“Students at Empire High School here [Vail, Ariz.] 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. _ to each of its 340 students, becoming one of the first U.S. public schools to shun printed textbooks,” Arthur H. Rothstein reports for The Associated Press.
“‘We’ve always been pretty aggressive in use of technology and we have a history of taking risks,’ said Calvin Baker, superintendent of the Vail Unified School District, which has 7,000 students outside of Tucson,” Rothstein reports. “Schools typically overlay computers onto their instruction ‘like frosting on the cake,’ Baker said. ‘We decided that the real opportunity was to make the laptops the key ingredient of the cake. … to truly change the way that schools operated.'”
Rothstein reports, “All of Empire’s students knew about the laptop-only setup when they enrolled, and students who were uncomfortable with it were allowed to enroll in the district’s other, more traditional schools. But Empire has a waiting list. Julian Tarazon, a freshman, said he doesn’t miss lugging around a bag full of books. ‘It was kind of hard at first, because you had to put things in folders,’ Julian said, referring, naturally, to virtual folders on his computer’s desktop. ‘After a couple of days, you kind of get used to it.'”
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Chatham County (NC) rolls out 1,000 of eventual 7,400 Apple iBooks for students and teachers – August 17, 2005
Apple announces 30,000 iBooks deal with Florida’s Broward County Public Schools – July 27, 2005
if it works, more power to ’em… but what’ll happen to the tradition of wasting class time by reading the doodles left in the margins by the previous twelve students who’ve used the textbook?
If everyone is wondering, this is probably a charter school, not a public school, and such schools are known for going out of the edge of teaching. Kids that go to charter schools end up getting better test scores than normal public schools too. Some day the public sector of schooling will catch up to them.
Folders? Okay, time for lesson 1: Spotlight!
Makes you wish you were back in school huh?
“…what’ll happen to the tradition of wasting class time by reading the doodles left in the margins by the previous twelve students who’ve used the textbook?”
it shall be a lost endeavour, as will the creating such textbook addendums, footnotes and art. soon it shall go the way of the dodo, just like the Sony Casssette Walkman did.
on the other hand you might just have more excuses to not do homework (“I spilled Pepsi on the keyboard… really!”) or have a real legit problem if you mistakenly drop your bookbag/laptop carrier down the stair whilst changing classes.
“Learn Different”
Sweet!! Much better than lugging books around – there are some disadvantages, perhaps…
Hope the school has lots of outlets!!!!
you can doodle on an iBook too. Trust me. A sharp paperclip or nail is perfect!
If everyone is wondering, this is probably a charter school, not a public school, and such schools are known for going out of the edge of teaching. Kids that go to charter schools end up getting better test scores than normal public schools too. Some day the public sector of schooling will catch up to them.
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eh.. charter school? you mean.. PRIVATE school?
wow, they get better test scores.. would that be because.. the school has about 340 students.. and hence, a much better student:teacher ratio?
And no the public school system, by its very nature, will never catch up.
When the East Compton High is using iPods, the private school’s will be beaming language lessons into your brain.
Golly, Miss Johnson, I did my homework. Ask my brother Wally! Really I did. But my dog, he stepped on the keyboard when he was chasing the cat, and he deleted the folder where I was storing my science project.
What was the project about? Well, Miss Johnson, it was about the psychological trauma Eddie Haskell wen through with the canellation of the show, and why he went into porn as a result.
Yes, I know the subject of porn is banned in our school, but truly I wasn’t going to show any of that yucky stuff. I mean, who would want to see that bean pole naked anyway? Though I do have a few pictures of Hugh Beaumont in a speedo if you’d like to see.
Okay, then, just spotlight stuf-muffin dad.
i’d imagine a good network backup system… or better yet, Wireless access points and autobackup would be really cool to have… syncing your harddrive every log in, so you don’t lost too much if your unit fails.
Ward, don’t you think you were a bit hard on the Beaver last night?
Only real problem is that iBooks don’t hold up as well as paper textbooks when the school bully knocks it out of some kid’s hand.
I suppose you could get around that problem by making bully’s mom & dad foot the bill for repairs/new iBook
“If everyone is wondering, this is probably a charter school, not a public school, and such schools are known for going out of the edge of teaching. Kids that go to charter schools end up getting better test scores than normal public schools too. Some day the public sector of schooling will catch up to them”
We’re not wondering, because we took a minute to do some research, We found out that it’s a normal public high school; it’s just that it’s brand new, so they’re only enrolling freshmen and sophomores this year. When full, it will be twice the size. Kudos to them for going out of the edge of teaching. Some day the private sector of schooling will catch up to them.
Kinda funny they mentioned the now infamous Henrico School Board in the article. After that (expected) mayhem, in my mind I keep associating Henrico with Wayco.
Yes, charter schools are the way to go, if you want your children to get the one-on-one teaching that works best.
It’s a bit expensive though, and a lot of people can’t afford it. At least this school is using that expense to fund education, rather than bureaucracy.
Public schools could learn a lot from them.
I now have two children (3 years, and 19 mos). They will be enrolled in charter school as soon as they are old enough.
MW: likely–Charter school students are 50% more likely to graduate college.
