Laptops in Classrooms

Laptops aren’t magical. They don’t produce fuzzy bunnies out of the ether; they don’t wondrously change how students learn in classrooms. They are tools. Very powerful tools. But when I read this piece about Maine schools below, I cringed:

State education officials announced three weeks ago that they hoped to provide a laptop to every public school student in grades seven through 12 by fall. The aim is to add 53,000 high school students to the first-in-the-nation program, which now serves students in grades seven and eight.

Teachers must be given support in how to use computers and the internet with students.  If you give out 53,000 laptops that are used to types papers in class, you are wasting students’ time.  Laptops require Internet access with reasonable firewalls.  Is that part of the Maine’s plan?  What good are laptops if students can’t search for “terrorism”?  What’s more, laptops are most effective teaching tools–I would argue–only when teachers are as comfortable on them as students.  Is such training and support part of Maine’s plan?  If it is anything like past initiatives, it is not.  Rather, adding laptops without attention to pedagogy is an illusion.  Much like a magician, in fact.  Just open up the mysterious box, drop in the student’s learning, and watch it disappear.

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