“During a presentation last week at the District 220 Board of Education meeting, a committee of teachers and administrators outlined a plan to use MacBook Air laptops to infuse technology into classrooms,” Bridget O’Shea reports for The Barrington Courier-Review.
“The initiative, referred to as Digital Age Learning, calls for 600 MacBooks to be provided to Barrington High School [Illinois] students during the 2013-14 school year,” O’Shea reports. “‘We’ve been researching this on an ongoing basis,’ Cindy Jaskowiak, assistant superintendant for educational programs and assessment, told School Board members during the March 13 meeting. ‘“We think that a MacBook Air provides our students with the widest range of technological applications.'”
O’Shea reports, “The School Board responded favorably of the plan, despite expressing financial concerns. ‘We have to move forward,’ Board member Timothy Hull said. ‘We’ll have to find a way to fund it, one way or the other.'”
Read more in the full article here.
Well if anyone would benefit from retina displays it would be those bright young eyes. Best wait for the update.
Always glad to hear Apple as a selection, but isn’t this state completely broke? Maybe they should go back to chalk and black boards.
Digital books SAVES the schools money…
Never-mind that chalk is largely gone in favor of non-evirnmental issue creating dry erase boards. Chalk is an environmental hazard don’t you know..
But really the reasons are as simple as this:
You cannot rely on ancient methods to teach modern kids. They are hyper stimulated, tech savvy and listening to a teacher drone and write on the board isn’t very effective.
Todays students are using 21st century skills doing project based learning. No longer do we focus on things like memorization (rote learning) we are teaching critical thinking and actual application of concepts. (well unless you are stuck in some regressive hell hole like OK, where they still argue over evolution, I’m not sure what they do, likely stone tablets and chisels)
My children’s school is launching one-on-one programme next season. For the past twelve years, the school was overwhelmingly Windows (with a few Mac exceptions, in the media lab). Two years ago, at the refresh cycle, they switched massively over. Now, every classroom has an iMac and a couple of MBAs, there are carts with MBAs roving the school, and from next year, every pupil 5th grade and higher will receive a MBA to keep until they leave school.
The IT steering committee apparently did a lot of research and concluded that the best solution from every angle (TCO, academic software, support for education, etc) was an Apple-centric solution. The few remaining Windows computers now sit in the library…
“We’ll have to find a way to pay for it.” Harrington is one of the wealthiest towns in the USA. There is no lack of money in town. $600k is not far from an average annual family income in Barrington, I would suspect.