Laptops Pick Up As School Resources Fall
The Age
Tuesday November 2, 1993
THERE is much discussion about the educational advantages of laptops, with a number of schools reflecting on their medium-term strategies for computing resources. The interesting question is: are we seeing the first signs of a dramatic shift in how students and schools are provided with computing resources? Laptops have been used in education for several years now, most evidently at such schools as MLC, Toorak College and Trinity Grammar, but also with projects in a number of state schools. However, it has only been in the past six months that the educational laptop momentum has increased significantly. This has, in part, been fuelled by the more recent improvements in laptop technology that now overcome some of the earlier concerns of schools. These include better battery technology to give increased time for use in class, less charging hassles, the inclusion of hard disks and improved screen readability.
Figures from the United States show that there are about two million computers in schools throughout the country. Although this may seem like a significant number, this is not even one computer for each teacher.
Just as significant, more than 70 per cent of those computers are at least five years old. Not only do schools not have enough computers to resource students, but many of those they do have are now only of limited use because of the hardware demands placed by the latest software.
Most informed estimates suggest that Australia has taken up the educational technology challenge even faster than our US counterparts.
However, the problem is still critical. Although many schools make the best use of their limited facilities, there is still a significant problem in providing students with appropriate technology.
This is obvious in the senior high school years and tertiary institutions, where students who do not have access to reasonably powerful computers are placed at a significant disadvantage. Think of the enormous numbers of students working in school computing labs well into the night around VCE CAT time, and the many parents who purchased a home computer to allow their children to keep up with the workload.
But is it enough? What we are getting is a growing inequity between schools and students who have sufficient computing resources, and those that do not. This highlights the real issue of who should be providing the resources in the first place. Is it the responsibility of schools, via taxpayers and fundraisers, to maintain computing facilities for all students? Is this possible? Maybe we should be getting closer to seeing some of the realities of Alan Kay's DynaBook vision, where computers become the student's tools and an integral part of their learning. This is the vision that laptops' manufacturers are tapping into. The only barriers to this are affordability, and the realignment of the school working environment to accommodate such a key change.
The affordability issue is, in some ways, less significant for parents whose children attend independent schools, where the parents are used to paying for many aspects of their child's education. The attitude in state schools is changing as parents realise that the Governments' educational resource budgets are getting smaller. In neither case is the decision to purchase a personal computer necessarily an easy one.
However, where parents know that the computer they are buying is going to be used both at home and at school _ as in the case of a laptop _ then the decision can seem more reasonable.
It is thus contingent upon schools to reassess the facilities they are providing to better accommodate laptop-using students. The school computing budget can become more focused on providing support facilities such as printers, scanners, communications, CD-ROM and network access, and less on the actual provision of the computers themselves.
We have shifted the cost of providing resources such as books and calculators from schools to the home, and it will only be a matter of time before the same will happen for the bulk of computing resources.
What we must be looking for are innovative ways of financially assisting parents in making that transition. We also need to implement comprehensive teacher development programs to ensure we get the most out of it.
CLARIS have just released two worthwhile resources for teachers using ClarisWorks 2.0 in their schools.
ClarisWorks for Teachers is a tutorial program for ClarisWorks built around common classroom tasks such as letters to parents, student records and so on.
ClarisWorks 2.0 in the Classroom is an excellent bundle of projects for using ClarisWorks in curriculum areas such as language arts, science, maths and social studies and is ideal for middle primary through to middle secondary. Each pack includes a Mac disk for $29.95 which is available from your local Claris supplier.
© 1993 The Age
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