Posted on 07/11/2005 8:53:06 AM PDT by freepatriot32
TUCSON, Ariz. (July 11) - A high school in Vail will become the state's first all-wireless, all-laptop public school this fall. The 350 students at the school will not have traditional textbooks. Instead, they will use electronic and online articles as part of more traditional teacher lesson plans.
Vail Unified School District's decision to go with an all-electronic school is rare, experts say. Often, cost, insecurity, ignorance and institutional constraints prevent schools from making the leap away from paper.
''The efforts are very sporadic,'' said Mark Schneiderman, director of education policy for the Software and Information Industry Association. ''A minority of communities are doing a good or very good job, but a large number are just not there on a number of levels.''
Calvin Baker, superintendent of Vail Unified School District, said the move to electronic materials gets teachers away from the habit of simply marching through a textbook each year.
He noted that the AIMS test now makes the state standards the curriculum, not textbooks. Arizona students will soon need to pass Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards to graduate from high school.
But the move to laptops is not cheap. The laptops cost $850 each, and the district will hand them to 350 students for the entire year. The fast-growing district hopes to have 750 students at the high school eventually.
A set of textbooks runs about $500 to $600, Baker said.
It's not clear how the change to laptops will work, he conceded.
''I'm sure there are going to be some adjustments. But we visited other schools using laptops. And at the schools with laptops, students were just more engaged than at non-laptop schools,'' he said.
Vegas?
I'm betting they are.
Apparently, so has the spelling of the Profs... ;^}
It's why I emphasize grammar with my little first graders. Besides, my grammars wouldn't like it if I didn't.
Guess they'll know everything the kids look at. Wonder how the marketers will tap this new database? Will 120vac outlets be brought to each desk, or will there be extra batteries at charge stations? How much additional IT staff will be required? What are projected costs for software, updates, upgrades, malware, and loss? What's the disciplinary policy for laptop abusers - back to books? Who handles classroom laptop problems - intructors or IT staff? Will air conditioning cost more due to the heat generated by hundreds of laptops and chargers? So many questions...
I not sure I get your point... what we are doing here is reading on line physical text and marking up documents and make comments...FR and discussion board like it are a prime example of what on line learning can be... post your text article or assigned reading and and then let the student have at it in a discussion board format to comment and question...
That is offset by the ability to increase the viewing preference.
"Also, you have to log in on the laptop with a preset password. In other words, they just aren't worth the effort."
That could be bypassed fairly easily unless the password was specific for each laptop and then it could still be bypassed. But, as you stated, it wouldn't be worth the effort.
Bush's fault.
FYI
Ok, I'll be the first to implement Kant's Categorical Imperative.
What if everyone did this?
The issue is, the book publishing companies won't be able to run their little racket anymore if this catches on.
What does it matter? What little they learn (e.g. Diversity, Multi-Culturalism, Moral Relativism, Anti-American History, Secular Humanism, Global Awareness, Non-Competitive Phys. Ed., Alternative Life Styles) ain't worth laarning anyhoo.
I wonder how much they will have to pay for copyright royalties.
When it comes to people, other then biological necessities...(Breathing, Drinking, Eating, Sleeping, Craping)
I have no fear that everyone will ever do anything
This is Arizona, where the schools are different and better than they are in the rest of the country.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1409962/posts
Trust a government school and you'll get a government education.
Smartboards are great. We installed them in our new acad building last year and the college profs love them. Its like the next level of overhead projectors.
The institution I work at also uses wireless laptops in the HS grades, but in addition to the books.
I think we are stepping away from the basics kids need to be able to know how to do. Who wouldn't have loved a grammer or spell checker when they were in school? Heck, kids already use calculators too early.
But that's just my $.02
Virtual gun safety?
Golly!
Me too!
I didn't say anything about poofweeeding.
Nope. It's not the same. And I do teach at an on-line U. too. There are big differences in how reading physical books and mags makes one a "reader," while reading on-line apparently does not.
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