The Peterborough, New Hampshire Ledger-Transcript reports
The ConVal School District[1] will provide every middle school and high school student a Chromebook laptop by the 2017-18 school year, as textbooks, homework, and lessons all go digital.
[...] Administrators couldn't emphasize enough how essential it is for students to move out of the "print, paper world". [...] The U.S. Department of Education found students that had access to a computer anywhere, anytime "became more creative, more collaborative, and better writers", while University of Kentucky researchers wrote "improvements in writing, literacy, science, exam scores, and GPAs all have been noted in various research studies".
[...] The district will buy the Chromebooks over three years. [...] There are already 266 Chromebooks in use at the middle schools and high school. To implement the one-to-one model, the district first must upgrade the technology infrastructure of the three schools in 2016-17. [...] It would then buy 662 more Chromebooks in 2017-18.
[...] The dean of faculty at the high school, said money will be saved not having to buy newer versions of textbooks.[2]
[...] Administrators have considered either buying insurance for each device at $20 to $25 a year, or a student and their parents becoming responsible for paying to fix or replace the device if it is damaged. [...] The district also hopes to make arrangements with its member towns and libraries so if a student lacks Internet access at home, it can use the WiFi at municipal buildings.
[1] Does not degrade gracefully; black text on a black background in the HTML styling.
[2] It appears that the district is still using digital versions of traditional textbooks rather than using an Open Knowledge model.
Related Stories
Apple is ready to fight Google's Chromebooks with cheaper iPads
Apple has a big problem. Just five years ago, its iPads and Mac laptops reigned supreme in US classrooms, accounting for half of all mobile devices shipped to schools in 2013. Apple has now slipped behind both Google and Microsoft in US schools with Google's Chromebooks leading the way in classrooms, securing nearly 60 percent of shipments in the US as overall iPad sales declined for three straight years. Apple is now ready to strike back against Chromebooks with some cheaper iPads.
Apple is holding a special education-focused event on Tuesday that promises "creative new ideas for teachers and students." Rumors suggest Apple is preparing to launch a $259 budget iPad model this year, while Bloomberg reports that a "low-cost iPad" will be announced alongside new education software. The new iPad could even support a stylus, like the Apple Pencil found on the more expensive iPad Pro models.
The article notes a cancelled $1 billion program to give iPads to students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Administering the iPads back then wasn't easy, but Chromebooks store their data in the cloud. If a student forgets their Chromebook at home, they can log in to another device using their Google account. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has criticized Google's G Suite for Education for storing students' personal information in the cloud without their knowledge or consent.
Related: L.A.'s iPad-Friendly School Superintendent Resigns Under a Cloud
Los Angeles Schools Halve Email Retention after Scandal
Los Angeles Schools iPad Program Target of Federal Criminal Probe
NH School District: One Chromebook Per Student by 2018; Paper Textbooks Going
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2016, @11:32PM
n/t
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2016, @12:06AM
"Mom! I have to go to Starbucks to do my homework because City Hall isn't open after 6pm!"
You think it likely that ebooks will be downloaded to these things so that the Internet isn't needed on a daily basis, or do you think it more likely that it will all be sitting "in the cloud" "on demand" from the textbook web sites?
Yeah, they'll eff it up for sure.
(Score: 2) by scruffybeard on Tuesday February 23 2016, @01:59PM
You think it likely that ebooks will be downloaded to these things so that the Internet isn't needed on a daily basis, or do you think it more likely that it will all be sitting "in the cloud" "on demand" from the textbook web sites?
We have online text books and they suck. Each publisher has its own login, for each student. You cannot download any portion of the book to your local device, so it is difficult for a student to work on an assignment outside of school or home. One good thing to mention, the school district partnered with the local cable company to provide free/reduced Internet service for needy families, so access from home is good for most, however they still need to provide their own PC or tablet.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2016, @12:29AM
Don't fool yourself, there's no step back.
