All-laptop high school to open in Arizona

Textbooks are so last-century.

At least, that’s what they’re saying in Vail, where about 350 students will ditch books for laptops this fall as the Southeast Side district opens the state’s first all-wireless, all-laptop public high school.

Students still will go to class and teachers still will create lesson plans, but textbooks are making way for electronic and online articles.

Next door, in the 60,000-student Tucson Unified School District, workers are installing 300 Smart Boards in high-school math and English classrooms before school starts this fall.

The high-tech whiteboards allow teachers to craft multimedia lessons that go far beyond the limits of their old overhead projectors.

Both moves are steps in the right direction, experts say, but not nearly close to where schools should be in 2005.

By Daniel Scarpinato
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Full Story: http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/dailystar/83469

*********

Vail school may shun textbooks for laptops

By Dan Sorenson
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Laptop computers would replace textbooks under a plan being considered by the Vail School District for its new high school.

Under the "One to One" assigned laptop proposal presented to the district’s Governing Board Tuesday night, each of the 350 students expected to enroll at Empire High School in its first year would be assigned an Apple laptop computer, district Superintendent Calvin Baker said. About 50 staff members also would get laptops.

But rather than being loaded with digital versions of textbooks, the computers would have an Internet browsing program to let students access the best method available to teach skills specified by Arizona education standards, Baker said.

Full Story: http://www.azstarnet.com/dailystar/dailystar/14295.php

***

CHARACTERISTICS OF LAPTOP PROGRAMS

The following charts and text summarize the characteristics of some of the most well known laptop programs at schools around the country. Five represent large public school districts, which were underrepresented in our own survey due to lack of response. Following the public school chart is an additional summary of three independent school laptop programs. At the end of this section are some pertinent abstracts from the programs regarding goals, maintenance and usage rules.

In the public school programs, laptops are generally funded by the school. In the independent schools, it was generally the family that purchased the laptop through the school. The public schools were about equally divided between the Apple Macintosh and Wintel platforms, whereas the independent schools were employing Wintel based laptops. Wireless networks were well represented despite their relatively recent emergence. Microsoft Office was the most common applications software program.

Consistent with our own survey, faculty training was extensive. Several schools offered stipends to faculty for development work.

Full Study: http://ilab.dalton.org/secure/departments/nltl/CouncilLaptopResearch/VII_LaptopPgmChar.htm

*******

Maine Learning Technology Initiative

Phase One Summary Evidence:

http://www.usm.maine.edu/cepare/mlti.htm