Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops

[Tak-Wai Chan]

Jianwei,

This is another news about one-to-one computing in schools, which
Chen-Chung, my colleague who is now visiting
University of Colorado at Boulder, sent me. Success of one-to-one will
probably lie on this one-to-one group
through establishing successful experimental classes and schools.

Tak-Wai
=======

Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops

By WINNIE HU
May 4, 2007
New York Times

LIVERPOOL, N.Y. - 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."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/education/04laptop.html

 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: discussion-bounces at g1to1.org 
> [mailto:discussion-bounces at g1to1.org] On Behalf Of Jianwei Zhang
> Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2007 4:38 AM
> To: <discussion at g1to1.org> <discussion at g1to1.org>
> Subject: School boards in Toronto ban cellphones and personal devices
> 
> Dear G1:1 folks,
> 
> I want to share with you this news because I believe it 
> presents a big challenge that the G1to1 community needs to 
> deal with. On Wednesday evening, Toronto District School 
> Board, the largest school board in Canada, voted 
> overwhelmingly in favour of a motion to force students to 
> turn off their cellphones and other personal electronic 
> devices such as BlackBerrys, once they walk through the 
> school doors. Another smaller school board has already passed 
> a similar ban in February. They also have a plan to ban other 
> devices, like iPod in schools. Major concerns about these 
> devices include: 
> --cellphones caused disruptions in class, distracted students;
> -- cheating by accessing the internet on their phones or 
> receiving answers via text message;
> -- Safety and privacy issues as the result of the video and 
> picture functions.
> http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2007/04/19/toronto-cell
> phones.html
> 
> This is apparently not good news for technology developers 
> like Apple, who is envisioning the next generation computing 
> based on cellphones! This is another example of the conflict 
> between technology as an "invading species", using Yong 
> Zhao's term, and the school ecology; and the tension between 
> the educational and "childcare" functions of schools. Solid 
> research and design work needs to be done to demonstrate what 
> mobile devices can do for teaching and learning in order to 
> win these schools back. In term of technology per se, I'm 
> thinking whether there should be cellphones and other 
> handhold devices specially designed for school students that 
> can help address schools' concerns in some way.
> 
> Jianwei 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> =================================
> Jianwei Zhang
> Institute for Knowledge Innovation and Technology 
> OISE/University of Toronto
> 
>