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After 15 Years, Maine's Laptops-in-Schools Initiative Fails To Raise Test Scores (npr.org)
For years Maine has been offering laptops to high school students -- but is it doing more harm than good? An anonymous reader writes:
One high school student says "We hardly ever use paper," while another student "says he couldn't imagine social studies class without his laptop and Internet connection. 'I don't think I could do it, honestly... I don't want to look at a newspaper. I don't even know where to get a newspaper!'" But then the reporter visits a political science teacher who "learned what a lot of teachers, researchers and policymakers in Maine have come to realize over the past 15 years: You can't just put a computer in a kid's hand and expect it to change learning."
"Research has shown that 'one-to-one' programs, meaning one student one computer, implemented the right way, increase student learning in subjects like writing, math and science. Those results have prompted other states, like Utah and Nevada, to look at implementing their own one-to-one programs in recent years. Yet, after a decade and a half, and at a cost of about $12 million annually (around one percent of the state's education budget), Maine has yet to see any measurable increases on statewide standardized test scores."
The article notes that Maine de-emphasized teacher training which could've produced better results. One education policy researcher "says this has created a new kind of divide in Maine. Students in larger schools, with more resources, have learned how to use their laptops in more creative ways. But in Maine's higher poverty and more rural schools, many students are still just using programs like PowerPoint and Microsoft Word."
"Research has shown that 'one-to-one' programs, meaning one student one computer, implemented the right way, increase student learning in subjects like writing, math and science. Those results have prompted other states, like Utah and Nevada, to look at implementing their own one-to-one programs in recent years. Yet, after a decade and a half, and at a cost of about $12 million annually (around one percent of the state's education budget), Maine has yet to see any measurable increases on statewide standardized test scores."
The article notes that Maine de-emphasized teacher training which could've produced better results. One education policy researcher "says this has created a new kind of divide in Maine. Students in larger schools, with more resources, have learned how to use their laptops in more creative ways. But in Maine's higher poverty and more rural schools, many students are still just using programs like PowerPoint and Microsoft Word."
I was in high school in the 1980s and they wanted to put Commodore PETs everywhere, then they wanted Apples, then the provincial government decided it would be IBM PCs in the computer classes. Looking back, I can imagine that the salesmen were salivating at all that juicy education money.
TI still sells overpriced calculators to universities today! Education is as much a racket as anything else these days.
Mostly random stuff.
You mean just giving computers to kids doesn't make them smarter? You actually still have to teach them and get them engaged in learning?
Well I'll be...
Imagine that you give a TV to a teenager. This TV has 100 channels. Two of those channels are educational. 98 channels are sex, drugs, rock n roll. What is your teenager going to watch?
No question about it. My dorky nerd son is going to watch the science channels ... while explaining all the inaccuracies, like ignoring friction, or failing to account for relativity.
Some fathers worry that their kid isn't really theirs. Not me.
Around here they're doing iPads, not laptops. The yearly repair budget alone is killing most of the schools.
I told her to go look at the job offers on Craigslist, and compare the number of jobs requiring knowledge about pancreases to the number requiring knowledge of Word and Powerpoint.
That's because those jobs are called "doctor" and aren't generally advertised by Craigslist.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Yet, after a decade and a half, and at a cost of about $12 million annually (around one percent of the state's education budget), Maine has yet to see any measurable increases on statewide standardized test scores.
So what you're saying is we've managed to move children from paper to using laptops, which will actually prepare them for the future as adults, without any negative impact to learning? Sounds like a massive success to me.