by Andy Rementer @ TechnoTuesday.com
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Posts tagged as:
laptops
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?
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How many devices are your kids tethered to and what do those devices cost? Not just in terms of dollars, but also in terms of loss of creativity, loss of your peace of mind, etc.
Michelle Singletary, who always seems pretty level-headed in her advice had a great column in the Washington Post that covers the topic nicely.
Do kids really need all of these gadgets? Mine don’t, although they do have some of the ones that she mentions. She’s spot-on with her points on how expensive these “toys” will cost in the long run. It’s not the cost of initially getting the cell phone or the came console, it’s the monthly charges and the stream of games that need to be bought over the years that really adds up.
“If parents just saved that money, the cash they spend on monthly cellphone charges would add up to thousands of dollars by the time their children go to college. “
True. And I like the part where she talks about parents who can say no, work less and spend more quality time with the kids as well. If you’re going to spend $250-$400 on a gaming console, that’s about 1-3 extra days you going to have to work. And you’ll probably end up buying at least 10 games this year at $40-50 a pop.
When my son wanted a Wii, I told him he could sell off his old games on eBay… We sold a few and got $10-20 a pop… So then he shows up with a big bag of games from his old system and sold about 15 more. He sold them at a fraction of the original puchase price, but he earned enough to buy his Wii and felt good about doing it on his own.
Hint… If you want to get games at a good price, try looking on eBay, there is a glut of them there. Try to get your kids and their friends to trade games too.
My daughter wants a laptop. That’s her big thing. But she doesn’t need one. She says it will help her in school. I say, “No, it’s going to be a big distraction. You have a desktop that you can use at home and get you work done on that.” And a CMU study agrees with me that Laptops Isolate Students and Don’t Improve Performance.
What’s it going to cost? The initial outlay for the hardware, but it doesn’t end there. There is the cost for software, the time it will take to install and maintain the system, office software, firewall, anti-virus, anti-spyware, internet filter/monitoring. All of that installation, maintenance, and ugh… if something goes wrong. Suddenly I’m out a lot of my free time and I’m dealing with aggravation because I’m the “Geek On The Go” in my house. How about the costs in terms of stressful arguments with the kids; a portable computer is going to end up being used in places you don’t want it being used, like in a bedroom, out of site of the parents. Late at night after we’ve gone to bed. Now she’ll want to take it to Grandma’s house when she goes to visit.
No way. This is getting too expensive for me. Just say no.
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