Some Schools Ending Laptop Programs

The New York Times reports that schools are abandoning their laptops-for-students programs. It turns out that the expense of providing laptops, expense of repairing laptops, difficulties of school network management, and discipline problems stemming from pornography, cheating, and cracking more than outweighed the educational benefits. Indeed, a number of schools have concluded that far from improving student achievement, laptops either had no effect or actively hindered academic performance. Apparently, politicians embracing technology as a quick fix for social problems doesn't always work out.

Gee, you think?

Wow... and it only took them a couple of million to figure that out.

Re:Gee, you think?

I think it would have helped to get a dissenting opinion into a debate. Clifford Stoll had very good arguments in his book, Silicon Snake Oil.

If they *had* to have it, this sort of thing is something you want to grow into, try a few smaller schools, let them come up with their own approach to technology, and see which approach works best and scale it up gradually.

What problem were the laptops supposed to solve?

The real issue with laptops in schools is ... what is the problem that the laptops are supposed to solve?

Nothing I've read indicates that ANYONE looked at the problem. They decided that the students "needed" laptops to "prepare" the students for ... something.

Think about it. It's kind of like giving kids a TV. Or a game console. Yes, there may be very specific instances where such would be useful (learning TV repair?) but on the whole, it's a fucking stupid idea.

Add to that the fact that (as they discovered) laptops are FRAGILE and it just gets worse.

Instead of focusing on technology, I'd rather see the focus on finding better educational models. We've all heard stories of kids who go from illiterate to college because they moved to a non-traditional school. Why can't we spend a fraction of the tech money seeing if we can find better low-tech (and therefore, more reliable) methods of educating our kids?

The average laptop probably won't last 4 years in high school. A book can last 20 years.

They did it to make money.

what is the problem that the laptops are supposed to solve? Nothing I've read indicates that ANYONE looked at the problem. They decided that the students "needed" laptops to "prepare" the students for ... something.

As I recall, that "something" was "survival in the business world" and the solution was to tech kids how to use Word and Excel. Encarta and other "resources" were admitted to be inferior to those the school already had in the library. Of course that's a loser, but those pushing it made a lot of money selling licenses and hardware.

The irony of this is that free software has solved issues of fragility and also has created real resources for learning that are cheaper than conventional alternatives. KDE's educational package has math plotting, algebra manipulation, language studdies, flash card programs, star charts, periodic charts with chemical properties, isotopes and images, and more. Wikipedia is a vast resource that easily competes with printed encyclopedias. Google will help you dig it deeper. All of this is free, robust and actually gives students what schools want them to have.

The low price comes with a cost: finding people willing to push it. Parents, having been burnt, are now sceptical and anyone who would follow the frauds are going to be abused. The well has been poisoned by people who claimed that "computer literacy" was being able to work M$ Word and other now worthless non-free software.

Falling hardware prices may help turn things around, but the M$ laptop will always be expensive, fragile and barren of learning material.

Re:Why not a computer lab?

We don't purchase a car for each student just because we know that they're probably going to need to know how to drive, do we? Instead, we have a "driver's education" class where they get to practice with a few school owned and maintained vehicles.

Not that I'm supporting it, but the argument here would be that your basic skill set determines your class in life and the types of jobs you can hold. If "office worker" isn't in that skill set, there's a whole job sector cut off from you. Also, if we're to believe the hype behind modernization and globalization, we're losing blue-collar jobs to other countries, but gaining white-collar jobs in exchange, so the students need to be trained or risk not have a place in the workforce.

Knowing how to drive on the other hand doesn't nearly determine your position in society the way your career does. Not having a car is an inconvenience you can manage. Not having a career has a much broader effect on your life and society as a whole.

Also, my public high school did have driver's ed.

Re:Why not a computer lab?

Old Sanford & Son skit had (Redd Foxx) talking to his son, who couldn't read.

"Why should I learn to read? I'm going to inherit the junkyard ain't I?"

"You gonna go broke, son".

"Why? I'll just hire a manager".

"Your manager can read and you can't? You gonna go broke, son".

Laptops teach communications skills. Laptops give you the opportunity to use what you learn that way, too.

IT is absolutely the wrong career for a lot of people, but if you even get a job selling cars and your boss can communicate but you can't, well, you're gonna go broke, son.

Re:For example...

AutoCAD, for example? Mathematica? SAS/Stat? Websphere? Photoshop? Windows? Help me out here, I'm trying to come up with some other "now worthless non-free software" that I can recommend to my friends' kids not to touch. Especially "M$" software, because we all know no one uses that anymore.

