New Hampshire to Follow Maine's Lead

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."

Would be good if...

[Blaine Hilton]

The teachers knew how to use them, and the system admins know more about securing them then the kids that are using them.

Kid's and laptops.

[Hayzeus]

I dunno. I can't see issuing my middle schooler a laptop. Not because I have any particular problem with their use in education, but because the kid has a tendency to drop stuff (and lose stuff). Seems to be endemic to the age group.

REAL computer curriculums needed BEFORE computers!

[blueworm]

I help support the laptops here in Maine and the program is a complete joke. Schools don't do much more than post information on the Apple run FirstClass mail server and have students use search engines with the things.

Now if a REAL computer curriculum were to be developed around the Unix aspects of Mac OS X that would be something, but integration with the classroom itself isn't going to happen. I don't know how it could really without losing the attention of students who resort to web browsing during dull (and meaningless) lectures.

High School/Public School education is a joke in the U.S. Student's don't even know algebra by the time they graduate with A's in math.

Re:Thats for sure

[aardvarkjoe]

I would agree with that, except for the fact that most schools I know of have plenty of computers. There's lots of money for that. I constantly hear about "X school got Y million to upgrade their computer labs." You never hear "X district got Y million to raise teachers' salaries," or "X school got Y million to replace 30-year-old textbooks." Buying new tech sounds more impressive, so that's what happens.

Re:REAL computer curriculums needed BEFORE compute

[JaredOfEuropa]

I agree... schools, and the education system in general, need to figure out 2 things:
- How to teach using computers, and when teaching without them is better.
- What to teach about computers.

Both these issues are not being addressed or even recognised in schools over here (Holland). In rare instances you see an enthusiastic physics teacher giving classes on computer science, and even in those cases they have little if any teaching materials to back them up.

Buying computers for schools or giving laptops to kids is not the way to improve education.

Oh, I can sympathise with your sentiment about education. Here in Holland, per-capita spending on education is about 2/3rds of the amount spent in the rest of Europe. It scares the hell out of me to see my country dumbing down, visibly.

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[account_deleted]

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Oversold and Underused?

[pbooktebo]

As a teacher who used a mac in teaching music, I think that they are amazing tools when used in moderation. I do support the use of computers in classrooms, but it is also true that the only technology that really revolutionized education is the blackboard. In the past 100 years, grandiose claims were made for record albums, film strips, movies, TV in classes, etc. Often, the claim has been that teachers will become obsolete.

Larry Cuban, a professor of education at Stanford, has written a book on the subject, "Computers in the classroom: oversold and underused," which is available in .pdf form here:

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/pdf/CUBOVE.pdf

Re:REAL computer curriculums needed BEFORE compute

[scseth]

I absolutely agree that the curriculum needs to endorse and support the laptop program in order to be successfull. However - the expectation cannot be that teachers can do this overnight.

When we implemented a laptop program for graduate students in 1990 at UC Irvine's Graduate School of Management, it definitely took some time for faculty to understand how to best use the new technology for their curriculum. Obviously, some professors took to it faster than others, some may never take advantage of the fact their students have laptops. IMO it took a 3-5 years for the faculty to understand how to best utilize the laptop program for their curriculum.

Hmmmm .... is this really a good idea?

[anonymous leprechaun]

This has serious potential of being a serious nuisance. can you say, students not listening. -browsing -games -music -INSTANT MESSENGING! plus the possibility of some guys running exploits on other students machines . id take windows off ... nix (and wine if necessary) ... nonetheless ... i like the idea