A week or so ago we had the shocking revelation that education software doesn’t help. Now we learn that giving students laptops doesn’t help, either:
The students at Liverpool High have used their school-issued laptops to exchange answers on tests, download pornography and hack into local businesses. When the school tightened its network security, a 10th grader not only found a way around it but also posted step-by-step instructions on the Web for others to follow (which they did).
Scores of the leased laptops break down each month, and every other morning, when the entire school has study hall, the network inevitably freezes because of the sheer number of students roaming the Internet instead of getting help from teachers.
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.â€
It’s this part I’d like to focus on:
The students at Liverpool High have used their school-issued laptops to exchange answers on tests, download pornography
You don’t say! Really? And you expected them to do . . . what, exactly, with those laptops? Not to be cliché, but if I had a dollar for every time I caught a student on a porn site in class, I’d own my own island in the Caribbean. Then Ann Althouse says:
I don’t know if laptops make students dumber, but they obviously make adminstrators dumber.
It’s a great line, but it’s not just, or even primarily, administrators. It’s everybody in education (and politics) who apparently lacks the common-sense gene.
Step back, get in touch with your inner grandfather, and ask yourself these questions:
- Why would “educational software” improve learning?
- Why would giving kids laptops improve learning?
And if you did get in touch with your inner grandfather, your answers were:
- No reason at all.
- No reason at all.
And you likely asked yourself:
- What ninny thought “educational software” or giving students laptops would have any effect on learning?
- How do you keep the kids from abusing the laptops?
See? It’s not hard. What’s unacceptable is that we have people stupid enough not to figure it out beforehand in charge of education, and millions of dollars were wasted, not only on the pointless technology, but the studies demonstrating the obvious.
Get in touch with your inner grandfather. It works every time.
Peggy U says:
I don’t understand why brick-and-mortar attendees would need school-issued laptops at all. In defense of school-provided machines, however, Insight School from Issaquah, WA provides laptops to its distance-learning students, and I don’t think they have too many problems. Maybe that is because people who opt to home school are of a different mindset, although I think it is more likely because most of these students already have better computers at home which they can use for other purposes. The school decided to provide the machines and software so that they wouldn’t have any compatibility issues which would slow down students and require time from administrators to troubleshoot.
May 4, 2007, 2:19 pmdragonlady474 says:
So what happened to just sitting your butt in the classroom and taking notes?? And let’s not forget LISTENING…a very valuable skill.
May 4, 2007, 5:22 pmI bought a laptop for school and all it did was weigh me down and give me strong arm muscles. Totally useless in a classroom setting. Well, if your goal is to learn, that is.
Jetgirl says:
I am of the opinion that to prepare students for the technological world it would be wise to ensure they can read, write, perform arithmatic, and engage in reason and logic before ever letting them loose on a computer.
Computer skills are realitively easy to learn once you manage the first four.
May 4, 2007, 6:43 pmrightwingprof says:
Sure. I had a classmate with harlequin ichthyosis, who obviously couldn’t come to school. They moved a speaker phone from room to room. That was long before PCs, much less distance ed, and a laptop would have been useful for her had the technology been available. But that’s a wholly different issue from, “If we buy laptops for all the students, it will improve learning,” which is pure BS.
May 5, 2007, 6:48 amPeggy U says:
Agreed. I am happy with the online schooling arrangement, however. Class sizes can be larger, less money spent on building maintenance and transportation, no counselors to pay for, etc. …
May 5, 2007, 4:52 pmYour Inner Grandfather | Right Wing Nation says:
[…] as I’ve noted before, educators seem to lack the common sense gene. Here’s a stunning example from Joanne’s […]
December 25, 2007, 8:25 am