For a student all of that is worthless, especially when schools consider knowing the software more important than knowing the concepts. Worse much of the software you listed is a niche market which the majority of students will never use again nor be able to justify the price of. R can be used instead of SAS/Stat/Matlab for anything a high school or even college student could ever need. *nix is a lot more useful to learn than windows if you do data analysis or teach a class that does it. GIMP can be used instead of photoshop, again the missing features don't matter. I'm sure there is a free AutoCAD clone, god knows anything would be better than the dos version of AutoCAD I was forced to use in High School (only 6 years ago, no one gave a rats ass about the CAD class or it's equipment despite me being in a very good school. I got an A for keeping enough system running for the class to do it's work, the network admin simply didn't care). No idea about Mathematica but its probably only a matter of time.

No. They did it to as an attempt to throw money..

Schools and politicians have this belief that money solves problems. Buying laptops is a high tech and expensive way to babysit kids. Since every kid spends oodles of time playing video games and surfing the web, politicians and teachers thought that buying laptops was the best way to get all kids to learn. Throwing money and technology at the problem wasn't the solution.

The real issue here is a poor educational system. Teachers need to be paid based on merit. Students with poor discipline need to flunk. Instead, educators think flunking a student is a sign of a bad school, or a bad teacher. Parents can't believe that they are responsible for their childrens' inability to learn. They coddle their children, blaming everyone but themselves or their children.

We've grown into an age where kids don't care. Teachers are not given the power to teach properly, nor are they incented to do so. They go through the motions, and whatever happens, happens.
 
The teachers unions have crippled the entire process. The unions protect the worst teachers. Unions also drive the best teachers out of the system, leaving us with a system that gradually deteriorates. Unions always blame lack of funding. They line up the poor kids, pointing at how little money is spent on kids' educations. Yet most of the funding increases don't go to teachers' salaries. It goes to administrative costs, new buildings, and golden parachutes for administrators.

What we need is for teachers to be held accountable. And for those students that refuse to do the work, disciplinary action. Flunk them. Put them into a trade school. Europe has a pretty good system. If a student doesn't show aptitude for higher learning, send them to a different type of high school... one that is geared towards learning a trade.

Instead, schools just try to keep students in their classrooms, because headcount means tax dollars. And tax dollars are the only things that school administrators care about. They have no interest in grades. They have no interest in test scores. They get their money no matter what grades or test scores happen.
 
Laptops were seen as an easy way to throw money at their educational woes. "We need to do this to stay competitive." The insuation was that America was losing ground to the students elsewhere in the world. A computer for every child HAD to be the solution. Ignore the work. Ignore the fact that they actually have to learn something. Let's just buy the technology, and the rest will just fall into place.

Balloney. After this spending fiasco, the rest of the tax payers should wake up and force the teachers unions and school districts to change their ways. Paying teachers regardless of performance is RIDICULOUS. Throwing money at problems is careless and irresponsible. It's downright sad. To think that money, and not real work, will solve our educational woes.

Re:No. They did it to as an attempt to throw money

The real issue here is a poor educational system. Teachers need to be paid based on merit. Students with poor discipline need to flunk. Instead, educators think flunking a student is a sign of a bad school, or a bad teacher. Parents can't believe that they are responsible for their childrens' inability to learn. They coddle their children, blaming everyone but themselves or their children.

We've grown into an age where kids don't care. Teachers are not given the power to teach properly, nor are they incented to do so. They go through the motions, and whatever happens, happens.

There are many causes, not the least of which is parents who either don't care so if their kid is suspended he or she just sits at home playing video games for a few days; or who come screaming and blame the teacher when their precoius spawn is punished. Guess what, at some point teachers stop caring and don't waste their time on the losers - push them through and forget about them.

The teachers unions have crippled the entire process. The unions protect the worst teachers. Unions also drive the best teachers out of the system, leaving us with a system that gradually deteriorates.

It's a shame that local teacher's unions aren't as powerful as some believe; then maybe teachers could exert authority and maintain discipline instead of worrying that parents complaints will result in a bad review and not being rehired.

Good teachers leave because they are good - and can make a lot more money with a lot less hassle in another job.

Unions always blame lack of funding. They line up the poor kids, pointing at how little money is spent on kids' educations. Yet most of the funding increases don't go to teachers' salaries. It goes to administrative costs, new buildings, and golden parachutes for administrators.

That's because the unions don't have the power to control spending - in our district (rather well off one) I don't know a single teacher who wouldn't like to be able to direct spending so they wouldn't run out of copy paper 2 months before the end of the year or buying textbooks so each student has their own copy. (Real cases).

What we need is for teachers to be held accountable. And for those students that refuse to do the work, disciplinary action. Flunk them.

