back then there was more of a process leading up to getting the game to play. Today, these young whippersnappers don't even have to put in a CD-ROM to get things working anymore, to say nothing about having to work with the command line. And yes, I do in fact want you off of my lawn.

Re:How does this aid in education

[melikamp]

That's not the computers' fault. These kids are just lazy. If you think we shouldn't fail lazy students who don't do anything, then what's the point of grading? We just need to provide everyone with affordable quality education, we don't need to graduate everyone with honors.

Re:How does this aid in education

[PitaBred]

But if you don't understand basic arithmetic and multiplication and such, your simulation is just pretty. That is the point... kids don't learn how to conceptualize math, they instead just learn where to put the inputs to get the outputs.

Re:How does this aid in education

[PitaBred]

The problem I've seen when I got my degree in engineering is that kids who grew up with computers doing their math had absolutely no idea when the numbers they were getting out were even in the ballpark of being right. No "horse sense" about the mathematics. They learned the process, but they didn't know the reasons or underlying purposes, so whatever came out of the machine was the answer. Even if it meant that the bullet coming out of the gun had .5J of energy, that's what the calculator said and they never questioned it.

I'm not saying that computers aren't useful. I'm saying that people need to understand things conceptually and intrinsically before they should be allowed to use tools to make the jobs easier. Otherwise all you get is GIGO.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

I simultaneously surf with both hands while at home ....

You don't expect anyone to actually believe that, do you?

Re:How does this aid in education

[tophermeyer]

I'm not sure if you are entirely joking or not. While I was reading your post on my laptop I was also skimming through Facebook on my phone.

Needless to say, you really just made me step back and evaluate myself right there.

Re:How does this aid in education

[ffreeloader]

I simultaneously surf with both hands while at home ....

You don't expect anyone to actually believe that, do you?

Are you kidding me?

If I had a third hand I'd simultaneously download and read ebooks on my iPad with my butt so I could use even more bandwidth.

What???? You can't read with your butt? Of course I expect to be taken a face value.

Re:How does this aid in education

[PriyanPhoenix]

I totally agree with you, but I wouldn't expect kids to be screwing around with crayons and paste in a maths lesson either...

Re:How does this aid in education

[locketine]

There's a TED talk from a guy who researched giving computer/internet access to kids in India and it greatly increased their learning capabilities. I think the failure of computers in the studies you guys are talking about has more to do with the people not knowing how to integrate computers with the classroom rather than the computer itself being a "hindrance to learning". http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html

Re:How does this aid in education

[Securityemo]

Hardly. Don't you realize that most people want to be plug-and-play tools in their professional and money-making lives so they can be social and do non-productive things the rest of the time ? Only relatively rare people are driven to "work on things." And no, this doesn't mean they are somehow intellectually disabled.

Re:How does this aid in education

[orient]

This is why a cashier is unable to figure the change for $20 when the total is $17.23 - if the machine is not calculating the change for her. Way to go, America!

Re:How does this aid in education

[c6gunner]

There is real concern that children are getting injured by carrying more book weight than is physically appropriate for them. Having the ability to carry an entire library in a tablet is a huge advance.

Yep. Take it a step further. Why should the lil darling have to exert himself and take risks, when he could be lying on the couch munching on some cheetos and doing distance-learning instead? I say we get rid of schools entirely - it'll be WAY safer.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

the kids I see in classes are usually goofing around on flash game websites or facebook.

Re:How does this aid in education

[c6gunner]

Recall the parable of the butterfly [google.com]

Yeah, it's just too bad that the parable is completely wrong. If a parable is based on a lie, does that mean it's message is also a lie?

Re:How does this aid in education

[The Archon V2.0]

What???? You can't read with your butt? Of course I expect to be taken a face value.

"a face value"? HA! Typo! You mean "butt value".

Re:How does this aid in education

[ffreeloader]

Well, in this case my butt would also be my face, so yes, at face value....

Re:How does this aid in education

[dasdrewid]

When I was in English class, there was no reason for me to have a computer. We did the reading at home and only did discussion in class.

When I was in Math class, we had computers, at least in Calc and DiffE. I spent most of my time making Mathematica animations. Tests were designed so that a) you could do them by hand (no calcs even) and b) putting them into Mathematica generally made them harder, as Mathematica generally didn't solve them in a useful way.

In German, we didn't need computers because we did the readings as a group. Computers would have been a distraction. Possibly, having an iPad like thing and reading in a program that let me take notes on the page itself, would have been ok, but that would have only added up to equivalent with the book. And would have been heavier...

Chemistry we didn't need a computer, as we were doing experiments half the time. Maybe a computer would have been nice when taking notes. I generally took notes on paper in college when I had a computer, though...

Computer class...was f-ing worthless. We learned to type and to use excel, and then we learned to type 3 more times. I made friends with the lab manager. He let us come in on weekends and run HL and CS tournaments.

Biology...same as chemistry.

