New Hampshire to Follow Maine's Lead 236
Timex writes "According to an article from the Portland [Maine] Press Herald, some seventh-graders in New Hampshire will be issued laptops in January. 19 school districts have been invited to submit proposals, and up to five of them will be chosen to lead the way in New Hampshire. Cabletron Systems co-founder and NH Governor Craig Benson is getting funding for the four-year project from corporate donations. So far, he's gathered about half of the estimated $1.2 million estimated cost."
It just works... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:REAL computer curriculums needed BEFORE compute (Score:5, Informative)
I live near Bangor, Maine, and I did a college photojournalism project at my middle school to see how the laptops were working. Not only did the students seem more engaged in their learning, but they used them for almost everything: they wrote journal entries, found clipart for multimedia presentations, and then researched information for a speech. And that was all during one class. Students in social studies the next period spent time researching current headlines on msnbc.com and informed the teacher of the latest development of the war in Iraq (I visited this spring). That's right, they were telling her the latest news. What better way to engage students in education than by letting them be the teachers? Every study I've ever seen has said that two-way learning is much more effective than reading from a textbook or listening to lecture.
While some districts in the state may be less excited about the program, its important to note that the laptop program in Maine is still supported and still working. While expensive, this program introduces students to technology at a fairly early age. It's very possible that Maine students will be much more tech-savvy once they leave their middle and high schools.
Re:REAL computer curriculums needed BEFORE compute (Score:4, Informative)
As he pointed out, the schools in his area were hardly making good use of the machines. In your example, I bet that the distribution of laptops in Maine was accompanied by an education programme to teach how to use the laptops for school assignments.
Re:Kid's and laptops. (Score:5, Informative)
IAACGWAL ( I am a college guy with a laptop ) and I can honestly say those things are nearly useless during class. They require boot time, which is wasted time. They also require juice considering they don't run on air and a random day at college lasts 8 hours for me. I haven't heard of ANY laptop with an 8 hours battery life and the idea of 30 people rushing for the nearest electrical outlet every 2 hours is plain silly. Also, laptops aren't very versatile for writing down stuff in a hurry. The programs given are very limited and using them can feel very unnatural at times. That whole issue might be solved by those tablet PCs with the pen thingy, which is far more suitable for jotting down notes and what not.
For college, nothing rocks more then a good pen and a good notepad with pre-perforated and lined paper. Though laptops would still rock, especially with WLANs. UT2k3 during dutch classes, anyone?
Re:$1.2 million ... (Score:3, Informative)
And yet, we still had to deal with textbooks that were falling apart at the seams because they had been in use since the 70's.
It's nowhere near a sure thing that they already have decent books. In fact, I would be willing to bet that a lot of them don't.
populations (Score:3, Informative)
hi, nh kid living in an actual city here... just like to point out those are like... really small. did it even say how many laptops they're getting? 1.2 million over 800 bucks a laptop is 1500 laptops. the above list adds up to just about 100k people, so how many of those are 7th graders? 1.5 percent?
Re:REAL computer curriculums needed BEFORE compute (Score:2, Informative)
Flame bait and ignorant.
Teachers [wired.com] like this one [middleweb.com] , and studies [stateline.org]and newspapers [macobserver.com] back up my claim.
Do you work better on a good day or a bad day? Most work better when happy. I know this sounds amazing, but learning AND having fun is possible. Don't be a troll and don't try to deny the results. Attendance is up, kids are having fun, teachers are happy, test scores are good, etc. What more do you want?
Re:Would be good if... (Score:3, Informative)
I work with the education program at my college and in the local school districts and their admins. The ibooks for the Maine program are locked down rather well, I'm still trying to tinker with one to get it to use something *other* then 802.11b. The only settings you can alter (other then the top row of Personal stuff) is keyboard, mouse, sound, and the universal access. Nothing else is even accessable. I can run terminal, but I'm also using a teachers image of OSX and not the student one. Everything was setup on a single unit by the Apple Maine rep and then imaged onto other machines. Kinda like nuetering a dog, but in this case, I can understand why. From there, training courses were taught (now how much they pay attention is a different issue) for all those who were interested and invitations were sent out for additional training to those involved. There isnt much excuse I can see not to understand how to use these machines.
I'll preface my remarks by saying that I was 4 years ahead of the 7th graders when it was implimented, and now go to college and know those in the northeastern part of the state that deal with this. Not a definitive answer, but its what I've seen personally.
I went from 5th to 12th grade with a laptop in sch (Score:2, Informative)