Accountability without authority is useless. Take away a kid's cellphone because they're texting during a test - Mom or Dad will come screaming at the administrator and teacher "How dare you do that to my little darling" instead of saying "Tough luck, child; you knew the rules and broke them"

There are a lot of great teachers, who care and whose main reward is to see some kid discover they can learn. Personally, that would not be enough for me to put up with all the other crap.
Don't even get started on "No Child Left Behind."

No surprise...

Seriously, I never thought that full blown laptops would help students (I myself having just recently finished high school). What WOULD help is something tablet-like that stores all our books in electronic form, which we could pretty much WRITE one. Seriously, that way they wouldn't have to lug around 6-7 books and erase their notes from the books when done with the materials. Would have my made high school years easier.

Re:No surprise...

That would be a convenience, but wouldn't solve the problems of pornography, broken equipment, network costs, hacking, etc.

I think the solution to that is to not provide a hackable device, but just a very simple reader with a basic tablet interface -- getting stuff on and off can be a non-trivial task because ultimately it will be done once a year when the next years worth of textbooks gets loaded on by the school. It's not a general purpose computer, it's a slightly advanced eBook reader with a non-standard interface for loading new material. That drops out the porn (sure, some kids will figure out a way to get it on there, but its no worse than the kids bringing in Playboy magazines -- you're never going to stop it, you just have to make it decidedly non-trvial), and the network costs. Hopefully such a special purpose device, being as simple as it is, should be much cheaper to manufacture.

Nor would switching tablets for laptops necessarily do anything to improve achievement.

A special purpose reader that has all your textbooks with good search facilities and the ability to annotate (via the simple tablet interface), bookmark, etc. would be an improvement over ordinary textbooks -- presuming the reader itself is of good enough quality. Being able to take notes directly onto the textbook, work on problems directly into the text, draw digrams, add bookmarks search tags, and generally have the text more firmly integrated into the course by making it central to all work, is going to be a good thing. It's not a revolution, but it would be an improvement. Of course this requires two things before it is feasible:
(1) eBook readers have to be of good enough quality to be an acceptable replacement for paper.
(2) Text sellers have to actually sell their eBook versions for significantly less than their printed paper copies.
Part (1) is all about the quality of the resolution, and general display. Right now it sucks. ePaper, or eInk, or whatever they call it, shows real promise in this area, but it's still very new. Part (2) is actually the harder one. There's not too much point in this if a printed dead tree copy is as cheap as an eBook -- students can fork over the cash for the heavy version and scrawl in the textbookm themselves; it wouldn't be quite as good as the eBook option, but it would narrow the gap sufficiently. If, on the other hand, eBooks are signficantly cheaper (as we would reasonably expect them to be) then there's enough good economic sense behind moving to eBook reader devices to properly motivate it.

Re:No surprise...

The way I see it is that schools should not be providing laptops. They should be providing desktops or rather making sure that each student has home access to a basic possibly internet capable machine and perhaps a usb drive to carry their work to and from home and school. There is no need to have a computer in front of every student in every class. When a class needs students to be in front of computers they can a either use a lab or b have simple terminals that the teacher controls and passes out/takes back with each class. If you must have laptops tie them to the room not the student so that one room can quickly be converted to a computer lab and back for classes that sometimes could use computers but other times don't need them.

Otherwise instate a program to make sure that each student has access to a home computer so every student can do homework that requires a computer.

Re:No surprise...

$150? School text books are similar to college text books. I've had to spend over $150 on a single class before in college. Unless prices are fixed for publishers, I don't see this happening. I remember getting fined in high school for book damage from previous students. We had to spend the first day writing down "marks" in the books and I missed a few pages. What would be nice is if on demand publishing became cost effective. As I recall, often only half the book was used in high school or at least a few chapters were skipped by the teacher. It might be beneficial to schools to offer dynamic versions of books that they could order which fit the needs and could also be printed fresh each year as you suggest.

This also leads to a few advantages like current text books. In high school, I had a french book printed in 1978 which is before I was born! It had water damage and was difficult to follow. The slang words weren't even close to current. History classes were often bad as well. I remember my text book talking about exciting "new" events in 1984 when it was 1992. That's not helpful either. Providing new books each year or on demand style books solves the outdated problem.

I used to work at an ISP. One school bought refurbished Macs and gave them to students for home use. These were desktop systems so they didn't need to worry about breaking. They also got a discount on internet access and students were provided desktops to use at school. This could solve some of the breaking problem. Plus the students were issued the computers as long as they were at the district. The school could buy a $300 dell or something and let the students use it at home for 6 years. (well ok maybe a brand that will last longer...) I'm not sold on the idea that computers automatically make students smarter. I would have played with them and not payed attention to homework at that age.