History...I guess digital textbooks would have been nice, although it was a mix of English (read at home and discuss in class) and lectures. Again, for the most part, it would have just added up to pen+paper+letshopeitworks.

Of course, there wasn't a lot of computer based curriculum. Nowadays, that might be different. Having 2 teachers for parents, I'm gonna go with it might be different, but it isn't better. My mom teaches kindergarten. They require her to use her smartboard during class a certain amount of time, but they don't help pay for any training or anything. There are only a few pre-made courses for it (for kindergarten...), none of which work with the curriculum she is required to teach. Meaning, on her own time, she has to learn a new and proprietary programming environment (again..this is the 2nd brand of smartboards in her school in 5 years). I went to an even better school (with way more money) than the one she teaches at, and they had no idea how to integrate computers (except the math teach, but he was different in a lot of other ways).

Basically, depriving kids of computer literacy is a bad thing. Forcing computers into classes that have not yet fully adapted to them, including the distractions they bring to the kids and the teachers, is probably even worse. You can learn computer literacy at home. Many people can't afford a computer at home, so they can learn it in the library. Or the school can focus on making the computer class *actually worthwhile*. My point is, kids aren't going to be deprived of the ability to learn to use computers, especially not at a school where the choice is 2 computers per child or 1?

Your argument makes sense for kids in 3rd world countries re: the OLPC project. For kids in posh schools in developed countries, the argument is more like depriving a mechanic of one of those super expensive factory provided diagnostic tools and giving him the 3rd party one instead. At poor schools, it's more like having a couple wrenches to share, and one of those diagnostic tools for the kids that have really proved themselves.

Re:How does this aid in education

[pjt33]

If you don't understand multiplication then it's irrelevant whether there are computers or not: you're wasting your time in a physics lesson.

Re:How does this aid in education

[PitaBred]

Exactly my point. If kids learn how to do multiplication and the basics by using only computers, they will never be prepared to properly understand higher-level concepts like physics.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Fjandr]

Being a voracious learner and being intellectually lazy are not mutually exclusive. One could say that passing through school with the least effort requires a good understanding of how to exploit the system's weaknesses. Children are good at figuring things out, just not necessarily at prioritizing what those "things" should be. Big difference.

Re:How does this aid in education

[ediron2]

My undergrad physics labs involved writing out ten iterations by hand, pooling with 4 other tables of students to get 50, then doing statistics on them. The error bars were so freaking huge we generally couldn't see the forest for the trees, so to speak.

A friend's undergrad physics labs (at UCSD, if memory serves) used computers as data collectors. Pendulum motion was timed to the millisecond by a magnetic switch. Three data runs of 100 results apiece let them test both the arc-width invariability of a pendulum period and make a stab at the gravitational constant. The students pooled their data via spreadsheet copy/paste, lab sections pooled data further, and the omnibus results had error bars nearer to .1% -- needless to say, they walked out with: more statistical awareness, more trust in physics's 'realness', less pain, more attention on the scientific method and less on rote data collection.

That was 15+ years ago.

There are ways that books, calculators and computers can become crutches that impede learning. But no matter WHAT stage in the process, computers can improve the process: as adaptive-rote-learning drills (a la mavis beacon or mathblaster), via visualization, via data collection, via symbolic math tools, via simulations, via reference-material portability (ebooks) and instant research (wikipedia).

Don't be a luddite -- it isn't the computer's fault, it's ours. We've got to find ways to learn that don't fit the 19th-century teaching paradigms. For example, I taught my mom what an integral was and what made it cool with a 2-minute youtube video. Can she do the math? Nope. But she groks the mathematical concept behind rate-of-change, Newton's law of cooling, etc.

Re:How does this aid in education

[wvmarle]

I stand to my point: for teaching the principles, there is no place for computers. For doing practical work they can be really useful tools, for sure. But to be able to calculate the gravitational constant for example you first have to know what it is, the principles on which your experiment you're doing is based, and how the actual calculation is done. For doing the actual calculation, the grunt work so to say, a computer is a great tool. But it's in no means a replacement for a text book - only an addition to it.

In my time they always said "when you start programming, the first thing to do is to switch off that computer. Because you first have to figure out what you want to do, and how you plan to do it. When you have that, you can start using the computer and implement it." I think this still holds true.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd opt for a system with something of a kiosk tool. We had this in 7th grade IT class where the teacher had a sort of server which could take away control from us and also show neat screencasts of what she was doing on her PC. Of course, there was only 12 of us in class, but I think this might work. It just takes more adjustment and knowledge from the teacher, as well as more reliable technology that someone with e.g. a degree in teaching English can use without having to study IT as well. Conclusion: Have cool Stargate Atlantis like touchscreen pads mounted to the tables which are school property just like books, only connected to a cool server in the school library which has all your books and your account info (with your notebook et al.).