Some cronnies just needed some money and decided to open a public tender; the winner was decided even before the tender became public, it was it that wrote the tender documentation.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday February 22 2016, @11:43PM
I'd be surprised if most middle and high school courses couldn't use an open/public domain textbook. It's been long enough since people started talking and working on this, and certain subjects like Math and English/Composition won't require frequent updates (update: author Harper Lee is dead). Now "Open Knowledge" proponents just have to spread the word, and defeat Pearson/McGraw-Hill/Houghton Mifflin sales drones. Dumb school principals buy unnecessary and possibly ineffective educational software and other stuff all the time. What will be harder than selling to them is convincing them that the free/open textbook isn't going to cause massive problems.
As for the Chromebooks, they are cheap and effective enough. Their inability to run Windows programs probably solves a lot of headaches for schools (kids normally pass around games on flash drives). Note that the EFF is going after Google on the issue of Chromebooks and their cloud-storage-by-default model: https://www.eff.org/press/releases/google-deceptively-tracks-students-internet-browsing-eff-says-complaint-federal-trade [eff.org]
Personally, I was able to disable all the tracking/cloud features on my $99 Chromebook in just a few minutes. In fact, I think I used the EFF's guide [eff.org] for help.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday February 22 2016, @11:56PM
The towns that fund this school aren't exactly rolling in dough, and are run by direct democracy at town meeting. My guess is that if it lowers costs, and is allowed by the (minimal) state standards, they'll be glad to make the switch.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday February 23 2016, @12:17AM
Is there a complete set of free [freedomdefined.org] textbooks yet? Are there a few gaps? Or do most of the textbooks for a K-12 curriculum have yet to be written?
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday February 23 2016, @09:23AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2016, @09:16PM
We have mentioned OpenStax before several times.
This one was particularly noteworthy because it had some details of the compensation to an author.
Professor Adds Open Knowledge Chemistry Textbook to OpenStax College's Collection [soylentnews.org]
...and when the consumers get their mitts on them, they like Open Knowledge textbooks.
Open Knowledge Textbooks Not Flunking Out [soylentnews.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2016, @04:19PM
Here in Ontario, Canuckistan, textbooks must be placed on the Trillium List [trilliumlist.ca] before then can be used in a school. Of course, to be approved for the list, you must submit a number of hardcopies to reviewers who charge a $3,500 evaluation fee. If the textbook does not meet the criteria, it must be resubmitted and the fee paid again. It must also be accompanied by a separate Teacher's Guide, which is usually a copy of the textbook with annotations describing lesson planning, key concepts, etc. This alone may rule out a number of open-source textbooks.
Also, the approval criteria are extremely specific w.r.t. Canadian Content, so if an open-source textbook includes "too many" references to other countries, it will probably need to be revised before being accepted.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday February 23 2016, @12:18AM
they clearly are unfamiliar with youth
I for one cannot tolerate reading anything of any length on a computer screen; I need paper. I don't own an eBook reader, I have an iPad but I don't use Apple's iOS eBook program.
Just today I paid $5.95 for a paperback book, Elizabeth Moon's "The Speed of Dark".
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Tuesday February 23 2016, @12:46AM
Random somewhat young person chipping in here: I agree. e-books are a complete pain in the ass, especially from a raw flexibility standpoint. While it's great to be able to seek and search very quickly (that is, if the particular e-reader allows you to do that), the ability to flip around in a real book is sorely understated. Also, the fact that page sizes for proper e-books are variable makes them a complete nightmare for citations and in-class essay writing.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday February 23 2016, @01:07AM
I bet the next iPad will be rawly flexible and you'll be able to flip it around (what are you going to grumble about then?)
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Tuesday February 23 2016, @01:26AM
While it's great to be able to seek and search very quickly (that is, if the particular e-reader allows you to do that)
I have an Kobo-mini, which is longer available for sale, and it sucks at that function. I suspect most e-readers suck at that function too because eInk has very slow refresh rates. What eBook readers are great at is reading novels. Textbooks are OK too, if you are not using them as references. So the solution is probably having textbooks on computers *and* e-readers - then you can search quickly and scroll around on a computer, and you have an easy on the eyes screen of an e-reader.
I actually support replacing most textbooks with electronic versions for one simple reason - kids have to carry 10+kg all over the place. I know. I did it. It sucks. Carrying 25% of your body weight around (for younger kids) is not a good thing.