A wise man once said

"There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems." -- Ed Crowley

No surprise really

Kids don't need technology, they need an education. I think they can be given an excellent education without ever involving a computer.

And I agree, when I was in a computer class I spent more time actively hacking (in both senses of the word) their system, than doing work. Bootlegged their PC DOS 6.3 installation. Used Word 6 for Windows instead of Works 3 for DOS. (Or used WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS.) Et cetera. I obviously want to make the most of my time, but it was stuff I already knew. That's not the case for most kids, they need to be paying attention to the teacher, not their PCs, and you know kids have reverse midas touches and wreck everything...

-uso.

Re:No surprise really

Even in grad school, PhD students surf the web (looking at shoe stores, reading their email) on their laptops during class. Even in small seminar classes, not lectures, ostensibly built around discussion. I'm convinced that no matter what age or maturity level or intellect the students have, laptops are a productivity killer.

Re:No surprise really

As someone who has a laptop and tends to sit with the group of students who would likely be called lazy and disruptive by teachers I'll say this about the laptops. It's not the laptops that are a productivity killer, it's the teachers who are extremely boring and review review review. I regularly surf the web in any class that I can, java, circuits, history etc. I also get A's in those classes. It's not the laptop's fault that kids aren't paying attention, all that's changed there is that they have a better way to waste their time, kids aren't going to pay attention until the subject is interesting and challenging to them, which the current education fails to do for 90% of students who are either not interested at all in subjects they're being taught (case in point biology is required for my PROGRAMMING degree...I hate biology, much rather would take physics...you know, that think I'm very likely to program for any game/simulation...) or simply over or under challenged by the course.

On the other hand I'm against these "laptops for everyone!" programs as it tends to put technology in the hands of those who don't deserve it, those who can't treat it properly (oh look, I dropped my laptop for the third time this week...I should really put a hole in this screen and tie it to my backpack!) and those who tend to get good things ruined for the rest of us (there's an inverse relationship between the number of people on my campus who have a laptop and the number of classes that allow the thing, which is amusing as many of the laptops were bought through the school to help in classes that they're now banned in because some people aren't smart enough to alt-tab from /. to a blank or semi-filled word document when the teacher's near and only glace at other's laptops rather than stare at them and ignore the teacher noticing you)

I swear, most people don't have any ranks in Hide (Computer Use) at my school and far too many ranks in Illusion (I'm a leet hacker who'll never be caught)

But hey, what do I know. I'm one of the kids who doesn't pay attention in class so obviously you have to take what I say with a grain of salt...and a knowledge that I really don't like people who can't use technology right using it...and I'm currently in GM mode...

Heh

Imagine a LAN party.
Now imagine that LAN party comes with free hardware, you don't have to bring your own.
Now, imagine that LAN party has free Internet access, is open all day long, and you HAVE to go attend it each and every day.
So, how much work are you doing ? Yup, right, almost none at all.

Suddendly, schools realize that LAN party I describe above is on school grounds, with school hardware, and it goes on all schoolday long.
What a big surprise...

High school kids not responsible?

When you're old enough to have a beer you're old enough to have a computer running Windows. Believe me, you'll need the beer. I'm impressed that the network security is such a 10 year old can breech it!

Makes sense to me

Kids rarely appreciate what is given to them. If they had made it a program that rewarded students with academic success and achievement their results would have been different. Blindly giving them to all students undoubtedly would fail. Most kids these days happily trash everything they encounter. It's why most intelligent parents don't give their kids a nice car as their first automobile. They get a POS that no one cares about and can easily be replaced. Then the kid earns their own nicer car (or earns the first one off the bat depnding on the financial status of the family etc).

We can argue all day about the educational benefits of these laptops but if the kids just trash them from the get go there are no educational benefits. I wouldn't trust kids today with a pen let alone a laptop.

Why did they think that in the first place?

Why would have anyone have thought that laptops would have helped schools in the first place?

Was there any studies done to show that it would augment learning, or was it just a matter of technology=cool?

And, if there were any studies done, were there any studies done not funded by industry groups wanting school districts to spend lots of money?

Duh!!

At my sons school, the in-class PCs were rarely used for class work. Instead, the kids loaded 'em up with video games,
  music videos, and viruses/trojans/worms/spyware/spamware. No virus software or such. No patches were ever applied
  ( M$ machines). The school had no one to repair or troubleshoot stuff. This was all after a big push to get PCs in the
classroom. There were wiring parties and meetings to show off how great it was to get a PC in the classroom. Went nowhere.
A mad rush to bring our schools into the 21st century. Didnt work.

