[OLPC-Chicago] laptop backlash in USA

[Michael Tobis]

The NY Times had an article last week about schools backing off the
idea of laptops for students.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/education/04laptop.html

a snippet:

==>
So the Liverpool Central School District, just outside Syracuse, has
decided to phase out laptops starting this fall, joining a handful of
other schools around the country that adopted one-to-one computing
programs and are now abandoning them as educationally empty — and
worse.

Many of these districts had sought to prepare their students for a
technology-driven world and close the so-called digital divide between
students who had computers at home and those who did not.

"After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact
on student achievement — none," said Mark Lawson, the school board
president here in Liverpool, one of the first districts in New York
State to experiment with putting technology directly into students'
hands. "The teachers were telling us when there's a one-to-one
relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the
way. It's a distraction to the educational process."
<==

It's not surprising, really, but the timing is not good.

mt