Also, the fact that page sizes for proper e-books are variable makes them a complete nightmare for citations and in-class essay writing.
Wrong. Page numbers are embedded in the text allowing for dynamic sized pages AND fixed page numbers for references.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday February 23 2016, @04:18AM
I have an Kobo-mini, which is longer available for sale, and it sucks at that function. I suspect most e-readers suck at that function too ...
Another Kobo Mini owner here. Yes, it does suck but I suspect the main culprit is the reader software, it doesn't seem to me to be significantly slower (at least for biggish files) than my tablet. Which also sucks in lots of ways, again because of the software. What we REALLY need is cheap tablets running GNU/Linux and not just a crippled subset of what Linux can do.
E-ink is BRILLIANT for curling up with a novel, though.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday February 23 2016, @04:04AM
It depends. I totally agree that a paper study book is better in many ways. Media is good as a compliment though.
For reading novels though ebook using a specialized e-ink reader is better, I think. People value different things, but for many variable fonts, light weight, capacity, adjustable lighting, and so on are priceless. I still remember that hiding under a blanket with a flash-light after curfew was not very comfortable and much more obvious.
As per stations, people who wrote bible were much smarter:)
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday February 23 2016, @12:54AM
Kids are remarkably more adaptive than us old 8-bit NES players. Older folks are stuck in their ways, and it seems you are following that rule well.
In a college class, it was fantastic to be able to edit papers immediately upon classroom feedback, and reorder and reorganize them without the tedious manual process. Imagine doing your code on punch cards, that's what writing feels like now for anything longer than a page or two. The mechanical part of writing isn't effected by this move since the elementary schoolers aren't getting Chromebooks. Hopefully they're teaching typing on the lower levels as well.
I for one welcome our new paperless classrooms. Having worked in a school environment, I've seen how many reams of paper they burn though as handouts, assignments, quizzes, tests, homework, and supplementals. The cost of printing such volume is substantial, to the point of districts considering programs like PaperCut [wikipedia.org] to monitor and even redirect larger print jobs to less-expensive-per-page printers. The students invariably will lose the papers, or crumple them up and put them in radiators, or spill god-knows-what on them before handing them in.
If the network is suitably locked down, there's no reason why students should be distracted beyond what they would do doodling on paper.
The usual reactionary crowd will complain about this progress, like the save-cursive crowd that pines for 1958, but the world is digital. Take a look at any college class today, Macbooks and a rare ThinkPad fill the lecture hall. Does keeping our public middle and high schools in the dark ages benefit them for that?
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2016, @04:34AM
Yes, yes it does [soylentnews.org]. And how do you suitably lock down a cell phone network anyway?
This is like letting kids use calculators in elementary school. They rely on them and don't learn the basics, which handicaps them down the line. Our bridge builders of tomorrow are working through their engineering courses by looking up their tough homework answers on StackExchange instead of putting their noses down and working through tough problems. Sure, they can now see the question and the answer and see how you get from one to the other and feel they understand, but they don't develop that "aha" moment because they didn't have to discover it themselves. Sure, perhaps this is a boon for the literature majors, but its outsourcing the mind in the engineering and science fields.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday February 23 2016, @12:58AM
they clearly are unfamiliar with youth I for one cannot tolerate reading anything of any length on a computer screen; I need paper
Kids today do everything on a phone screen.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday February 23 2016, @02:49AM
That explains the rounded corners then: no company would want to be liable for bottom injuries.
Call me last century if you like, but I still need a larger (than a phone screen) sitting surface and paper at the end; 3 plies would be just fine, not need to be bleached thanks.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by Absolutely.Geek on Tuesday February 23 2016, @01:49AM
I have an eBook reader (kobo aura HD); it is awesome for pleasure reading, not only can I take my entire library with me, but I prefer the lower weight of the eBook to a regular book.
For technical texts I prefer the ability to search for a specific bit of info; so PDF + physical copy works out best. But in many situations only PDF manuals are available; sometimes I will print sections to use short term.