Information access does not equal education

I think one of the biggest paradigm shifts that people are going to have to adjust to is the idea that information, like many other things, is now often causing a problems with too much, and not with too little.
Having constant access to information does not mean you are educated. Becoming educated is more than just having access to information. You can give a student a laptop, with built-in or internet access to a database of information on anything in the world, and that doesn't make them educated. A fully 3D, interactive CD-Rom showing the human anatomy isn't what is needed for someone to become a doctor. Its the understanding of the basic concepts, and the discipline to understands how information fits into the big picture that allows people to really be educated. Without out, information is just a distraction.

Re:Information access does not equal education

Indeed, it was Einstein who said,

Never memorize what you can look up.

Kids need to be taught to understand concepts, how to think critically, and how to engage in research. Having access to information and memorizing some of it is nearly worthless.

Re:Information access does not equal education

Kids need to be taught to understand concepts, how to think critically, and how to engage in research. Having access to information and memorizing some of it is nearly worthless.

I think Einstein memorized more than he thinks, and in any case mathematical formulas which was his domain are very much a special branch. I find that this "memorization is pointless" is often being warped into "knowing WTF you're talking about is worthless". Let's say the assignment is "Explain the reasons for World War II". That involves a lot of critical thinking, it's not about memorizing dates or names or figures or whatever. Pick any of the below:

- Past history of wars
- Massive war damages to pay
- Heavy demilitarization
- Insane inflation, poverty
- Rise of glorifying nationalism
- Rise of xenophobia, racism
- Fear of Communism

From these (and more I'm sure) you can start to draw concepts and critical thoughts. But you wouldn't get anywhere without knowing that yes, there is a history of wars here and yes, there were economic problems and yes, there was racial ideologies and so on. Of course, at this point you're going to tell me that you could just look up that information here [wikipedia.org] but then you've put the cart before the horse. You're using other people's critical thinking, their logic and arguments and almost certainly arrive at the same conclusion they did with little critical thought of your own, unless you're doing a proper source analysis and inspection of their logic, counterarguments and so on.

Giving critical thought to a matter means in my opinion that you need to know more about the subject than mere memorization, which is usually only of some important events. By that I don't mean that you need to know them by heart, but you do need to keep them in mind at the same time as a working set. Critical thinking is figuring out which of these facts are relevant and arguing why. If you feel you see a factor that's been underrated or overrated, and can gather evidence and arguments for that then it is research, it shows understanding and critical thinking. Quoting others like a parrot is not, memorization of arguments and memorization of facts are just two sides of the same corn.

In short, if the information you're basing yourself on is crap, the conslusions will be crap even if the logic is excellent. You can reason yourself from knowledge to understanding, but you can't reason yourself from ignorance to knowledge, and so neither from ignorance to understanding. Memorization is not a goal, but it is a side effect. If you meet someone that can't quote you some facts about how WWII started, then he sure can't have any meaningful understanding of it either.

Re:Rote memorization does not equal education

Well, at least it wasn't:

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Contrary to what seems to be popular belief

My undergraduate university had a laptop program, and it was one of the great things about the school. Every student received a laptop as part of his or her tuition; each year was furnished with the same model of computer, so students' technology capabilities were roughly equal across the class year. The program let people like me, who didn't own computers before college, get one for a reasonable price and it discouraged theft because everyone had pretty much the same computer anyway. Teachers could assign projects or expect students to utilize certain software without having to contend with unequal access to technology, and the computer help center only had to train its employees to service a maximum of four machine types in any given year, so I imagine it cut costs there.

Of course, this is a different situation than the one discussed in TFA; we were college students, not high schoolers, and although our computers were under warranty, they were bought with our tuition money and belonged to us, so there was incentive to keep them nice. We also seldom, if ever, used the machines in class, but when we did, there was a good reason.

A laptop is a tool, just like any other. Tools can be misused, but they can also be instruments of success when applied correctly. Don't be so quick to shun the idea of school-issued laptops. When done right with the right age group, it can really work.

Laptop Worked Fine For Me...

Of course, I went through a few different online academies, so it was a necessity. I was home-schooled after elementary, it was only in high school that we went with online academies so that I could have a diploma instead of a GED. I went through four different associations, each better than the last. Ecot, which gave out woeful Compaq desktops and didn't have the slightest shred of organization. TRECA, which provided locked-down iMacs and practiced an overall totalitarian monitoring policy. Ohdela, which gave out decent laptops and had a fairly stable, if not hand-holding system. The best was BOSS (Buckeye Online School for Success); they provided adequate desktops, however I never used it as I took all book-based courses. Read the material, answer questions, send away for exam. That was perfect for me, as I was highly annoyed with the interactive classrooms and hand-holding lessons of the other schools. Of course, I'm sure I'm in the minority on that. I'm also sure that I'm in the minority when it comes to wiping out XP and installing Linux on the computers install. As I wasn't playing many video games on them, I found the OS more than suitable for school work.

