[neveh-l] Laptops Win Over the Skeptics, Even in Maine
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- Date: Sun, 9 Mar 2003 16:29:01 +0200
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March 5, 2003
Laptops Win Over the Skeptics, Even in Maine
By SARAH MAHONEY
REEPORT, Me., March 4 — Attendance is up. Detentions are down. Just six
months after Maine began a controversial program to provide laptop computers to
every seventh grader in the state, educators are impressed by how quickly
students and teachers have adapted to laptop technology.
In a language arts class at Freeport Middle School, for example, muted
howls could be heard recently as students researched projects related to Arctic
stories, including "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London. Following Internet
tracks created by their teacher, Janice Murphy, some students, inspired by the
story, were researching wolves.
"Look," said Doug Hoover, 13, double-clicking on a wolf site. "Here's a
picture of the sound waves the wolf makes when it howls."
Here and at the 239 middle schools around the state, students, teachers
and parents say they are finding unexpected benefits.
No one seems more surprised by the early success of the program than
Angus King, the state's former governor. When he announced the plan in the
summer of 2000, motivated by a $50 million budget surplus and a pressing need
to attract new business to Maine, Mr. King was stunned by the vehemence of
objections.
The statewide effort, the first of its kind in the nation, "was more
controversial than abortion, gay rights or even clear cutting," Mr. King said.
"People hated it. They thought it was extravagant; they thought the kids
wouldn't take care of the computers."
An early opponent was Chellie Pingree, then the State Senate majority
leader and soon to be the president of Common Cause, a government watchdog
group based in Washington. "It was about the allocation of resources," Ms.
Pingree said. "We were struggling with construction issues: schools needed to
be built; there were leaky roofs and not enough books."
Though she now sees the program as a success, others still say it is
misguided.
"The state was flush at the time the laptop program was inaugurated, when
it should have been providing for the rainy day that we're living with today,"
said Sumner Lipton, a lawyer in Augusta and a former state legislator. "There's
a certain degree of irony in giving all the seventh graders laptops in a day
when we're talking about cutting state employees back to four-day work weeks."
Before the program began, legislators trimmed its cost and scope.
Envisioned as a $50 million effort that would let seventh graders take the
computers with them through graduation, the plan was limited to seventh and
eighth graders.
Laptops will follow their users to eighth grade next year, while seventh
graders will get new iBooks, for a total of 33,000. When students leave the
eighth grade, they will turn them in.
The cost of the four-year program is $37.5 million, which includes
leasing the laptops, installing wireless ports throughout schools so students
are always connected to the Internet and training teachers. It translates to
about $300 per user a year, said Tony Sprague, project manager of the laptop
program, the Maine Learning Technology Initiative.
To bolster the program, Mr. King sought support from beyond the state
government. The author Stephen King (who is not related to Angus King) toured
the Freeport school and offered to teach an online writing course. The Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation donated $1 million for more teacher training. The
technology giant EDS pledged $400 million in software for Maine schools, the
biggest gift the state has ever received.
Educators say that problems have been minimal, with little breakage,
theft or loss. The rewards, teachers say, have been impressive.
"These laptops are changing the way learning happens and the way teaching
happens," said Chris Toy, principal of Freeport Middle School. Such a
transformation, Mr. Toy said, can happen only when each student has a computer.
"We don't have a pencil lab or put eight pencils in the middle of the room and
have kids take turns using them, Computers are tools, and when every child in
every school has one, it levels the playing field."
Though an estimated 90 percent of the homes in Freeport, near Portland,
have computers, the laptops go home with the students at night. "We needed to
make sure that level playing field is extended to the home," Mr. Toy said.
"Now, no one's computer is better or faster."
That sense of equality is felt keenly in the state's poor and remote
schools. At the tiny elementary school in Pembroke, about 240 miles northeast
of Portland in Washington County in the Down East region, children and teachers
seem to be using the laptops as effectively as those in more affluent areas,
the principal, Paula Smith, said. Washington County is the state's poorest, and
Ms. Smith estimated that perhaps 35 percent of her students had a computer at
home.
As at other schools, she said, seventh graders seem more focused and less
mischievous. Last year, Ms. Smith said she handed out about 30 detentions to
Pembroke's seventh and eighth graders. This year, there have been two.
Parents also welcome the program.
"When the plan was announced, a lot of people thought the money should
have been put into buildings," said Alison Bennie, the mother of a seventh
grader in Topsham, next to Brunswick near Portland. "My husband and I both work
at Bowdoin College, and we see the rate of students bringing their own
computers to campus. It's virtually 100 percent. So the sooner kids learn the
language, the more adept they will be at computers in high school and beyond."
Ms. Bennie's point is critical. By some measures, Maine's public schools
are considered quite good: the National Center for Education Statistics ranks
Maine as having one of the highest high school graduation rates in the country.
But when it comes to students going on to college, Maine ranks low in the
region. And in term of Ph.D.s earned in the state, Maine ranks dead last among
states and Puerto Rico, according to a recent report from the National Science
Foundation.
Improved college attendance five years from now would be a measure of the
program's success, but for now, educators are collecting all the information
they can and are awaiting year-end test scores. In other parts of the country,
smaller programs have had a significant effect: In Henrico County, Va., where
24,000 students in grades 6 through 12, have laptops, test scores have risen
and dropout rates have fallen.
But many Maine educators worry less about how success will be measured
than about what will happen when they tell ninth graders in 2004 to surrender
their iBooks.
"Because I see their skills building, the biggest concern is what will
happen when they enter high school and lose their laptops," said Diane Parent,
the principal of the middle school in Caribou, more than 300 miles northeast of
Portland in remote Aroostock County.
Teachers are crossing their fingers that schools will be able to secure
funds to ensure that laptops stay with students through high school, as they do
in Henrico County, Va.
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Reuven Werber
Ed Tech Coordinator
Neveh Channah HS - Gush Etzion, Israel
www.nevnet.etzion.k12.il
Virtual Reference Desk Information Specialist
Instructor - Herzog Teacher's College - Yeshivat Har Etzion
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