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Laptops Versus Textbooks - The Good, The Bad, And The UglyBY GREG GALITZINE Last Sunday, as my wife and I were shopping for furniture for our kids’ bedrooms, we talked a lot about how the pieces we were buying were “a little expensive” but we justified it to ourselves by saying “they’ll be able to use these pieces well into their teen years.” On the way out of the mall, we passed an Apple store, and the whole front window displayed an image of hundreds or thousands of books, on shelves. This image hung directly above a huge iBook picture, with the caption: “The Only Book You’ll Ever Need.” Now I’m no Luddite, and I often get excited by the mere prospect of cool technology, but as an editor, and an individual who has read — and has enjoyed reading — more than his fair share of books, I wonder what this holds for future generations of readers. I mean, people can talk all they want about iBooks and eBooks and V-Books, but I can’t imagine hauling a Toshiba Satellite to the throne room, or lugging an IBM Think Pad to bed, and having it slip off my chest as I fell asleep. Ouch. There are just too many places where a laptop can’t replace a traditional bound book: The beach, a crowded train, boats, lakes, woods, traffic jams… you get the picture. Yet I can honestly say that I am intrigued by the trend of high schools replacing textbooks with laptop computers. This is perhaps one of those cases where technology can actually serve a need and herald an improvement over the status quo. A recent Associated Press report showcases Empire High School in Vail, Arizona, one of the first U.S. Public Schools to issue laptops to their student population and reject the good ol’ textbook. All 340 Students at the school were issued Apple iBooks. In Lenexa, KS, approximately 20 minutes outside of Kansas City, students at St. James Academy are also embracing the digital future. The Kansas City Star reports that St. James Academy is just one of a number of parochial schools that are trading in books for laptops. St. Monica School in Kansas City already has a partnership with IBM, which yielded the school a state-of-the-art computer lab facility. ST. Thomas Aquinas High School in Overland Park offers wireless Intenret access in all of its classrooms. According to Sister Patricia Clune, associate superintendent in the diocesan school office for the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, “Are we going to prepare kids for their future, or our past? If we aren’t using technology, we aren’t preparing them for the future.” Students are able to keep track of assignments, access test scores, submit homework, and more. Parents have access to a student’s grades and assignments. Teachers are able to monitor to see if students’ work is their own or if it contains plagiarized material by using simple Web programs. The AP article on Empire High School gave a great example of how the technology can help make the curriculum more dynamic. According to the article: For example, lessons in social studies, which might previously have been done in summaries, can include links to full Supreme Court rulings or an explorer's personal account of a discovery. Social studies teacher Jeremy Gypton… said he assigns readings based on Web sites, lists postings to news articles, uses online groups and message boards to keep the students connected on weekends and asks them to comment on each other's work. Students and teachers get their information and course materials from a variety of sources including Web-base subscription services, an array of free web resources, and from the publishers of textbooks themselves, who now offer digital versions to address the growing trend. Of course, mixing laptops and education does not always yield the desired results. As was widely reported earlier this week, Henrico County School System tried to off load 1,000 four-year-old Apple iBooks for $50 each. Well, 5,500 people showed up and they were in no mood to wait nicely in line and risk missing out on the prized portables. So the news was full of reports of people tossing folding chairs, urinating on themselves rather than losing their place in line, and other horrible “I can’t believe we live in this kind of society” ocurrences. (See VA Laptop Sale Turns Into Stampede http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/-va-laptop-sale-turns-into-stampede-/2005/aug/1173 804.htm ) Also this week, charges were filed against a pair of University of Connecticut basketball players alleging that they stole and subsequently tried to peddle several stolen laptops. The student athletes have since been suspended from all basketball related activity. I didn’t quite see it coming as I left the mall last Sunday, but I guess it was quite a week for laptops. |