So...

Are all of these problems going to happen with the OLPC program? Will the children of third world countries really use these laptops appropriately? Granted, this new abundance of technology could be greatly beneficial to the young people of these countries, but it may also breed new problems as well.

OS?

This is why current OS are NOT tailored for students. Pretending Windows + Office will help getting a better education is simply dull. In this regard, I really hope the OLPC will work and may stimulate new development of finally useful educational platform.

I am new here, so I actually RTFA.

well, not new, just your run-of-the-mill lurker.
Anyway, I find TFA poorly researched and rather superficial, much like the whole school-issued-laptops program.
I've been a math teaching assistant at college for a few years, and have worked in IT most of my life. I feel somewhat qualified to have an opinion on this issue.
The problem is not the laptops. It is not the kids. It is not even the teachers. The problem is management (ie PHBs) not thinking stuff through, and lazy journalists. If I was a journalist I would try to get answers to these questions:
A) What was the plan of the program?
B) What did they expect to accomplish?
C) How was the actual implementation?
D) What analysis was done afterwards to correct the problem?
E) Why are the kids getting blamed?

I suspect the answers will be:
a)
1. Give laptops to kids
2. ?
3. Congratulate myself

b)
The more money I pour into laptops, the better kids grades will be. Just because.

c)
kids got laptops, and nobody (teachers and students) had any clue what to do with them, so they mostly fooled around. And the problems were with a. and b.

d)
Too busy blaming the kids for education management FUs.

e)
Because they are the weakest link.

Of course, other questions cross my mind:
- How many kids had used computers before?
- How many used them at home?
- How many parents got involved with the program?
- How many parents where computer-savvy?
- What budget did the teachers have available for computer courses for themselves?
and so on and so forth...

O Rly?

I could have told you that giving high school kids laptop computers to use in school would only make matters worse. I oft-times wonder where the common sense is in the administrative bodies that cook up these hair-brained ideas.

You see, here's the problem... High school is to kids, essentially, a place where they are forced to perform menial tasks and busy work for 8 hours a day with no reward and the only motivation is to avoid punishment (if they are indeed punished for bad grades/failure/dropping out). The incentive to excel academically is nigh nonexistent for the majority of high school kids. Introducing laptop computers to the mix does nothing but give the students a tool they can use to pay less attention to class with. After all, most of these kids aren't interested in doing much more than passing their courses... playing some solitaire or looking at some titties is much more entertaining than staring at the clock for 5 hours a day, waiting to be freed.

At university, however, laptop programs are far more beneficial. My university (Winona State) issues tablet computers to all students. Indeed there are still plenty of instances of students who decide to play solitaire rather than pay attention, their grades reflect it and (for the most part) their behavior changes accordingly. Personally, I take all of my notes on my tablet (I can type far faster than I can write by hand, and the professors can certainly talk faster than I can write!), and it is hellof convenient to be able to draw diagrams right into my notes digitally with the stylus. You can begin to imagine some of the benefits... like pressing Ctrl+F instead of flipping through pages upon pages of notes to find a definition. There's a whole boatload of advantages to the system and I'm sure most of you slashdotters can think of them yourselves.

My point is, the real driver behind the effectiveness of laptop programs is the students' motivation to excel in academically. High school doesn't give the motivation, so laptops will only help students actively perform poorly. In a university setting, however, there is motivation. Be it the fact that the student is paying for an education out of his/her own pocket (like me!), or that the student is seeking a degree in order to make money hand over fist, or that the student is studying something he or she is actually interested in and doing it of his/her own free will. Because of that motivation, students will utilize computers effectively.

No wonder...

My sister has been taking part in her school's laptop project for the past two years. From what we've seen, it is an extremely flawed system. Here are some problems we've encountered:

-Many of the teachers are opposed to this foreign technology overtaking their classrooms. Right there, 25% of classes will not have laptop usage. Furthermore, even more of the teachers don't even know how to use a laptop.
-There is no educational software provided. I know that there are some really good educational titles out there that would be a tremendous help in classrooms, but nobody is taking the initiative to install/support them.
-The laptops were aimed to lessen the use of textbooks. Oddly enough, they just add to the ever-growing pile of virtually useless school-provided materials.
-The security system is flawed as well. They are heavily restricted - that is, until you quit a certain task in the task manager - after that, visiting porn sites couldn't be easier!
-The aforementioned hardware problems.