Re:How does this aid in education

[uninformedLuddite]

When I was finishing High School the affordable pocket calculator was a new thing(Is TI lust a DSM-IV issue?). If any student had been caught using or even bringing a calculator into a test they would have been expelled or failed immediately. I thinkt technology in the classroom is helps make kids less competent than they would be without it. I'd really like to see a bunch of current HS kids all tested for their abilities in long division and multiplication. I suspect they might struggle a bit more than they should. Some may even try sharpening their pen when it runs out of ink.
The argument that they wont be able to use computers in the real world after they leave school if they aren't exposed to them all day, every day is complete and utter bullshit. The legions of people my age and baby boomers, etc that use computers today whether in the work force or at home should lay that argument to rest.

Re:How does this aid in education

[uninformedLuddite]

Sorry for the typos in the above comment. It's karmic in a way that I should post about computers and incompetence, then make an illiterate post - LOL

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

In a lot of schools in my area there has been talk about moving to an E-book model. As tablets are designed to handle e-books and e-textbooks it is a natural progression for a classroom. I know schools often find themselves with outdated versions of books which are expensive to continually purchase. As the previous poster pointed out 'how does this aid in the education of the children?'.I would have to agree. With hardware like the iPad and others like it coming to market there are far more features that just those easily transferable to education. Kids will always be kids and as such will get distracted easily. I, like the poster above, was a tech geek. When it came to my classroom learning I leveraged the technology which was mandated for me to use because I wanted to figure out anything and everything it could do.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

This I disagree with. I have ADHD and found it incredibly difficult to follow lessons. Most classrooms and lessons I made a game of typing out everything I could and trying to keep up (I can type quite well). Visually I could memorize most of what was on the board but could never remember the lesson which was being discussed verbally. I think it is important in these scenarios in the education system to allow exceptions for those where it makes sense. I know for a fact that if I was not allowed to have my laptop in the classroom my grades would have been skewed drastically. All of my technical classes would have been very high and the others would have been very low.

Re:How does this aid in education

[TapeCutter]

Yeah, we stoppped wearing onions on our belt after that....

Re:How does this aid in education

[Ol Olsoc]

My kid's backpack weighed in at around 50 pounds when he was in high school. He went to a physically big high school, and it was often not possible to get from one end of the building to his locker, then get his book(s) for the next class. So he did what everyone else did - carry everything.

Not to mention the occasional random locker inspections for drugs. Many students found it less embarrassing to just leave their lockers completely empty. "Sorry Officer, and Principle Jones, nothing to see here!" The old locker paradigm doesn't work any more.

And yes, he had a whole lot of books- often several per class. We wen't through a lot of backpacks until we gave up and bought him a leather one to handle the weight.

He was a strapping 200 pounder in high school. But now imagine someone like his girlfriend who weighed 100 pounds, carrying the same weight in books.

Slippery sloping this from a real problem (carrying a large percent of your weight around a good portion of the day is a good way to develop scoliosis, esp. in young women) to lazy kids laying on a couch, munching Cheetos. is just not correct.

Having a tablet to carry between classes, that just happens to have your textbooks on it, is no indication of sloth. It just kinda makes sense.

Although Cheetos are pretty good...

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

As a final thought, though, two computers per student is stupid and a waste of money. I have no idea what anyone could gain from that.

One to display an electronic textbook or something similar, the other to actually work on. I don't see why they'd both need network access though.

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

With that attitude, why did they even let boys and girls go to the same school?

Re:How does this aid in education

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, I bet you were thinking "I'm not doing enough here... reading an iPad with my butt, why didn't I think of that".

Seriously though, while reading that comment on my N900 I was downloading radio shows from BBC iPlayer on my netbook and listening to ones I'd previously downloaded.

Looks heavy

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately this won't tip the Earth too much since this extra weight will be in the southern hemisphere.

ADHD

[Anonymous Coward]

The makers of ritalin might take an extra hit of their own supply to celebrate this one.

But...why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone ever need to carry a laptop AND a tablet? My laptop does just about everything a tablet does and more, so what's the point? I can understand wanting a tablet so you don't have to carry a laptop around. I can even understand owning both a laptop and a tablet, but this school seems to be planning on everybody using their laptops and tablets simultaneously for some reason. After all, if each student only uses one or the other at any given moment, then their wireless network wouldn't need an upgrade. But what reason could a student have to be using both a tablet and a laptop at the same time?

So my big question is just...why?

Re:But...why?

[guyminuslife]

We're talking about private schools. Maybe they need to justify tuition hikes.

Re:But...why?

[Gadget_Guy]

Why would anyone ever need to carry a laptop AND a tablet?

I would imagine that the tablet would get used mostly as an ebook reader so their can carry all their textbooks in one unit. Students will be handwriting less as they type all their work onto their computers, thus replacing their notebooks. It really doesn't seem that difficult to imagine that they would want to have their textbook and notebook on their desks at the same time.

