In A Crisis, Do Kids Need More Macs?
10:29 am, March 12th, 2009, Nicole Martinelli
A program providing MacBooks for students in Maine plans to increase its scope by leasing 100,000 computers from Apple at a cost of about $25 million per year.
Maine started its first-in-the-nation program by distributing more than 30,000 computers to each seventh- and eighth-grader in all of the state’s state public schools in 2002 and 2003.
Now, all 120 of Maine’s high schools, along with 241 middle schools, will have new laptops under the same program. The cost runs about $242 per computer per year.
Maine governor John Baldacci believes the laptop computer program can go beyond the classroom, becoming “ a powerful tool for the entire family.”
“Every night when students in seventh through 12th grade bring those computers home, they’ll connect the whole family to new opportunities and new resources,” Baldacci said. The computers would come with software to connect to the state’s CareerCenters, he added.
In 2007, a study released by the Maine Education Policy Research Institute (.pdf) indicated that student writing scores improved after laptops were introduced.
Image used with a CC license, thanks to torres21.
The AP via Bangor Daily News
Posted by Nicole Martinelli in News | Comment on this article
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Belengazi, on March 12th, 2009 at 10:57 am
I’m still a bit skeptical about schools giving a laptop to each child like this. I know my school tried it one year and the result was that they were hacked or had their OS reinstalled and all of the software we were supposed to use fell out of vogue because it was crap. By the end of the year we were all back and turning our papers in manually, not via email and everyone used them to play games.
I think that if they are going to do laptopts for every child, which is a good idea, that they should sell them. Leasing the laptops just leads to abuse because its not the student’s computer.
Chris Peterson, on March 12th, 2009 at 11:44 am
In addition to this program apparently being based on “correlation implies causation” I really think that computers in school is just a bad idea, and that their use in an educational environment should be minimized as much as possible.
More of my thoughts on the subject are outlined in a full article here:
http://coreminimalist.blogspot.com/2009/01/do-computers-belong-in-schools-debate.html
Dann Zinke, on March 12th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
I’m not sure the price is right, but having computers in school is an excellent experience. I was the second class of Maine students to receive the ibooks, and they added immensely to the learning experience. Although there were problems with hacking, damage, and misuse, overall they helped replace some outdated textbooks, and provided valuable access to the internet’s many resources. The biggest problem was the teacher’s inability to utilize the technology. Yes originally paper was wasted, and the ibooks were not used to their full potential, but over the years teachers have learned and attended conferences specifically designed to help integrate the computers into the classrooms. The tools kids learn on the laptops can be applied to the real world where computer skills are increasingly required in the workplace. Furthermore every child, receives hundreds of dollars worth of software, that helps replace the need for, some textbooks, reference books, and handouts, making the computers final cost even less. Besides if spending is the tool to getting out of this recession, then education is no place to skimp.
Ian, on March 12th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
it seems like there needs to be some oversight. lease them and keep them owned by the school and then make these kids sign a contract that they understand that this is a privilege and it can be taken away (leaving them to use in school labs) and having all the laptops in managed mode with logs and the teachers have a right to view those logs at any point. and any child who hacks a computer or attempts to do things they know they should not like download porn will lose his/her laptop. any child that excessively misbehaves, skips school, slacks off on doing homework etc can lose his/her laptop and so on.
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