What needs to happen is for the school districts to implement a laptop education program of some sort. One that will ease teachers' fears of computers/help them to better assist their students, and one that will teach kids the basics of computing (no, how to use Word doesn't count). This should have been done from the start. What needs to happen for this

Integration, Planning, and Infrastructure

Speaking as someone who is heavily involved in the specifics of a 4-year-old 1-to-1 laptop program in a school, I can state that it is a matter of integration, planning, and infrastructure. If you sit down and you recognize that lots of laptops will break, that the curriculum must be modified, that students will attempt to get around restrictions you will have a much better experience. If you just dump the laptops on the schools and expect it to work you're going to be in a world of hurt. This is not to say the deployment at my school/employer is flawless, far from it. We have all those problems and more. But they have not been crippling, because we planned and we have the integration and infrastructure in place to mitigate them.

i used to teach in a district w/ a laptop program

And it's worse than you can possibly imagine.

We were always told in meetings to have students use the laptops as much as possible (I imagine to justify the expense in supplying students with them). It didn't matter what we did, so long as we were using technology in the classroom. The other big push was the state achievement test (thank you very much Bush). We were never told of a definite way that we could use these computers to help improve test scores.

Of course, any chance that students have to goof off, they will, and any time my students got to use their laptop, they would be using it for IM, games, or just generally surfing the web. i tired to keep an eye on all of them, but when you have classes of 30+ students, it's difficult to make sure they are all on task with traditional kinds of instruction and assignments.

The most successful I ever was in that district was when I was teaching summer school. I think a large part of that was because the students didn't keep the laptops over the summer. I brought in a classroom set of laptops in for a day so they could type a paper. Before I brought them in, I unplugged the wireless router in the drop ceiling.

Long ways to go

As a high school teacher, I can see a lot of benefits to having students with laptops. You could save a LOT of paper (it's amazing how much paper and toner is used on making handouts in our school every day), textbooks wouldn't have to be lugged around, assignments could be turned in electronically (no more "the teacher lost my assignment"), tests could be automatically corrected and students would have instant feedback., along with a lot of other benefits. The reality is, I rarely even go to the computer lab for anything class related because it's a waste of time. A lot of the websites with any interactivity are either blocked by the network, the computers don't have the right plug-ins (which students can't download and install themselves), or there is some other problem. Also, there are always a couple students in class that can't get on the network for some reason. This results in me wasting time emailing the tech department so they can reset his or her account. In the mean time, my student who can't get on the network has wasted a class period. The fact that the student was kicked off the network for downloading games in a different class is beside the point. With all the problems of just visiting a computer lab in an average high school in Middle America (and dealing with the "technology guy" who seems to invariably be a prick", I think it will be a while before we are ready for eSchool. Slowing the process even more is the teachers. My 50 year old coworkers usually need help loading a new program on their computer. They aren't going to be much help to students with a email issue, let alone be able to develop an electronic curriculum. It doesn't mean that they aren't good teachers (they do a much better job than me); it just means that they would need a couple years of training to get up to speed. Nobody has the time, money, or interest to do that. I think and hope schools will work toward the concept of every student having a laptop. I don't think it will work, however, until computers are as commonplace as pencils and paper and books, so students don't think of them as a novelty, but as a tool for getting their homework points.

This is time

This is time for the big, collective "D'uh!" we've been holding about this for a while.

As technologists I think we know better than the bureaucrats who propose these "nuggets of wisdom" that technology does not fix the fundamental problems in education.

Wrong approach

Handing each student their own personal laptop is the stupidest goddamn thing I've ever heard.

Technology was not used to that incredible extent at my high school, but we did have laptop carts available to supplement the library and computer lab(s). When a class needed to do a computer-oriented project, the IT people would roll in two or three carts (with 16 laptops apiece, I think) and let students check them out. Each cart had chargers built in, as well as a wireless access point, so the cart would be plugged into ethernet to create instant wireless access in that classroom.

We would do the task at hand, and the laptops would all be returned at the end of class. People didn't mess with them because of the futility in doing so. The systems were locked down, and anything you did manage to change would be wiped off at the end of the day anyway.

Good!

All for the better. Good books, pencils, paper and a desk are all that is necessary and sufficient for elementary education. Computers just waste time and get in the way. And I say that as someone who owns a dozen computers and used to earn my living as a programmer.

-ccm

Laptops work with lower income students

Studies show they work in lower income schools with students who have no access to computers or the internet. If the kids already have that at home then they will use it as a toy rather than a tool

Every new techology becomes a silver bullet

Every time a new technology comes along, the education establishment embraces it as a silver bullet that will deliver knowledge while keeping the students' interest.

When movies came along students sat through all sorts of educational movies as a way educating them and engaging them.

