THE
GREAT MAINE LAPTOP EXPERIMENT
Chris
Toy, Principal
Freeport (ME) Middle School
Maine is undertaking a bold experiment. The goal: Put Apple iBooks in the hands of every middle schooler across the state. In September, the first wave of 17,000 laptops were distributed to 7th-graders at 239 schools, including Freeport Middle School, where MiddleWeb diarist Chris Toy is principal. A strong proponent of Maine's Learning Technology Initiative, Chris will chronicle the laptop adventure for us.
Laptop
Diary #15
Students Suffer Laptop Withdrawal
Remember the Joni Mitchell song, Big Yellow Taxi?
"Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got til it's gone."
This past week our 7th graders experienced what life is like without their laptops. We needed to do some midyear adjustments to the hardware. In order to do this we had to collect all the laptops and the charging units.
Well, not only did we hear moaning and groaning from the students, parents called concerned that the students would not be able to do their homework over vacation. This was interesting since the only homework assigned was to have students finish reading four chapters in an historical novel for an upcoming unit!
Of course, when we explained that the homework did not require laptops or Internet research the parents were OK. The students were still concerned because they use the laptops to take notes and to make journal entries. Some students were able to use computers they had at home, but several students who did not have access at home clearly felt at a disadvantage, not because of what they were required to do, but because the laptops had become part of the way they do their work.
When the laptops were allowed to go home after vacation there was a noticeable sign of relief from the students and the teachers. It hasn't taken long for the tools of technology to become integrated into the way students learn at Freeport Middle.
"The dog ate my charger unit"
One reason we pulled the hardware in was very low tech. The state department of education asked that no marks be placed on any of the equipment. Each laptop had a permanent serial number attached to it, but when the laptops were allowed to be taken home students had to take home the plugs for charging them. It didn't take long for students to forget and leave the chargers at home. And yes, one was eaten by the family dog.
As charger units "got lost," students began to borrow, and they soon lost track of who borrowed what from whom. Without individual marks on the charging units things got pretty confused. We informed the department of education that we were going to break the rule about marking the equipment and collected the laptops and chargers. We then made sure each machine had a charging cord and marked the charging units so each could be matched to a laptop.
Aside from that little puzzle there have been very few real problems with the MLTI equipment. We've had two broken screens. Neither of them was a result of vandalism. In one case, a student layed his pen cap on the keyboard as he was writing. He forgot it was there and closed the cover of the iBook. The screen was replaced through Apple's contract with the state. The student had access to a spare laptop provided through a pool of computers especially for this purpose.
The only
instance of theft happened when an adult employee of a delivery service
was caught trying to take one home after it had been repaired!
