The Kansas City, KS School District enthusiastically drops $6.4 millon into a project to give 5000 students laptops.

Meanwhile in upstate NY, a similar laptop project is declared a failure.

Are those in charge of the KC project aware of these other failures? If so, what are they going to do differently that’s going to make it work for them?

Or is it an overzealous board that thinks simply throwing expensive technology at kids is going to make them smarter?

“It’s actually here — the day we have been waiting for,” said Mary Stewart, instructional coach at Wyandotte High School. “Classrooms in Kansas City, Kan., high schools will never be the same after today.”

“Laptop computers will help us to teach each student at their instructional level, so that they can find success,” said Susan Engelmann, a district administrator who oversees the high schools.

Those quotes seem insubstantial. How and why exactly?

On his blog, Edtech expert Andy Carvin doesn’t feel that it’s the laptops that matter as much in these laptop programs. He concludes that if you’re going to introduce laptops, then you also have to introduce new ways of teaching that make good use of the technology.

That idea makes a lot of sense to me. Don’t expect the laptops to transform education. It’s just a tool afterall. The educators need to transform education. Maybe this is why they failed in Liverpool, NY. Because they plopped laptops into the hands of the students and did little else to engage them. How else would you explain significant IMing and network-clogging YouTubing on the school’s network?