If it wasn't useful to be able to see two displays at once, then we wouldn't have computers that support multiple monitors. This is just the same thing in a portable form.

I was initially against the idea of kids having to lug around laptop computers (especially the early adopter schools who did it before small netbooks). However, when I think back to my school days, and how heavy my bag was when I carried all my textbooks around then it seems that tablets and netbooks would be a much lighter alternative.

Re:But...why?

[c6gunner]

But what reason could a student have to be using both a tablet and a laptop at the same time?

Even Jean Luc Picard used his PADD and desk-console at the same time.

In particular a laptop and a tablet

[Sycraft-fu]

That just smacks of trendy bullshit without good thinking behind it. I understand OWNING both, sort of. I can understand that maybe there are situations where you want somethign that boots faster than a laptop or is easier to carry or whatever. But how the hell does one person reasonably use both at once? Yes, yes, I can think of contrived situations, I mean how is it useful, in particular to education?

I also have to agree about the distraction thing. I don't think computers for their own sake are a good thing. Computers, particularly ones on the Internet, are wonderful little distractions. As such you should only be using a computer when there's a need. If students are doing a lab where they are using a word processor, or programming, or something well of course they should be on computers. However if they are in English class discussing a novel they read? No, the computers will just be distractions.

This is even true of adults, much less students. I've had the occasion to video tape some special lectures for the department I work at recently and this means I'm in the back of the room, watching everyone. Everyone in the room was an adult, many were over 30 and had "PhD" behind their name. Some brought laptops. All who did, fooled around on them and didn't give it their full attention. Nobody took notes (no need, I was laying it down to tape), they all surfed and goofed off. Fine, they are adults it was their time to waste and this was purely optional. However to presume that young kids would do any better is stupid, particularly when it may be something they aren't so interested in.

Students should do plenty on computers, learning how to use them is an important part of modern life. However they should be off them when whatever they are doing doesn't involve a computer. Less distraction.

And two devices? Give me a break.

Re:In particular a laptop and a tablet

[xnpu]

You don't need to do anything do use both. Even if they're in your pocket, both devices could be calling home on the WiFi network every now and then.

2 devices is not overkill. Every modern phone these days has WiFI, which leaves you with just 1 more to carry, which could be a laptop or a pad, not necessarily both.

Re:In particular a laptop and a tablet

[icebraining]

Schools don't involve only classes, you have breaks too, And excuse me if I like to make a call from my VoIP enabled phone and not lose my laptop's connection.

Re:In particular a laptop and a tablet

[Anonymous Coward]

That just smacks of trendy bullshit without good thinking behind it. I understand OWNING both, sort of. I can understand that maybe there are situations where you want somethign that boots faster than a laptop or is easier to carry or whatever. But how the hell does one person reasonably use both at once? Yes, yes, I can think of contrived situations, I mean how is it useful, in particular to education?

If you have only one screen, you'll find yourself constantly alt-tabbing. Maybe they use tablet for reading a textbook, laptop to write stuff.

Re:In particular a laptop and a tablet

[delinear]

Not to mention one of the devices might be provided by the school and be pretty locked down in what it can do, the other might then be a personal device that the student carries because they have more freedom (to install their own apps, etc - I've experienced this in the commercial world before, having a work-approved laptop that I had to use to access internal systems but which wouldn't allow me to install any of the development tools I need to do my job, therefore having to also carry my own personal laptop with me in order to be productive). Alternatively, the laptops might be tied to particular classrooms (we probably shouldn't assume just because they're laptops that the kids are allowed to take them away, they might just be laptops because it's far easier to manage when you need to clear the classroom for some other activity) rather than carried around by students meaning the students need another device if they want to access anything when they're not in class. There are all kinds of reasons why it's not unreasonable to assume more than one device per child.

Re:In particular a laptop and a tablet

[Push Latency]

I experience the camera-perspective phenomenon quite regularly. The thing that gets me, is that it always seems to be the loudest (and most listened-to) gadgetry advocates that are guilty of this. The folks who, at this point, have to whip out their Macintosh personal computer at such occasions because it's... expected of them or something. So they do, and then proceed to do precisely as you noted.

It's pretty telling when I attend a meeting, and all of the tech representatives have a piece of paper and a pencil, and all of the managers, deans, etc. have Macintosh personal computers. If there were some variation to this phenomenon, perhaps it would require more thought.

Re:In particular a laptop and a tablet

[Monkeedude1212]

You said it best: It's actually not about having a computer available to kids, but having the internet available to them.

There's no need to upgrade the wireless to support 2 devices per child, no kids going to need the INTERNET on two devices at once. It's a horrible idea.

Letting a kid use a computer when its got nothing but office productivity software on it and no internet hookup doesn't function as much of a distraction.

Re:In particular a laptop and a tablet

[Anonymous Coward]

In my day kids didn't have phones in school, let alone VOIP enabled ones. If you are making a phone call, it should be during your break time, why would your laptop be on? And even it is on most others wouldn't be therefore freeing up wifi space for your VoIP enabled phone. Anyway, how do you think previous generations survived without their own phone in school? It really isn't that important.

