Free laptops inspire a whole generation of US students

Five years ago in the US, an extraordinary proposal was made by the then governor of Maine, Angus King: he wanted to give every seventh-grade student (12- to 13-year-olds) a laptop computer. Karlin Lillington reports

"People went wild," recalls Ms Bette Manchester of Maine's Department of Education during a recent panel discussion at Dublin's Media Lab Europe (MLE).

The panel was a follow-on to a two-day education and technology conference held as part of the Irish EU presidency.

"And there was surprise that this governor, who was a fiscal conservative, would ever come up with such a notion."

But Mr King had a persuasive arguer at his ear - the famed MIT mathematics professor and researcher in education and technology, Dr Seymour Papert, who lives in Maine.

The iconoclastic Dr Papert - who is also the man behind Lego's highly successful Mindstorms programmable robots - is passionate about using technology as a creative tool in the classroom.

"I say to education planners and politicians: just look ahead. Think of five to 10 years into the future, and look what's happening in society today.

"The computer is becoming the medium for every form of intellectual endeavour," Dr Papert said in defence of the idea when visiting Ireland three years ago. "The only exception is learning."

Now, at least in Maine, learning is included. Not the kind of passive learning for which classroom computers often are used.

Instead - a development that panel member Dr Papert said pleases him no end - the whole learning process has been turned on its head as teachers find new ways to make the laptops part of every subject in the curriculum.

Those new ways of learning are producing tangible results across the state.

Two recent studies confirmed what teachers had believed anecdotally - that students using the laptops increased their level of achievement, class attendance rose and teachers reported high levels of engagement in the classroom.

In addition, the highest levels of improvement were among students who had been the poorest performers in the past - low-income students and those from minority backgrounds, according to Ms Susan Gandon of Maine Department of Education.

"We're very excited about what we're seeing in Maine," she says.

So successful has the programme been that the state has committed $75 million (€61.4 million) to make sure its 70,000 high-school students also have an Apple iBook, the laptop chosen for the state's initiative.

"We have had students who have had access to these wonderful tools for three years [at middle school\].

"To move them back to paper and pencil would be ridiculous," says Ms Gandon.

The Maine project - the largest ever to place technology in this way into the classroom - has been closely watched by educationalists and school districts around the world.

Mostly, according to the participants in the project, initial attitudes ranged from disbelief to outright scoffing. School boards at first dug in their heels, insisting the initiative would be impossible.

Teachers were wary, worried about having a pile of hardware dropped into their classrooms with no guidance on how to use it.

And topping the list was doubt about students themselves - surely they would quickly damage or break their new laptops, or only use them for playing games, and most assuredly they should not be allowed to take them home away from the school's control.

The naysayers, however, have been proven wrong, says Ms Manchester.

Some 33,000 students and 3,000 teachers at 241 schools all have their iBooks now for three years.

There have been almost no damage problems (in most schools, none at all) and 60 per cent of schools happily allow their students take their laptops home.

Not that developing the programme was easy, the panellists caution.

They knew such an initiative would require a redevelopment of the entire school curriculum, and that intense teacher support and training would also be needed.

They also took the radical step of taking control of the technology away from technologists, appointing teacher leaders for the management of each school's technology.

A broadband internet network at each school is funded through a monthly five cent charge on all Maine residents' phone bills.

Bringing in the technology required a close working relationship with a provider company.

Apple, which has always focused strongly on the educational market, was the company that immediately and most creatively embraced the idea of the project and has partnered closely with the state in developing the initiative, according to Ms Manchester.

In the end, every school district in Maine chose to participate.

"In all schools, people have said they could never go back to the way things were done before," Ms Manchester says.

Now the Maine project has inspired others.

There is currently a pilot programme in Michigan, for example, and another one in France.

"In some ways, it was a step into the darkness, but we've seen an incredible amount of light at the end of the tunnel," says Ms Manchester.

For further information see: Maine Learning Technology Initiative (http://www.state.me.us/mlte/) and Apple Learning Initiative: (http://ali.apple.com/ali/)