Ariz. High School Swaps Books for Laptops

[trogdor]

This is cutting edge, dudes.

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20050819/D8C2QFRG0.html

VAIL, Ariz. (AP) - Students at Empire High School here started class this year with no textbooks - but it wasn't because of a funding crisis. Instead, the school issued iBooks - laptop computers by Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL) - to each of its 340 students, becoming one of the first U.S. public schools to shun printed textbooks.

So the weight of your bookbag shrinks from 40 pounds to about six. Kewl.

[NoodleBoy]

1. Now, if only that money had gone to hiring teachers who can teach....

But that's ridiculous. Students need nice looking chairs to sit in, new desks designed to have computers at them, laptops, and a campaign advertising all those things to the world more then they need teachers who love what they do, are good at teaching, and feel they're getting paid what they're worth.


Such is the state of AZ's education system.

[JoFerret]

13. Why does it have to be one or the other?

Students need good teachers, the right furniture, a great program AND laptops. And with textbook prices these days laptops are cheaper than a full high school set.
And breaking the information delivery monopoly of the textbook industry is a great thing.
Now I just hope they train the teachers well to teach well with laptops.

WTG Arizona!

PS There are schools that have had all students with a personal laptop for the best part of a decade now. Lots of evidence out there about what the issues are and how well they serve children and education.

[NoodleBoy]

32. I've seen schools with old carpetting, old chairs, old desks, mediocre

textbooks, and fantastic teachers, and they all outperformed my school with new carpetting, new chairs, new desks, new textbooks, and mediocre teachers.

Plus, in lower-income districts like the one I went to school in, most students don't have access to a computer at home, so making them take mandatory classes beyond basic use is ridiculous.

[Dora]

2. I wonder how this will pan out.

Textbooks are pretty bad these days, so I'm glad to see that schools are attempting something different. However, the effect of using solely laptops and the internet as the medium for course content could be either good or bad.

If students are allowed to search the internet widely, are exposed to a variety of original and secondary sources, and are given some latitude in charting their own course of study, then this could possibly be a very fruitful enterprise.

But if students are limited to using online course curricula that's been designed by the same interests that are designing textbooks... Well, I wouldn't anticipate seeing much improvement in students' reasoning skills, literacy levels, or ability to create and support an argument.

[nolabels]

7. In the long run it has nothing to do with money or education

it has to do with baby sitting and control. Economically it would seem a win-win. A laptop at $600 wouldn't take that long to pay for with books at %50 x 4 or 5 classes times 3 or four semesters. And a case in point about education like history. I learned way more history (important history that mattered) just casually here at DU than I ever learned in school.

[Horse with no Name]

9. Problem is that the laptops get dropped, viruses, etc

My daughter's laptop had a system 32 failure first day of school and had to be re-wiped. She missed not having it for 3 days, then had to go back and catch up what she missed.
These schools do NOT let you just surf the internet.
They are heavily controlled as to what the kids can and can't see.

[B3Nut]

11. Probably why they're using Mac laptops...

iBooks are rugged to a fault, and the Mac OS is largely immune to virii, Windows virii and spyware don't affect it at all. I still prefer XP and 2K to OSX for usability (I miss the OS 9 days, LOVED that OS) but for all the damage Jobs did to the user interface OS X is solid under the hood.

They would definitely have filtering at their gateway, but one hopes at least various world news sites will be accessible, especially non-US-based sites like the BBC.

Todd in Beerbratistan

[nolabels]

14. Wow, how could we have guessed it was about control ?

Really do they each need their own individual one at school? They could be attached to the desks even. If we can make it into the future in any fashion, my guess tells me books are kinda obsolete. It will be like comparing horses to modern engines in producing tangible results. Mostly you don't see it while you are traveling, but when you look back, that's when you can see where you have been.

The internet is right up there in importance with the invention of the wheel. Keeping the corporate and government goons from ruining it our challenge now

[txindy]

3. I wonder how the students will study for tests

Surely they can't assume every student has internet access at home.

I just hope they don't have their science classes via some fundie 'intelligent design' website.

