Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops - New York Times
“After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none,” said Mark Lawson, the school board president here in Liverpool, one of the first districts in New York State to experiment with putting technology directly into students’ hands. “The teachers were telling us when there’s a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the way. It’s a distraction to the educational process.”
This seems like an obvious outcome now, but I remember thinking how awesome this would be when I first heard it years ago. Could it have worked? What was needed? I wonder if the instruction changed to match the new technology in the student's hands?
Wondering about the program I had seen in Atlanta I google laptops for students in ATL and found this article: http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/cobb/stories/2007/04/20/0420metlaptop.html
Aparently many school board members were fired and are under investigation for the business practices used in their program.
Maybe it's just a bad idea all around..
Posted by cmwillis at May 5, 2007 08:36 AM | TrackBack