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2016, @02:37AM
I'm with you, I'm old (50's) and much prefer hardcopy to the screen for reading lengthy technical material, including source code.
But kids in their 20's don't have that learning disability, at least until their vision starts failing, which it probably will at an earlier age than for our generation.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2016, @12:20AM
Burn your footnotes to Hell. It is bad enough that people seem to think their one or two sentence posts are in desperate need of having footnotes added to them (and you are a poor writer [sussex.ac.uk], indeed, if you feel the need to insert them all the time [h2g2.com]), but now we get these wonderful editorials added as footnotes in the summary. Despite what you morons think, it is distracting when reading, and it looks awfully pretentious because of your obvious pitiful attempt to look for scholarly.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pino P on Tuesday February 23 2016, @12:22AM
Then what's the more acceptable way to disclose serious violations of web standards and norms in the cited sources that are likely to interfere with readers' viewing?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2016, @01:09AM
I doubt that Soylent's readers are so wholly incompetent as to be unable to deal with stupidly colored text. I'd say that warnings like that footnote serve only to point out what a pretentious hipster the author was in disabling CSS or JS or whatever it was that he disabled to get the illegible rendering, but I just disabled CSS and JSS both on the linked page and found that it was still quite legible, so I'm not sure what the author meant except to point out that he was such a pretentious twat that I can't even reproduce whatever error condition gave him an excuse to whine like some sort of special snowflake exposed to the brutalities of adult life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2016, @02:50AM
There are better ways* **. And when you quote something and leave out a section, adding " ... " is good enough. Including all the unnecessary brackets makes it more difficult to read***.
* Such as using the single star character.
** When there's a limited number of footnotes you shouldn't use numbers. More stars is fine.
*** Personal opinions of the poster shouldn't be in article summaries. They can post the first comment if they want to add a comment. A summary is an overview of the article and potentially other articles showing differing viewpoints.
(Score: 2) by rondon on Tuesday February 23 2016, @03:15PM
All of the footnotes there were factual. Please stop whining so much on the internet.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2016, @02:40AM
Not a Pratchett fan obviously
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday February 23 2016, @03:06AM
That's a pre-hypertext, pre-ebooks, humanities writing style designed around the composition of overwritten, long-winded 200k+ word count long contextualized thesaurus parsers. The kind that is fighting tooth and nail for every scrap of the reader's attention as one chapter is read and the former forgotten. The one filled with overwritten paragraphs and secondary characters that do nothing to the story's plot or theme. The kind that invented such colorful terms as "filler chapters"...
Thankfully, the printed book medium is perishing, taking that novel format along with it to a 100 years old overdue and much-deserving grave.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Common Joe on Tuesday February 23 2016, @05:40AM
Disagree.
I hate footnotes, but I feel they were used appropriately in this instance. The submitter used them because the information was off topic enough from the main summary, but relevant enough to include.
Usage of footnotes (or lack thereof) is a matter of skill by the writer and enjoyment of footnotes is an opinion by the reader.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by black6host on Tuesday February 23 2016, @12:43AM
My son doesn't live in this district but does live in NH. Google Docs is the way they're going in his district. He's only in first grade and we've traded lock-in from one vendor (MS) to another. The more things change the more they stay the same...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2016, @02:50AM
Vendor lock-in is inevitable if you look for someone to provide a complete out-of-the-box service with minimal work for the individual.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2016, @04:43AM
Dis-disclaimer: I am a teacher (hence anonymous post).
Administrators couldn't emphasize enough how essential it is for students to move into the "print, paper and digital world"
Fixed that for them.
The U.S. Department of Education found students that had access to a computer anywhere, anytime "became more creative, more collaborative, and better writers", while University of Kentucky researchers wrote "improvements in writing, literacy, science, exam scores, and GPAs all have been noted in various research studies".
Duhhh.
The district will buy the Chromebooks over three years... The district also hopes to make arrangements with its member towns and libraries so if a student lacks Internet access at home...
And this is where I have a serious problem. Locking into a single provider and forcing schoolwork into the cloud are both pedagogically unsound. Data and applications must be available locally.