Students were subjected to film strips.

I was a professor when TV came along. The university had a new building devoted to TV lectures. I had to film a few lectures. They were terrible! All except the most telegenic faculty had the same experience. Very soon the building devolved to a lecture hall with an unused TV system.

Computers were hailed as a magic solution. We see where that is going.

Education consists of an engaging teacher and engaged students. Without those, all the newest gadgets are useless. With them the gadgets are superfluous.

textbooks, projectors, and white boards?

Of all the tools I thought were useful in college for helping learn, having working projectors and white boards in every room helped a great deal. The projector is good because it allows the professors to spend more time talking about the subject instead of writing nasty, ugly looking notes on a chalk board. More so, it gives students the opportunity to have the presentations at some point to study from. No these aren't replacements for your own notes, but it helped me tremendously in the past.

I think better textbooks would help tremendously, i.e., course material that isn't designed by someone trying to do a social experiment. It actually amazes me that the same quality management criteria used in business can't be applied to the generation of these books. That is, the text books should improve gradually over time, not radically to try some math teaching method of the month club.

Re:School students and pornography a problem?

Here I was, thinking that giving someone with a Grade 3 reading level, a Grade 2 writing level, and an ego regarding their abilities which can only be attained by someone who has learned nothing of substance in the past 5 or so years, a laptop which requires excellent reading ability and desire to learn from, and excellent writing ability and desire to communicate with the outside world with...

You know what? It's just too ludicrous. You've got to have fundamentals before a laptop and the ensuing internet access is of any use, and even then, they won't help with anything they'd be teaching in any sort of school where you're not expected to buy your own laptop if you need one.

Re:School students and pornography a problem?

Here I was, thinking that giving someone with a Grade 3 reading level, a Grade 2 writing level, and an ego regarding their abilities which can only be attained by someone who has learned nothing of substance in the past 5 or so years, a laptop which requires excellent reading ability and desire to learn from, and excellent writing ability and desire to communicate with the outside world with...

You know what? It's just too ludicrous. You've got to have fundamentals before a laptop and the ensuing internet access is of any use, and even then, they won't help with anything they'd be teaching in any sort of school where you're not expected to buy your own laptop if you need one.

We started a one-to-one laptop program at a pilot middle school for our 7th graders. The biggest problem is the driving force(s) behind the program are only focused on the laptops. These people are not educators or technicians, they are politicians of one stripe or another. They don't realize that the price of the laptop itself is the *least* expensive item.

The teachers that were thrown into the program were like "Cool, I get a new laptop...", and that's about where it ended. They were worse than clueless when it came to using computers for even the simplest things, let alone how to properly integrate a laptop into their teaching environment and curriculum. Of course, they "budgeted" training into the project, but it amounted to about 3 hours of general computer familiarization. This is just enough time to make the computers the "focus" of the classroom (a distraction from learning) instead of an integrated learning tool. Giving every student a computer makes sense only when you change your teaching methods at a fundamental level. This requires a deep understanding of many facets of computers and computing; something today's teachers just don't have and colleges don't teach yet.

This is still ignoring the infrastructure aspect. There are the obvious things like having enough wireless access points to handle 100 computers within a close cluster of 3-4 classrooms (non-trivial - especially when the plan calls for "two airport extremes to provide wireless coverage" - yeah, what are you going to do with the other 80 laptops?). Then there are the racks of spare batteries and battery chargers that will be needed. Students will *not* show up to class with their laptops charged and you *cannot* have power cables stretching across the aisles. These high-speed chargers are expensive and so are the batteries.

Students now *require* their computers for every class - not just for "computer lab". This means that they *have to have* a computer with *their* data on it. If something breaks or gets corrupted they can't wait for several weeks to have their computer repaired (we have a 1,000-to-1 computer to technician ratio). This means that OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) work orders get priority and everything must be dropped to get a replacement to them (with their data on it). Expecting students to properly back up their data is a lot to ask. Making this a priority part of the educational process is apparently impossible (since the teachers don't even really understand it). Making sure that all the important data, settings, etc. are backed up in such a way so that transferring them to the stand-in replacement is quick and seamless is not impossible. It just becomes difficult deciding what to backup. How important are the 10 Gigabytes of iMovie projects? What about the 20 Gig of MP3s in iTunes or the Garageband projects? Assuming that some of these are legitimate and must be backed up, how do you do that over (totally saturated) wireless? Then where do you put that data? You can't put it in an accessible part of the file server - kids will be messing up their backups... Now you pretty much need a dedicated backup server with a huge amount of storage (which also needs to be backed up) to constantly be online.

Now we have to deal with damage and loss. It gets up to -70F in t