Long ways to go (Score 3, Insightful)

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.