Lake Superior school district explores tablet computers in classrooms
December 1, 2011 at 5:49 am in Lake County News-Chronicle
Heavy backpacks full of books may be a thing of the past for Lake Superior school district students and teachers. Superintendent Phil Minkkinen thinks that in the future their backpacks may hold only one thing: a tablet. Continue Reading
Did the school board ever consider contacting Apple, regarding various school support programs? Schools have gotten Apple products in the past at significant discounts, for school use. This of course benefits the company, by creating future customers for a product they are now familiar with, from school. The school benefits from robust and stable software and reduced cost, over retail.
Checking further, Kindle products are in some ways “locked in” to Amazon, for any books that are loaded, unless I have misunderstood other articles I’ve read on Kindles.
Sometimes the cheapest price is not always the best use of money. I suggest that if the superintendent is over 14, he get some tech advice from an I.T. pro, who will know which kinds of equipment take the most maintenance.
tom koehler
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I am aware of three things with regard to the superintendent’s proposal:
1. Numerous studies have now demonstrated that the use of this type of technology, in addition to being expensive, has not been shown to substantially contribute to the performance of students; and
2. This school district, to the best of my knowledge, has publicized it is around $1 million in debt, and has had to approve a line of credit to continue operating. It seems to me, there is no money for this sort of thing, and the superintendent should get his mind focused on prudent financial management as his first priority; and
3. The standardized testing scores of the students in the district are hardly anything to crow about, except as I recall Minnehaha, and perhaps the superintendent might find better ways to focus on the building of strong basic fundamental skills for a good education. If he thinks these machines are anything more than another distraction, if the investment gets made, he better be prepared to set and reach much higher standards of performance than the students are at now.
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Tom…
Apple’s 3rd quarter 2011 share of the PC marketplace was only 12.9%. Very few businesses use Apple products for all employees throughout the organization, except in some specialty areas where, for example creative and design artists, a large number of folks prefer the software.
But you are correct, an expert should be consulted to be sure the choice of device, if purchased, has a long, universally applicable and reasonably priced support path.
I do agree with Brian, however. Even with small children, technology (such as the Baby Einstein products) has not shown proven ability to substantially and universally give kids a leg up in the education process. This same result seems prevalent at the grade, middle and high school levels, also.
So, given our district’s financial challenges, I think the superintendent might spend more concentrated efforts on managing the money issues for taxpayers, and focus on proven good old-fashioned learning techniques for the kids.
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Mr. Broin, I do appreciate your remarks. In the context of this article though, the tablets were to be used as an electronic substitue for a stack of textbooks and not necessarily as computers. The school – and the students very likely already have plenty of computers for use in the lab and at home. The tablets were to be carried around instead of thirty pounds of textbooks.
In light of the intended use of the tablets as portable libraries of texts and other audio-visual training aids, the school board would do well to do their homework. In the case of Apple tablets, the first-generation tablets are now being reconditioned and made available in large lots to educational enterprises at reduced costs. They may not support the very latest “apps” but would serve adimirably well for what the district needs. Further, Apple is entirely responsible for the reliability and safety of apps that run on these machines, ensuring user safety against malware and poorly performing software.
Non-Apple tablets will run apps that have not been vetted by the manufacturer and therefore are often carriers of maliciously written apps that put the user at risk of whatever ill intent the software writer had in mind. Other non-vetted apps can simply crash or trash the tablet.
While it is true that Apple products constitute a minority of market share, that fact alone does not prove superiority of the majoritarian Windows platform over the Apple or Linux or Unix or other minority platforms. In fact, the argument from the majority is a logical fallacy. In the case of a school which must watch over its financial and manpower resources, the time that an IT person must spend installing software patches in its computer hardware should be a factor in deciding how computer dollars are spent. You will find that IT staff run themselves ragged keeping up with software patches to certian computer platforms, while the Mac OS computers just keep running merrrily along with few if any problems.
tom koehler
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