Top stories

Journalists Cover Microsoft, Using Macs

It’s not an easy time for Microsoft — with Steve Ballmer having to field questions about being “buffoons” and an “evil empire”  at the shareholder’s meeting (.doc) — so when they get together “the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers” (nb: we weren’t invited) for Mobius to discuss super-secret mobile tech you’d think [...]

Guide To Black Friday Apple Bargains: Cheap MacBooks, iPods and Accessories Galore

Here’s a guide for finding the best bargains on Apple-related gear during the infamous Black Friday sales on November 27. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of gear from leaked photos of sales flyers and descriptions of sales.
The bargains include a 2.26 GHz MacBook + $150 gift card at Best Buy for $999.99 ; a 32GB [...]

Review: Voices Is Today’s Best Thing Ever, Grab It Now While It’s Cheap

New on the App Store is Voices from the clever folk at Tap Tap Tap. You can guess what it does.

Open it up, pick a silly voice. Helium is pretty silly. A microphone appears and the app even clears your throat for you (try it, you’ll see what I mean). Now speak your brains, and [...]

Review: Sony Walkman S540 Series Video MP3 Player

Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.
“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite [...]

In A Crisis, Do Kids Need More Macs?

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

About the author

nicole_martinelli

Nicole Martinelli was born in San Francisco and has lived in Milan and Florence, Italy. Cultish tendencies and love for DIY increased while living on the Old Continent, where tech came late and cost more in Big Mac index terms. She's written for Wired.com, The New York Times and Newsweek, and since 1999 on her site, Zoomata. If you're so inclined, friend her on Facebook or connect on Linked in.

Email the author | Read more posts by Nicole Martinelli.

6 comments

    And do our animals need repurposed Bondi Blue ‘pet houses’?

    http://page2.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/b97687765

    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.

    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

    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.

    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.

    Ihr7Ox jiogsahuakwj, [url=http://jdleyzaprwaj.com/]jdleyzaprwaj[/url], [link=http://jojbrdhjfeqs.com/]jojbrdhjfeqs[/link], http://khgxrirllnqt.com/

Buy Inside Steve's Brain Buy from Amazon.com Buy from Barnes & Noble