Shit, I'm only 28 and I'm starting a post with "In my day...". Old age starts here I guess, now get off my damn lawn you young whippersnapper.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it is a wireless network and access points can only support so many connections. Bandwidth is not the issue here, it's the number of nodes.

Force the kids to make one ad-hoc device

[mykos]

Cut costs in half and the kid learns something on the way.

Re:Force the kids to make one ad-hoc device

[Anonymous Coward]

That if you have 30 ad-hoc networks in a classroom throughput will drop to a crawl? Not to mention the kids would need 2 wifi cards, one for the school wifi and one for the ad-hoc unless you meant getting both connections working at the same time on a single card as part of what they had to learn.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well this whole "article" reads like a very thinly veiled press release for Meru Networks selling its access points.

Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

The real sad thing is, private schools in Australia get more government funding than public schools...

I highly suspect the net educational gain for the countries children (and thus it's future) would be better if the money were spent on attempting to have both public and private schools with a OLPC program - than public schools with nothing, and private schools with a TLPC program...

This isn't about net gain though, private schools have 'god', better tax hikes, and more government funding due to their relative educational success over public schools (funding is granted to schools based on how well their students perform - worse school (in terms of academic performance of the children) = less money - public and private schools are in the same ranking list, and unsurprisingly private schools dominate the higher ranks of that list).

Gotta love our government!

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironically my typos in my message could have been avoided, if the public school I went to had better resources...

Damn my 'countries' government ;)

Re:Sigh

[AHuxley]

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1392211/Garrett-stands-by-school-funding
has the stats,
.."two-thirds of the education budget to private schools that educate one-third of the students, ...
has funding capped for students in government schools at $1000 per student, yet funding for students in private schools goes up to $7000 per student".
Australia has always been interested in new tech toys. The sad thing is we just use them as offered vs anything creative.
Will a tablet help kids, maybe , does it make the parents smile, yes.

Re:Sigh

[The Dark]

The real sad thing is, private schools in Australia get more government funding than public schools...

This gets brought out every election by the teachers union, it just lies through statistics.
Private schools get more Federal Government funding, and public schools get more State government funding. The state govements get the money for the schools from the federal government anyway.

See this link: http://www.acer.edu.au/documents/PolicyBriefs_Dowling07.pdf It is from 2004, but it shows that public schools get a average of $10,000 per student from the government and private schools get $6,000.

There is still an argument to be made that the public schools should get a bigger slice, but deliberately ignoring 90% of the funding for public schools isn't the way to argue it.

Well Australians do carry the youth in pouches

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the laptop is for the adult and the tablet for the kid in the pouch.

Tech doesn't have to be bad

[xnpu]

I walk around with 2 phones, and iPad and a laptop every day. In the business circles where I participate this is not exactly an exception.

If tech is not useful in certain classes, then just don't use it in THOSE classes. Hell, go ahead and block Facebook on the school network. But don't come up with this bull that tech in school is nothing more than a distraction. If anything, school should be teaching our kids more about how to use tech to our advantage in daily life.

Re:Tech doesn't have to be bad

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a sad individual, but just tell me that it's NOT a MacBook, iPhone 3 & iPhone 4 !
There may still be hope for you if even ONE phone is an android !

No more homework?

[sosaited]

So will this replace normal old-school lectures by professors? Or is this for helping students do their homework in schools? I can't imagine someone concentrating on a lecture by the teacher, which is the purpose of going to school anyway, when you have a laptop AND a tablet connected to internet. And please don't say this is only for in-between classes or breaks.

One possible reason I can think of that tablets with Internet access might be useful is watching some video/animation or using an interactive program aiding in the course. But former can be better done on a projector in the classroom, and latter is not an everyday task and should generally be given for home

So the only thing left then, is just a marketing and PR stunt of a sort. "We provide state-of-the-art IT infrastructure to help your child be one step ahead!"

OLPC? Come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

... we're talking a cashed up private school here.

Seems to me to be a little over the top: will the students be using both a tablet and laptop at once? One eye and one hand each?

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

There's one good thing about laptops in classes. Everyone will stay quiet during class when they can talk via irc :P

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha IRC you crack me up. I'm serious here 3/4 of my compsci class don't know what irc is and would be using facebook and proxies (and cries when they get blocked).

One desktop per child?

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing I find interesting is that in all the comments I read below are talking about the internet. When I went to grade school last millenium, we had computers. We used Logo, we played math games, we had courses in typing. But we didn't have a connection to the internet (such as it was in 1990). Now, I remember in high school everybody got TI-85 calculators. Although they were just calculators, we managed to write and distribute games on them. So maybe the problem is personal machines.