[obreaslan]

12. I would think that the text books are pre loaded...

Onto the laptops in some sort of digital format already, like Adobe .pdf files or something similar. You can store large amounts of info on the PCs and they don't have to access the internet at all.

I think it is a great idea in general. This world is changing to a digital world, and we shouldn't cling to our paper text books just because it's the way we were taught. And just think, for every couple of text books not printed, another tree is spared. Geeze, am I some sort of sterotype tree-hugger or something? :eyes:

[JoFerret]

15. Study for tests?

What sort of tests do you have in mind? Rote learning? Memorization? Spitting back the teacher''s views in multiple choice?
With laptops and information and production access students can use what they know to create more knowledge. That is the real test - putting information and skills to work in new and creative and useful ways. That is what good schools are doing with laptop programs.
Laptos and internet access have the potential to break the power stranglehold of traditional education. Like any tool they can be used for good or bad but at least information is set free.
The real challenge is harnessing the power in creative and productive and forward-thinking ways. No more worksheets and skill and drill. No more teachers as wannabe sages on the stage monopolizing the discourse. Teachers now have to work out how to be the guide at the side. Let's hope school systems and administrators give good teachers the training and support they need to take advantage of this new world.

[txindy]

29. No more homework, apparently, either.

Because not everyone has internet access at home. Only 340 students in the entire school, though. All schools should be that way. Too many are bursting at the seams.

You're thinking of an ideal world. I like the world you described, but if you think this is what is going to happen with laptops and schools, you're extraordinarily optimistic. They certainly aren't training and supporting teachers. They're underfunding public education in this country, not creating new systems. They're dumbing down schools, not unleashing minds. The article talks about filters. I can just imagine. In fact, I don't need to imagine. My kids each use laptops at school and have since third grade. They still have textbooks, though. What they learned about research skills and how to make use of the internet, they learned at home. They get prepackaged busy work on the laptops at school. Whoopee.

[northzax]

4. and you get carpal tunnel syndrome

nd your eyes are shot from reading a screen all day. Yes, textbooks are a pain, but they have their advantages, highliting, notes in the margians, reading anywhere, plus, you can drop them and they don't break.

[aePrime]

5. How very hideous

I'm a computer scientist. I'm also a computer science graduate student. When I'm not sleeping, I'm usually at a computer.

I would not trade books for a computer screen at any time.

Treeware is so much easier to read. You can flip through the pages, mark them, flip to the contents or the index... . Computers are also a distraction. When I'm studying, I leave my office to be away from my computers. This will only shorten attention spans more than they are.

[hunter]

10. Students can't write in their textbooks...

Worse, the textbooks are generally awful, especially history and science textbooks. These books weigh so much because they are full of useless crap. I hate to watch my kids struggling to bring textbooks home from school and back.

In my perfect world every kid would have a very rugged and lightweight laptop, textbooks would never leave the classroom, and teachers could make unlimited take-home copies of anything they needed for their students.

When my wife and I were teaching we used to spend quite a bit of our own money at Kinko's because the school copy machines were either broken or we'd exceeded our very meager allocation of copies. I would rather give my students a sheet or two of paper for homework than ask them to lug home an entire textbook.

[unhappycamper]

6. It wouldn't surprise me if all the laptops were loaded with 'special'

internet filters.

Having all your reference material online is also convenient - reality can be easily adjusted as needed. Web material is not permanent; books are.

[txindy]

31. They have many filters

If they're like the ones my kids have been using at school for the last five years or so. And as someone said in a different post, most students consider them a pain once they're over the novelty. They're preloaded with busy work, much like paper worksheets, and they spend days working on learning software such as Powerpoint (the kids get the concept immed., but it takes daaaaaays for the teachers to teach it) instead of actually DOING SOMETHING. And those without internet access at home are royally messed up because the assignments are mandatory.

It's a waste as it stands. Maybe this AZ school will do better.

