Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Laptop Campus: Bane or Boone?

Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Laptop Campus: Bane or Boone?

I came across this post on Vicky Davis's blog. It seems that there is a growing backlash against the idea of laptop schools in the US. I have to agree with Vicky in her conclusion that the problem is not the technology but aimlessness in applying it. Laptops, like any other kind of device used in the class room is no substitute for a well-organised syllabus or a dedicated teacher.

Computers by themselves are no more likely to educate than a library card is. However, when used in conjunction with a decent education sytem both are powerful tools to help students learn.

In the early 90's lots of language schools here in Greece spent huge amounts of money buying PCs to use for teaching English, spurred on by the idea that these beige boxes would somehow (the details were always fuzzy) miraculously get students to study more. The reality of the situation was that without any clear idea of how they could be used in the classroom the computer was quickly relegated to the status of a failed novelty.

Of course the problem lay not with the limitations of the machine but rather with an inability of those in charge to train staff to exploit them. PCs ended up being used as little more than dull electronic textbooks which students soon got bored of.