An original provision of Idaho Superintendent of Schools Tom Luna’s Students First initiative as expressed in SB 1113 was that every student in Idaho would be issued a laptop computer as a 9th grader. He would keep the computer throughout the following grades and would get to keep it upon graduation. Subsequent versions of the bill have watered this provision down considerably. Still…
In a previous post, I characterized this as a wonderful idea (and still consider it so), fatally flawed by being ill-timed (in an already lean budget year), ill-conceived (for example, students being arbitrarily required to get a certain number of credits from on-line courses), and for the wrong reason (getting rid of 700-1000 teachers statewide). I enthused about one possible application of these computers.
If every student had routine access to a computer, writing labs could be built right into instruction in English class, with no further facilities or personnel.
See the Memo “Writing Lab” in From the Files.