Imagine for a moment that the computers were highly restricted and kept in the respective classrooms. So you can access your word processor in English class, your Physics simulations in Physics class, et cetera. With less access, there would be less issues with maintenance. If you kept people's data stored on a remote fileserver, repair becomes a simple act of cloning a machine. And, in my experience, desktops don't break as often as laptops. Have the actual towers stored in a closet and have only monitors and keyboards on desks, and you have even fewer bad experiences.

In summary, classes don't just give you facts, they also give you relevant facts. The internet is, well, mostly irrelevant. So a more focused use of technology might avoid the dark side of computers. Not to mention keep webcams out of bedrooms.

A laptop AND a tablet?

[kurokame]

Man, that strain on the wireless network infrastructure has to suck. If only someone could invent some sort of bizarre laptop-tablet...

Re:A laptop AND a tablet?

[Genda]

Actually, what we need is a tablet that's a wee bit larger, has full current PC power (or greater) has a touch screen with full multi-touch and gestural support (precluding the need for a mouse), a detachable keyboard, and a full set of interfaces. Then we only need one device.

Re:A laptop AND a tablet?

[mangu]

what we need is a tablet that's a wee bit larger, has full current PC power (or greater) has a touch screen with full multi-touch and gestural support (precluding the need for a mouse), a detachable keyboard, and a full set of interfaces

You know that what you just described is a desktop computer, right?

Re:A laptop AND a tablet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't laugh it's been done:
a.k.a. Lenovo Ideapad u1 laptop.

www.pcworld.com/article/186105

Re:A laptop AND a tablet?

[froggymana]

Just carry a couple UPS's along with you for power, problem solved.

Two to one

[shird]

But surely each student would generally only be using one device at a time?

I guess having two devices increases the odds of having one of them connected.

Education vs. Schooling

[jonaskoelker]

What I would like to know. How does this technology aid in education... Yes the student can access some information faster, and do some research, or if your books were ebook they can search for terms faster, so they are not flipping pages while there is a lecture

By my (first tentative) definition, education is the pursuit of new knowledge and skills. It would seem that an internet connected device helps tremendously in the acquisition of knowledge, and in some skills (programming more so, lockpicking somewhat less so, in my limited experience).

Someone said that "learning happens when people do work at the limit of their ability on something that motivates them". When people are put into classrooms by force and told to study what the teacher has chosen for them, the motivation component tends to be missing. That might explain why people get distracted; but it also highlights why "forced education" is an oxymoron.

Education and schooling are not necessarily the same.

Dumbfounded comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

What a disgusting comparison between that affluent school district and the Third World.
ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD was never thought for a yuppie in mind.
And to criticize One Laptop per child as so yesterday is even stupider, as such machines can be updtated.

make 4 kids share 1, and they teach themselves

[Phil Hands]

as proven by Sugata Mitra (of Hole in the Wall project fame), if you get rid of the teachers and provide one computer per 4 children, and let the kids collaborate, they teach one another

http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html

The quote from Arthur C Clark is particularly telling: Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer should be replaced by a computer.

Re:make 4 kids share 1, and they teach themselves

[simplexion]

Yeah! So we need to reduce the amount of computers they have access to.
Our education system here in Australia is messed up. Thanks to John Howard our private schools receive excessive government contributions compared to other countries. While our public schools receive a low contribution from the government in comparison.
Then people come up with "great" ideas like spending that dismal amount of money on giving more distractions to students, rather than fixing the schools.
Keep it up Australia!

Re:make 4 kids share 1, and they teach themselves

[Ol Olsoc]

Yes, they do learn. They do teach each other. They can major in Farmville.

Re:Huh?

[c0lo]

How would they be simultaneously consuming data on both devices at once...

It is called ADHD... (if you didn't get it, the post is meant to be sarcastic... Something closer to my opinion: starts approx 3'50").

How was tech used?

[xzvf]

The problem isn't the technology, it is how technology is used in education. We've replaced blackboards with white boards with overhead projectors with presentation projectors with smart boards.... all to do the same task. Replacing textbooks and typewriters/word processors with tablets that can do a lot of fun stuff in addition to being books and writing tools is a distraction. Changing the way we teach using technology, but introducing differentiated pacing of classwork (allowing students to be diverse while learning at their own pace), separating classroom management from learning, using on line classes to allow unique classes in every school, creating lifelong learning portfolios, tracking progress in real time, immediate remediation when trouble occurs, freeing teachers for more one on one time, etc.... Technology will fail if you throw it over the wall, but using it to change the way we teach has potential to break us out of the failed system we have now.

viva

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for sharing such a wonderfull article ...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGszA07PqVs

Ugh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mom?!? Do I have to carry two devices? I mean, laptops are like algebra. No one actually uses them in the real world any more!