Administrators couldn't emphasize...
Administrators have considered...
I'm starting to see a pattern.
It appears that the district is still using digital versions of traditional textbooks rather than using an Open Knowledge mode
Actually, it's entirely possible to use teachers' class notes (suitably formatted and written in formal English (or other language) as textbooks up to about year 10. All that's needed is to fund a few hours a week off as editing time.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Corelli's A on Tuesday February 23 2016, @05:36AM
The devil is in the details. My son's high school requires each student to have an internet device (such as a chromebook). Pluses: assignments posted on the web; homework for some classes can be turned in on-line. But the textbooks? Color me exceedingly unimpressed. What we have seen so far is the worst of both worlds (print and electronic): the e-textbooks consist of the same set of pages as the paper text, wrapped with a clunky UI that gives you a peephole to view the page and which requires lots of precise mouse operations to scroll around the page and to go back and forward pages. It's not possible, on a normal-sized chromebook, to view an entire page width at a legible magnification. It's harder to move about the book than a printed book. Furthermore, they do nothing to take advantage of the electronic medium. An electronic math text could include interactive problem sets with immediate feedback. That alone would vastly improve learning efficiency for some students.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Tuesday February 23 2016, @07:15AM
Furthermore, they do nothing to take advantage of the electronic medium. An electronic math text could include interactive problem sets with immediate feedback. That alone would vastly improve learning efficiency for some students.
At least it is possible with an e-book - and not possible at all with paper.
I fully support letting the trees live. Production of paper is a very dirty, poisonous process that can kill rivers. Electronic distribution is ecologically clean. I rarely read anything on paper these days. I have lots of e-books, and even more datasheets and drawings and other stuff that cannot even be put on paper due to its size and complexity and cost of printing. I am perfectly fine with a good quality LCD screen or two. The old guard still can hold onto their paper, and they are welcome to pay premium for it, but the future belongs to computer screens of various types and sizes.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 23 2016, @12:43PM
My kids school has online texts which suck and were provided to comfort elderly administrators and school board members.
The kids actually use Kahn Academy, various youtube videos, plenty of drill and kill style semi-interactive apps/pages. I'll have to look up the app names because they change every year, sometimes more often.
On paper (oh the pun) the texts are still in use because the teachers have to teach to a specific book in the curriculum much like they have to teach to the common core test, but the texts suck, so they're something teachers use as a reference not something the kids use. So the bottom tier textbook reads chapter 17 is multiplying negative numbers (my kids are younger than yours) but in class its all the kahn academy and their interactive ipad apps and interactive-ish web pages. It meets the needs of the common core and the textbook, but doesn't use them directly.
My daughter for example technically legally in the curriculum has a reading textbook, although I don't think she's ever seen it. She mostly reads out of a website called raz-kids. Not very hard to google. Its pretty cool, at least if you're a grade school kid. My son has a pre-algebra drill and kill website which he was using last night, its on the tip of my tongue but I can't remember it, he also technically has a textbook which no one other than the teachers has ever seen.
My guess is the legacy student texts will go away in a couple years. Hard to justify the insane expense for something basically unused. Textbook mfgrs last stand. The teachers do need an adult teacher-level "here's the common core goal for multiplying negative numbers and how to teach it" probably in ebook form but the kids simply don't need it anymore.
We recently did spring conferences and its creepy how the career of teaching is dying. All my kids teachers are way younger than I am. Its not like the old days when it was a life career. Politicians demonize them, the pay is shit because its based on a lifetime career with low pay at start and made up for by age 60, except the working conditions are so awful nobody makes it past 30. On the positive side there are no gen-x or older teachers AFAIK which means all my kids teachers grew up holding iphones in college, so they keep up with modern stuff. At least half of the teachers being 25 year old women must be extremely distracting to the older teenage boys; it was distracting to me at conference time, that's for sure. I don't think teachers looked like that in the old days.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2016, @11:15AM
The only question remaining is will goog be the only one doing the surveillance or do schools get a cut of the action too?
I mean this almost seems to be SOP https://duckduckgo.com/lite?q=school+spies+on+computer [duckduckgo.com]