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

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.