It depends on how you define "student achievement"

[voss]

The idea that student achievement can be defined by standardized tests that themselves test rote learning
not critical thinking is kinda silly. Giving a child 21st century technology to do 19th century work is pointless.
However if there is an integrated technology-oriented curriculum and testing to observe THOSE objectives
then the results might be very different.

and when they graduate

[Anonymous Coward]

the students will be twice as dumb. great.

too much tech in the classroom is BAD for students.

No "help", no fun, only cram

[Anonymous Coward]

Computers could be used as excellent teaching tools. However, just like classrooms and textbooks, they should be filled with relevant content only, devoid of distractions. Clearly, general purpose computer systems for average home or business user are not appropriate for that. Along with series of restrictions regarding what can be installed or saved on them and what they should be allowed to connect with, there should be a high and thick (and with deeply buried foundations... OK, I am forcing it a little) wall of incompatibility, rebuilt regularly as young aspiring hackers tear old ones down, to slow down "ubiquitous computing" from creeping into these special purpose "educational assistants". If there is a need for student to do a research on Internet at large, that should be done from some other device and their "school computer" should not be able to download or input anything directly, at least not without watermarking the clip of text or picture as a citation or a quote. Lazybugs and copycats would be forced to, at the very least, retype their Internet-obtained essays.

Simulations should be used just as cheaper alternatives to demonstrations, or for self-evaluation of the results of exercises. Teaching students how to use production software should not be the goal in itself (nor is it ethical thing to do!)

Education

[prefec2]

Education will not improve with the number of gadgets. It would be wiser to use better teaching methods. But well it is for private schools (=elite persons and those who would like to see their kids in this group). So why bother.

Sounds fair...

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, the public school my mother teaches at doesn't even have one laptop per student, and their network can barely handle the load as is.
Not that I'd trust high school kids with anything that expensive, personally; I can't imagine how much hair pulling must go on in the maintenance of those things.

Keep in mind that per student, private schools actually get more money from the government than government owned schools.
Think about that.

Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five

[dominious]

Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of children's projects in this country. The OLPC was the project to own. Then the other guy came out with a Two Devices Per Child. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called the 2 Devices and an iPod Per Child. That's 2 devices and an iPod. For music. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I'm telling you what happened—the bastards went to four devices. Now we're standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling three devices and a strip. Music or no, suddenly we're the chumps.

Well, fuck it. We're going to five devices.

Re:Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five

[srussia]

Call it the Ipod, Desktop, Iphone, Olpc and Tablet project.

I'm waiting for Cliff's next book

[Anonymous Coward]

"I was right, Bitches"....

What do we want? The Card Catalog.
When do we want it? Now!

In completely unrelated news...

[SpectreBlofeld]

...prescriptions for ADHD medication among Australian high school students skyrocketed 400%.

Re:In completely unrelated news...

[Anonymous Coward]

And horrible wi-fi allergies abound.....

Ho Lee Fook!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure glad I don't have to foot the bill for this extravagance!
I'm kind of tapped out after paying for two useless wars, multiple ineffective banking industry handouts, and propping up uncompetitive car companies. I certainly don't have anything left to pay to keep people healthy. Or do educate them.

Tools

[WildNahviss]

I work in a public school district where every student has 24/7 access to a laptop, we are on the sixth year of this project. I have been in public education for 15 years now, six as a classroom teacher (high school math, business, and computer), and nine as a district technology director.

To those who feel there is no need for a computer outside one or two subjects, that's short-sighted. In music students compose their own songs, they record their practice sessions in mp3 files and email them to teachers for a critique, they find good prices on new and used instruments and parts, etc. In foreign language classes they have websites where they can work on one to one language skills, with the computer speakings words for them to help them learn them, they read websites in different languages, they record their practice vocabulary and phrases and email them to the teacher. In English, they create poetry, not only in words, but visually, through pictures, music, movies, and other media. Virtually every class has been transformed, not in what is taught, but how it is taught. It engages the students, it empowers them to take control of their education. Students in our school work harder than they ever did before on projects, enjoying the work, and taking pride in what they do. Not only do they get the "over-stressed" basics of reading, writing, science, math, and social studies, but they work on skills such as creativity, organization, problem-solving, collaboration, prioritizing, etc. Nearly every student is a better student because of the computers. Those that can't physically write well, can usually type much better. Those that are visual learners have tools at their disposal. Instead of forgetting a book at school, their books are always with them on the computer, at a weight of one laptop instead of a stack of six books. The students are better organized, using calendars, reminders, sticky notes, and other applications to help keep their busy lives lined out.

A computer is a very powerful and versatile tool, but it's just that it's a tool. If the current class doesn't require that the students use computers, the teacher asks them to put them away and they do the old fashioned pencil and paper work just like pre-one-to-one days. When the moment strikes that they are needed they are used, when not needed, not used. During school hours, the ONLY thing students can do on the computers are specific assignments for specific classes, or they get in trouble, just like if they mis-used a pencil and were writing notes in class. We use VNC apps to view the students perpetually, the first few weeks they quickly realize that we are "always watching" and setting that standard means the number of mis-uses are very infrequent. When schools come to visit, we proudly bring up every students screen and randomly click on them, watching students, chatting with students, and completely impressing the visiting schools with the quality of work and time on task our students have.

