The Truth About Laptops in High Schools

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...2621954&q=phhs

Video documentary with interviews with school staff and pupils in one american high school where every student has a laptop.

They obviously didnt lock down the laptops too well if students can install games and crud :) Besides its windows, what ever happened to linux or mac os x :) hehehehehe

The educational support for Maacs is very different in the states to how it is in Europe (and in particular the UK) and so the scheme [with iBooks] running in Maine cannot really be compared to over here.

Still, there are just as many horror stories from Maine as there are from other counties with this sort of schem ... and pretty much everyone agrees on the same thing; it is not what they have, but what the students are asked to do with them that is the deciding factor on whether the scheme is successful.

It depends what you do on them at the end of the day and how focused you are at doing what you are supposed to do and also down to the interests of the student(s) , I mean when i was at school ( CTC ) or any other places they just crammed all these different subjects in front of ya face and I wasnt particularly interested in languages and didnt have any focus on it because it wasnt my forte and not just that it didnt interest me.

Where as IT , Maths to a certain degree and Design and technology held my attention and was interesting and so obviously I did better at them.

And as those kids in that video clip that geoff posted, the games are more interesting where as the stuff that they study has no interest and it comes across as boring.

Gotta try and make learning more interactive and more fun ( to a certain degree so it holds the peoples attention )

I agree with gecko - clearly the school have bought all these laptops, but oops they haven't thought about locking them down. The one thing I also found strange was they still had blackboards and not a projector or whiteboard in sight.

I think it's bad also they're made to do ALL their work on a computer. Everybody needs to write on paper in some form, even if it's as simple as writing a cheque. I bet some of those kids have very poor handwriting through lack of practice.
I can imagine them using the Windows Calculator all through a Numeracy lesson, and pressing F7 while typing a document in MS Word during Literacy. No spelling mistakes or punctuation errors... brilliant. Every child has no excuse not to score 100%. They'll never learn anything, because making the same mistakes, autocorrect always puts it right.

I think learning ICT is important as a computer offers many advantages, but to use it constantly (especially with kids), just goes to show how easily equipment bought with good intentions can be used for other purposes i.e. gaming!

bottom line is they need to learn how to walk before they run and obviously using computers as much as they do and in the way they have and did went pear shaped because they were using the advantages of a computer without really knowing how to spell or other things such as hand writing as mentioned above ( I mean I might be wrong on that point ) but using computers that much obviously doesnt give them the oppurtunity to practise the life skills that they need.

The school is pants.

They haven't locked down the laptops, they don't seem to *teach* anything. And by the statements made from the students I don't think they are using the technology properly (interactive boards, projectors, and capable teachers who can use them and get the class involved).

Bottom line for me is that they didn't plan this at all. Stick X&Y chromosomes in front of a hormonal teenage lad and then put a laptop in his face with the ability to play Halo on it....it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the boys point.

Life skills?

At school?

:-)

To be fair the system requirements for HALO aren't that high. About 700MHz to 800MHz CPU required from memory and all laptops (even Celeron's) operate quicker than this today. Clearly all the pupils are setup as administrators on the laptops so no wonder they're free to do as they please. There clearly seems to be no usage policy and confiscating laptops (as did happen in the video) is a little pointless. If the pupils work is all on the laptop, how on earth are they supposed to continue with work?

What baffles me also is the company they bought the laptops from. Surely if the school is spending so much on equipment, the element of controlling that equipment through whatever means could of brought the company even more revenue.

some life skills as mentioned above with regards to writing a cheque or doing simple things which most people take for granted and then if something happens to you that stops you from doing those simple things ( Then you will realise how difficult it becomes to do those easy things ). Like the kids at school were just using the laptops to play games ( since they werent locked down , obviously ). If they had to do an exam the next day after not studying or paying any attention to what they were supposed to be doing then passing the exam ( which to most people would be easy ) Isnt easy anymore because they didnt do the simple thing of *paying attention* ie listening and learning.

To get to the point if they did that in real life ie in a job or where ever they worked at , I dont think they would keep the job they had for long, if all they did was play halo or games just because they didnt find it interesting.

Giving a laptop to each kid to do their work on just seems like sheer idiocy to me. They must have to spend a fortune in repairs and support. They must need a massive team of technicians to keep the things going and an absolutely infallible wireless network otherwise it would just fall over.

Like the film points out, its just another opportunity for the kids to procrastinate. You see it enough in ICT labs with kids playing flash games, checking their email, browsing the web or generally arsing around. Just imagine it happening in every lesson with every kid. Nightmare :|

i think all pupils with dyslexia should be issuied with a laptop to help them i have dyslexia and i find my lapatop a big help.... :D :D

I think all pupils with dyslexia should be given more lessons in english and spelling techniques, in order to help them develop, instead of pointless subjects such as French and PSE etc


.....but then that'd require more teacher time, so it wouldn't happen.

How to engage the pupils with more interesting knowledge base units other than the curriculum which quite frankly is written and worked out by adults who think that learning facts and figures and then being able to re-gurgitate
is called education.
I think the kids are able to learn through different media and surpass the adults who are restricted by their inability to create because they have too many facts emblazoned on their memory banks formulated by years and years of conditioning.
The education system fails to utlise the best of these and still relies on what the government calls "old fashioned tried and tested ways" reading, riting and rithmatic the three Rs as it was so called.
Kids these days don't need to remember what happened in 1066 at the battle of hastings because they can google for it. Same for any other subject matter. Yes i believe they have to have the fundementals of basic reading and writing but then let them learn for themselves using different media instead of conditioning them for the greedy money grabbing environment outside of school.
some of these kids are more worldly wise than most of your so called educational ministers who have been conditioned to think like everybody like them because that is the way they themselves have been taught. Educated people are supposed to be clever and free thinking but i feel that mostly they are sheep not being able to think for themselves and follow the rest.
Teachers for instance are mainly conditioned through a process of Primary school, secondary schools, college and university. All through this process they are conditioned to regurgitate what they have learned (called imparting knowledge better known as the curriculum) kids cannot stand this as it is boring.
Could not the very learned members of our society come up with better ways to manage our children than boring them to death each day in the guise of the national curriculum?

That was like a scary glimpse into the future! Take any school with behavioral problems and/ or poor discipline and that could be you. Just goes to prove once more that it's not the environment/equipment/pupils that make a good education...