Report on Macs in Maine schools
Monday, May 20th, 2002The Lewiston Sun-Journal, a newspaper I began reading when I was two years old, files a report from class on the Maine laptop program’s pilot test involving 90 seventh-grade students and their their teachers in Auburn, ME.
Two months after the laptops arrived and just about a month before the school year ends, teachers, parents and kids are calling the program a huge success.
Without the laptops, English teacher Linda Penley said, “I’d feel like I lost my right arm.”
In her class, students use the portable computers to research American poets, type assignments and practice spotting reliable and unreliable sources on the Internet.
The laptop is simply a tool that fits right into her plans for the class, Penley said. But since her students have had them, she’s noticed that the seventh-graders are more motivated and more focused. They are more excited about their work.
Other teachers have noticed that grades have improved and attendance is up. “We have certain kids who tell us they come to school now because of the laptops,” said Principal Kathleen Cutler.
Teachers have noticed few of the problems predicted before the computers arrived. No computers have been stolen. Only one has been dropped and broken.
The big threat to the program, as the article notes, is the state’s shift from budget surplus to deficit since the program was first proposed two years ago.
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I have a running disagreement over the value of the Maine laptop program with my pal Glenn Fleishman, another technology journalist and former Maine resident who posted
his own take on the story today. After reading it, I wonder what 7th-graders in Maine think of an essay written on a computer and posted to a weblog saying that they should go read a book instead. Adults who already have the good jobs are always talking like that.
Glenn thinks time spent on computers in school will undermine basic writing and organizing skills, and that compared to books, the Internet is a poor source for many topics of study (no argument there, Glenn).
I’m of the opposite opinion: Students should practice thinking and writing with the same tools they’ll need to use in the real life careers we want them to have. If the tools are sometimes problems rather than solutions, that’s one of the things they need to learn. Telling teenagers they’ll learn more if they stick to pencils and books instead of using Microsoft Office makes as much sense to me as telling them to go back to slide rules, typewriters, and mimeographs.