For those that claim it doesn't help with student achievement, that depends on what you measure. If the measure of a student is just math, reading, and science skills, the no, it won't make that black and white difference. If the measure of a student is being organized, creative, self-sufficient, engaged, motivated, excited, collaborative, self-discovering, and able to pursue individual areas of interest, then it is a black and white difference. In a district where 60% of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch, we have a higher percentage of students attending and succeeding as college level classes and their high school classes, the average grade for all students is going up, the well-rounded education they are getting is better than ever before, and we have less discipline problems, better attendance, and lower drop-outs. We have also found that our math, reading, and science test scores are slightly better, but that was never the point of the computer, it's an essential tool for learning, a tool that is used in nearl

Re:Tools

[tycoex]

Very nice post, interesting to see how having a dedicated laptop per student is working out for you.

One thing I thought about is if a kid has even a single laptop he takes to school, and a smarthpone in his pocket that auto-connects to available wifi networks, then that's two devices every time he turns on his laptop. And most kids that would bring a laptop to school have a smartphone, so this is honestly a very likely scenario.

Re:Tools

[Darinbob]

You know, the people who invented all this stuff went to school without access to any computers, laptop or otherwise. You don't need to grow up with computers in order to adapt to the modern world or to learn advanced concepts. Pencil and paper is a perfectly adequate set of learning tools. Add a calculator at higher grades. If a student wants to bring a full blown luxury computer, then that's their own business (but keep it put away while the teacher is talking).

The impetus for this I think is parent's fear. They had problems learning to use computers, so they want their children to learn to use them. Not so they can become geniuses, but so that their children can more easily adapt to becoming wage slaves. They're worried their kids won't know how to use Word and thus won't get a job. However note that I can build my own computer and operating system and compiler, and I still don't know how to use Word! The schools with laptops are not teaching computing skills that are useful, because in the 10+ years until the time the students are out in the real world, the computing fashion will have changed and the specific computer skills of today will be obsolete. It's far better to teach students how to learn and adapt.

If we do need computers in schools, why is there a need for one per student? Even more, why a laptop, which is a luxury device costing at least twice that of a regular desktop computer, which most corporate users do not have (if they're not in management or sales). It's an unnecessary taxpayer expense.

Re:Tools

[The_mad_linguist]

I still don't know how to use Word

It's pretty easy. You know how on /. when you press the left mouse button while the cursor is located inside a tiny white box, letters will appear on the screen corresponding to the letters on the keys you're pressing on your keyboard?

Same principle, but you don't have a lameness filter.

Re:Tools

[WildNahviss]

Traditional classrooms are an unnecessary taxpayer expense. If a district pays $7,000 a year to educate a student (low figure), a laptop comes out to be less than 5% of that cost (assuming a 4-year life), where teachers come out to be around 80% of that cost. By giving students a very powerful tool and using it well, you can cut down the number of teachers needed per student, save money, and get a better education.

But hey, let's keep doing things the same way our previous generation did, the world may change, but let's not change education, that wouldn't make any sense? Pencils are luxury devices, the people who invented those got by just fine using quills and inkwells. They learned fine using quills and inkwells, never mind that the pencil allowed them to get a lot more work done in less time and fix their errors. Sure, the computer is a huge step forward from a pen and pencil, which is even more of a reason to use that tool.

As for luxury, that's a bit exorbitant of a descriptor, these are the most economical laptops we can buy, including total cost of ownership in terms of hardware, software, and licensing that gives us the most features with least hassle.

(BTW, I didn't know exactly how to spell exorbitant, with a pencil, I'd have just used a different word, but on a computer I was able to double-check the spelling, insure it was the correct word, and use it, so the computer as a tool increased my vocabulary, when a pencil wouldn't have, likewise without a computer I couldn't have an engaging conversation and would probably just be playing tic-tac-toe with my pencil.)

touch GUI R&D just beginning

[peter303]

The early Apple Apps remind me a lot of early Mac days when people then became overly gawdy with MacWrite fonts. I've had to dodge a colleague now and then charging toward me with a iPad and the dreaded "favorite new Apps" session :-) More, seriously there appears to be a lot promise here. And it will take a couple years to shake out.

Nooo...

[Anonymous Coward]

Technology in schools is more of a distraction than enabler of useful learning.

The only real benefactors are teachers who can do everything electronically and thus don't need to waste their time grading the results of tests and homeworks.

Re:Public Funds @ Mac Ed

[akayani]

What brand? Macintrash. They have private schools involved in a rip off and pull out of all PCs including servers and admin systems. I know my nephew has to 'buy' one. They are charging the kids 50% of the price for 2 years then they get to keep the laptop. I'd assume that model is being promoted across private schools by crapple.