TheConfuzed1: It’s a PUBLIC school. And if you want your kids to have 1-on-1 education, try home-schooling.
Charter schools here in Michigan are publicly funded, yet privately run. Legally, they’re public schools, but in reality, they turn out results more akin to catholic and lutheran schools. I went to a catholic school for my first nine years of schooling, and by the time I got into a public high school, I became bored with the classes, and dropped out and got a job, getting my GED a semester after I would have graduated. I’m now two and half years out of school, I have a full time job, my own house, and my car is paid for. And my parents encouraged me every step of the way.
Soooo will Empire Schools sell their textbooks? If so they should bring in the geniuses from Henrico County VA to handle the sell off. If they could do for Empire what they did when they sold off iBooks for $50 per computer…chaos would reign supreme!
I’m a teacher in Texas, and I’ve been waiting for somerthing like this to happen. The problem is getting the Texas to catch up with the rest of the world, and getting stupid school techs to go Apple instead of Windows.
Magic Word living as in Teaching in Texas can be a living hell.
I’ll bet they won’t be selling them off for $50 in 4 years. Henrico County Schools has made clear a couple of points relative to technology and schools.
1) You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make them drink. The parents were worried about the kiddies not using Windoze.
2) One should not cast pearls before swine. If Henrico County was so worried about the kids having M$ Office they could have easily purchased it. I’m sure they purchased Office with their new Dull PeeCees.
3) Don’t take your Toyota to the Chevrolet dealer for service. Obviously, the quality, training and qualifications of school IT staff varies greatly. Your mileage may vary.
Lets hope the folks from Chatham, NC and Empire (Vail, AZ) schools are reading the report cited below…
___________
http://www.mdjonline.com/articles/2005/08/22/270/10192918.prt
Cobb board ignored Henrico s laptop lessons
As a supporter of properly implemented technology in education, I’ve vicariously watched this slow moving train wreck known as the Cobb Laptop program. With each new revelation in the MDJ, it becomes more apparent that “somebody was getting something from someone.” With the information available from both the Cobb County School Board evaluation process and from other school districts that have implemented this type of initiative, you have to ask yourself what was the CCSB thinking – or not thinking?
Since Henrico County, Va., was constantly mentioned in this process, I decided to do a little web research on the Henrico Public Schools Laptop Initiative.
They’ve had four years of experience with a program that looks like a carbon copy of the Power to Learn project. Well, well – bet they’ve got a wealth of information that would have been helpful to our fearless leaders at the CCSB in their quest for the best solution. A couple of clicks later and voila! I was correct. Henrico County Public Schools – the educational model for technology in the classroom, the favorite reference site of Apple Computer, that amazing come-from-behind winner in our laptop derby (and apparently the best place to look for supportive consultants to put on the CCSB payroll), does in fact have experiences that could’ve been of benefit to the CCSB. In fact, Henrico schools went out and hired a consultant to evaluate the process – after four years – to see just what administrators, teachers and students thought of the program. They also included the people actually footing the bills – the tax paying parents – in this survey.
I’ll skip to the juicy stuff in the report, the stuff that should have set off a few Red Flags if you had to make a purchase decision for a large school district:
n Page 16 – “The majority of iBooks (Apple laptops) require repair during the school year – 57 percent turned their iBooks in for repair since the start of the 2004-2005 school year.”
n Page 18 – “61 percent indicated that it took more than three days to receive their iBooks back from the help desk. – 18 percent of middle school students with iBooks have sent them to the Texas repair center since the start of the 2004-2005 school year.”
Who knows how long that took?
n Page 27 – “The majority of teachers indicated that they prefer to have a Windows-based system, while most administrators preferred the Apple Macintosh system.”
n Page 30 – “The majority of parents prefer their children use Windows-based personal computers. – 54 percent preferred that their children used Windows-based, 11 percent selected Apple Macintosh, and 32 percent did not have a preference. – Support for Windows was higher among those parents with a computer at home.”
Let’s see if I have this right:
n 57 percent (!) of the students have to get their Apple laptops repaired in one year;
n The majority of the people who work with the students and the computers -the teachers – prefer a Windows based alternative;
n The majority of the people who actually pay the bills, actually had to make an informed purchase choice with their money to buy a computer for home – the parents – prefer a Windows-based alternative; and
n The majority of people who neither work with the students and the computers, nor have to foot the tax bill to fund the programs – the administrators – prefer the Apple laptops.
Gee, it sure would have been nice for the CCSB to see this information before a decision was made. Too bad this report came out too late. Oh, wait a minute – it was submitted to HCPS on Feb. 10.
So I challenge anyone to find out what the CCSB knew and when they knew it regarding the Henrico County Public School Technology Evaluation Survey.
My guess is it wouldn’t have mattered – the fix was already in at that point.
Pete Gonzalez of Marietta has worked in the technology industry for over 17 years. He is the father of three young children.
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This school is a public school! I would know, because I go there!. These computers are hard to break, and for passing time reading the doodles in the corners of the text books. INTERNET GAMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Um yeah it’s a public school because I go there. The laptops are kind of hard to keep up with because the “computer experts” are constantly doing stupid things to our computer, and a lot of the kids are pretty computer stupid. It is both a good and bad idea, I think.