[Horse with no Name]

8. Our kids got laptops last year through some sort of funding

grant.
If you ask most of the kids, they would rather not have them, stating they are more of a pain than they are a benefit.
It is MANDATORY for them to turn alot of their work in via internet as well as check for assignments,etc. It is highly censored as to what they can look at on the computer and as for the kids who don't have home internet, they are out of luck.
Big problem last year when they had powerpoint presentations as a final grade.
It was to highlight the area cemetaries (alot of old ones around here).
My daughter and 4 of her classmates did a Blair Witch project theme which made them have to go to these cemetaries at night filming and editing. They spent 20-30 hours on it, filming and putting it together.
They were required to email it to their instructor, which they did.
However, there was a glitch and the instructor was unable to open it.
By this time, they had already turned their laptops back in (end of school) and none of the kids thought to keep a copy of it because they knew the teacher had it.
Laptops had already been wiped, project completely gone. They got a nominal grade for turning it in, instead of a great grade for a great project.
I just can't see how taking away textbooks could ever be a good thing.
How many times do you flip back and forth looking at one thing to the next. That is too difficult on a laptop, IMHO.

[nolabels]

16. It's us older folks that have the bigger problems with it

We have been taught in rote method to be thinking in linear flatlander mode. A global method is much more efficient. It's not a panacea, its a different way of doing it that has more potential

[Locrian]

17. yuk

OK - so everyone tell me: when was the last time you read a 500 page document on a computer screen? Right.

[nolabels]

20. I can't remember ever needing the entire contents of a 500 page book

at one time. I am no scholar and don't spend a lot of time reading. Yet I do know people that have horses. They love their horses but they haven't ever used them for their source of income. The computer display technology is crude but getting better. Books like horses will never go away but might become less prevalent. If I need information I look to the internet and the P.C. first. There is no absolutes here just tend to's and what will work, what will not in the given circumstances

[Lydia Leftcoast]

27. Okay, but did typewriters make pens obsolete?

Did television make radio obsolete?

I hate the idea of weaning kids away from books anymore than they already are, but I have to agree that school textbooks are dumbed down and full of drivel that is designed mostly to be inoffensive.

I wish, for example, that kids could learn history the way I did, from the coffee table books that my dad seemed to buy by the ton, each lavishly illustrated volume dealing with a different civilization (the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese) or a cultural region (Native Americans, the Pacific Islands) or a country (France, Germany, Italy). The pictures made the books irresistible, and once I got into the narrative, it was fascinating.

I also ended up getting the same story from several different viewpoints, for example, covering the Spanish conquest of the New World in the Native American book, the U.S. history book, and the book on Spain.

As a result, I hardly ever opened my history textbooks and got straight A's in history all through junior and senior high school. :-)

[nolabels]

30. People who own the pen manufacturing factory have vested interests

It's a conspiracy to make the invention of the typewriter go down in flames:crazy: The story of how books were made before the invention of the printing press is a good one. I never got good grades in anything but art in later years. I always resented the fact of that one sided story told like it was the only truth. So many other viewpoints to be looked at.

Many Native Americans cultures spent them thousands of years isolated from the rest of humanity learning how to live within nature and be part of it. That's how they survived. When the Conquistadors came the people of the earth were often helpless against the many inventions or naive to the reasoning of or for them.

Understanding IN DEPTH about the subject is what a P.C. offers. Learning how all the different studies are manifold into each other. A global thing is there in front of the questioner with just a few movements of the hand.

If you have dislikes about certain aspects of anything you should enjoin yourself find out what alternatives there are out there and why others don't participate in them.

I like reading but don't like books, P.C.'s and internet are a godsend to me.

[hunter]

18. Wow.

Well, they learned to make backup copies, which is a very important lesson.

The only way schools could hand out laptops in any of the places I've lived would be to saturate the market with them. Otherwise I can't imagine more than half of them would ever come back.

It wouldn't be safe for kids to walk home with a laptop in their backpack.

