The NY Times had an article last week about schools backing off the idea of laptops for students. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/education/04laptop.html a snippet: ==> So the Liverpool Central School District, just outside Syracuse, has decided to phase out laptops starting this fall, joining a handful of other schools around the country that adopted one-to-one computing programs and are now abandoning them as educationally empty — and worse. Many of these districts had sought to prepare their students for a technology-driven world and close the so-called digital divide between students who had computers at home and those who did not. "After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none," said Mark Lawson, the school board president here in Liverpool, one of the first districts in New York State to experiment with putting technology directly into students' hands. "The teachers were telling us when there's a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the way. It's a distraction to the educational process." <== It's not surprising, really, but the timing is not good. Hoping the OLPC folks are at least aware of this trend. mt
It's a good article. The problem is that if teachers teach the traditional stuff in the traditional ways, then the traditional tools work very well, with low overhead and cost. But if you want to change the curriculum and add a lot of problem solving, project based work, some computer programming, and so forth, then laptops can be a help. But most traditional teachers are not trying to teach this stuff. -Winston ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Stratolab - video game courses for kids in new york - http:// stratolab.com On May 7, 2007, at 11:56 AM, Michael Tobis wrote:
The NY Times had an article last week about schools backing off the idea of laptops for students.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/education/04laptop.html
a snippet:
==> So the Liverpool Central School District, just outside Syracuse, has decided to phase out laptops starting this fall, joining a handful of other schools around the country that adopted one-to-one computing programs and are now abandoning them as educationally empty — and worse.
Many of these districts had sought to prepare their students for a technology-driven world and close the so-called digital divide between students who had computers at home and those who did not.
"After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none," said Mark Lawson, the school board president here in Liverpool, one of the first districts in New York State to experiment with putting technology directly into students' hands. "The teachers were telling us when there's a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the way. It's a distraction to the educational process." <==
It's not surprising, really, but the timing is not good. Hoping the OLPC folks are at least aware of this trend.
mt _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
I understand the goal of OLPC is to get the technology into the hand of kids for self directed learning, not to get them into schools. Unfortunately, it will be years and years before schools focus on interactive education, and students will be the driving force. Eventually they will demand it, and teachers will have to learn from the students how to interact with them. I deeply appreciate OLPC's focus on getting the laptops into the hands of kids, rather than heading down the bureaucratic path of trying to get them into schools. gratia vobis et pax, TK + .:dydimustk.com:. | Freelance Apostle ________________________________________ Thomas Knoll 651.210.2321 tk@dydimustk.com skype:dydimustk
Somes schools will voluntarily affiliate with NGOs trafficing in laptops by the palette, and the NGOs won't mind if they see the hardware going to intelligent uses. So it's not an adversarial relationship with the schools in all necks of the woods. But it is in some. We live in a diverse world. What's going on in the so-called Empire State on the Atlantic side of North America is one National Geographic story among many. I don't set my own personal watch by the New York Times, that much is certain. Kirby On 5/8/07, thomas knoll <tk@dydimustk.com> wrote:
I understand the goal of OLPC is to get the technology into the hand of kids for self directed learning, not to get them into schools. Unfortunately, it will be years and years before schools focus on interactive education, and students will be the driving force. Eventually they will demand it, and teachers will have to learn from the students how to interact with them. I deeply appreciate OLPC's focus on getting the laptops into the hands of kids, rather than heading down the bureaucratic path of trying to get them into schools.
gratia vobis et pax, TK
+ .:dydimustk.com:. | Freelance Apostle
________________________________________ Thomas Knoll 651.210.2321 tk@dydimustk.com skype:dydimustk _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
participants (4)
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kirby urner -
Michael Tobis -
thomas knoll -
Winston Wolff