Maine's middle-school iBook program to end in 2006
updated 11:50 am EDT, Mon October 10, 2005
Maine\'s school laptops
Maine's $37.2 million dollar One-to-One laptop program for seventh and eighth graders is set to , with critics citing misuse by students. Many students and teachers, however, are saying that the program has improved attentiveness in the classroom, and that children of the digital era ought to be using equipment that is familiar to them, according to a report from MaineToday.com. Studying the program revealed that students do use the computers for purposes other than education: some joined a group that followed election results online during lunch, while another student writes fictional stories during her free time.
The program started in January of 2002, and while test results showed no significant changes after the laptops had been passed around, David Silvernail of the Maine Education Policy Research Institute said test results don't speak to the program's success or failure, noting that stories from the classrooms are where to look. "Are they learning differently? Are they learning more? We have evidence that that is the case," Silvernail said.
Seventh-grade science teacher Kelly Fitz-Randolph at King Middle School in Portland said: "They still need to know how to use a microscope, but (the laptop provides) instant learning, things you would have had to wait for, things you couldn't get, you can better teach in better time -- with hands on and eyes on –- than you could without the tool."
Abuse?
10/10, 01:32pm reply
Hmm. I don't know the full story here, but it seems odd that people are griping about kids "not using the computers for educational purposes," but the only examples they can cite are kids playing math games, tracking political elections, and writing stories?
I don't know, maybe there were more reports of kids playing Doom or something and the article didn't bother to mention it, but it seems to me like kids using their laptops to do those sort of things shouldn't be cause for alarm ...
cooner
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Joined: Sep 2003
OMG, Take them away!
10/10, 01:37pm reply
They are using them to follow politics and write fiction on their own time! We can't have the students doing things that are productive to society with laptops they are only supposed to use for education!
Unless they were using the laptop to surf p*** during class time, I can't possibly see how these non-educational usages are reasons to discontinue a program that is obviously popular with the students & teachers involved. Sadly, the critics are usually louder than the success stories.
Rincewind
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Joined: May 2000
Uh...
10/10, 02:26pm reply
I'm pretty sure the beginning of the article was written with a hint of sarcasm. The author is pointing out that using a laptop for other than the intended reasons isn't necessarily a bad thing.
ebow
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Joined: Oct 2001
I don't see any abuse
10/10, 07:38pm reply
It seems when they do these other activities they are doing it on there own time. So I don't see any supposed abuse as whomever claims it to be. And like the other posters have pointed out they seem to be doing educational activities. So why the complaints?
jhorvatic
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Joined: Apr 2005