[Horse with no Name]

19. This is a POOR rural community full of freepers

and collective intelligence isn't the strong suit.
They told all the kids and parents that these laptops had GPS capabilities and would periodically check the location of them.
Any that were not where they were supposed to be would suffer from going to jail.
:rofl:
But to their credit, they haven't lost one.:shrug:

[hunter]

21. That's sort of sad.

I live in a place where I have to worry if the kids I catch painting gangster grafitti on my walls have guns, which is a different sort of sad.

[Horse with no Name]

22. It's a very safe town

One reason I am here.
There have been 2 murders here in the last 20 years (unsure of how many before) and they were domestic disputes.
I never wanted to have to live in the environment you describe, because it doesn't have to be that way.
I think there was one fight at school last year...2 girls fighting over a boy. That's about it for violence in the schools.

Please let me add this because I think it is important that someone doesn't think I live in a lily-white environment.
Town profile:

Racial profile
* White Non-Hispanic (49.6%)
* Black (42.2%)
* Hispanic (7.3%)
* Other race (3.0%)
* Two or more races (1.0%)
* American Indian (0.6%)

Education
# High school or higher: 66.1%
# Bachelor's degree or higher: 9.9%
# Graduate or professional degree: 4.4%
# Unemployed: 7.0%

Town Crime statistics for last year
# 0 murders (0.0 per 100,000)
# 0 rapes (0.0 per 100,000)
# 1 robbery (25.2 per 100,000)
# 22 assaults (554.0 per 100,000)
# 35 burglaries (881.4 per 100,000)
# 48 larceny counts (1208.8 per 100,000)
# 0 auto thefts (0.0 per 100,000)

Median resident age: 37.4 years
Median household income: $23,655
Median house value: $31,600

There have only been 19 new homes built here since 1996

[Tyranny_R_US]

23. The stats you gave just doesnt match up

http://www.pagnet.org/population/census/populationdata/demographic2k/profilepdfsaz/1600478540.pdf

Table DP-1. Profile of General Demographic Characteristics: 2000
Geographic area: Vail CDP, Arizona

RACE
One race . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,392 96.3
White . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,165 87.2
Black or African American . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 0.6
American Indian and Alaska Native . . . . . . . . . . . 13 0.5
Asian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 0.5
Asian Indian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - -
Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 -
Filipino . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 0.2
Japanese. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 0.2
Korean. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 0.1
Vietnamese. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - -
Other Asian 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - -
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander. . . . 1 -
Native Hawaiian. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 -
Guamanian or Chamorro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - -
Samoan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - -
Other Pacific Islander 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - -
Some other race . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 7.4
Two or more races . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 3.7
Race alone or in combination with one
or more other races: 3
White . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,252 90.7
Black or African American . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 1.4
American Indian and Alaska Native . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 1.7
Asian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 0.8
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander. . . . . . 1 -
Some other race . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232 9.3
Subject Number Percent
HISPANIC OR LATINO AND RACE
Total population. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,484 100.0
Hispanic or Latino (of any race) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 16.6
Mexican. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 13.1
Puerto Rican. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 0.7
Cuban . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - -
Other Hispanic or Latino . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 2.8
Not Hispanic or Latino . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,071 83.4
White alone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,987 80.0

[Horse with no Name]

24. Doesn't match up with what?

I'm confused. I don't live in Vail.:shrug:

[Tyranny_R_US]

25. I'm confused as well

I read the original post then scrolled down here I guess I missed something in between :rofl: nevermind!

[deadparrot]

26. My (former) high school and my brother's high school are starting this...

Almost every well-off school in the district is.

[NJCher]

28. heavy books, texts as sources

My comments are probably more applicable to college texts but as a teacher, I tend to use a text as a resource more than something to read cover-to-cover. I hate seeing my students have to lug around huge book bags of texts. I find, though, with a good deal of advance planning I can tell my students which texts to have available on what days.

Much of what is in a text is dispensable. It would be nice if there was some sort of compromise between the printed material and the computer--such as a way to inexpensively print out sections for those who preferred to deal with hard copy.


Cher

[mikelgb]

33. tablet pcs are better

you can write in them like a notebook, make notes in the margins, draw graphs and shapes for math, even do paintings for art class... i love my tablet