Latest laptop plan would employ smaller computers

AUGUSTA – The task force trying to hammer a practical plan out of Gov. Angus King’s proposal to provide every seventh- through 12th-grader in the state with a laptop computer has decided to scale back his vision.

In a rough draft of its recommendations Monday, the task force agreed that instead of full-scale laptops, schools would be equipped with Internet-capable, but abbreviated, versions of portable computers for each seventh- and eighth-grader only.

Despite the scale-down, Commissioner of Education J. Duke Albanese said that Maine would still be the first in the nation to provide computers to a segment of students statewide.

King is “pleased with [the task force’s] general direction,” said John Ripley, the governor’s spokesman.

Schools would own the devices and permit seventh- and eighth-graders to take them home under guidelines established by local officials. This is in contrast to King’s original idea of giving the machines to students, who would then keep them, using them from seventh through 12th grades.

Two underlying principles formulated by the Task Force on the Maine Learning Technology Endowment are that there must be a device for every student and there must be the possibility that the pupils can take them home. This mix is needed, according to task force members, in order to “transform” education in the state.

The devices envisioned by the task force would have limited stand-alone computing capabilities. They would run a word processing program, and spreadsheet and database programs.

For other applications, the machines would need to be linked in networks to a powerful computer known as a server. Each device would have direct access to the servers of the Maine Schools and Libraries Network, a system of Internet connections to all public schools and libraries in the state.

The task force had to shrink the governor’s proposal because of financial constraints triggered by the struggling stock market. When King unveiled his plan for creating a $50 million endowment with surplus state funds in March, his idea hinged on the endowment’s earning in excess of 8 percent interest a year, which would pay for the machines.

On Monday, task force members talked of more conservative assumptions to keep the $50 million principal in the endowment intact. But their long-term hope is to reach all high school grades.

Although the grade span has been pared, the task force’s recommendations would provide a fuller educational endeavor than the governor foresaw. For example, the task force is going to recommend that money from the endowment be used for teacher training.

Despite “the cliff” between eighth grade and ninth, Ray Poulin, superintendent in SAD 46 (Dexter area), said, “I think the overall direction is very favorable. There is an interest to make sure equity is addressed.”

In three or four years, Poulin said, the cost of the machines will have fallen and financing probably will have improved. Because Maine will be in the vanguard of educational technology, he added, funding from private and federal sources would probably be forthcoming.

The program laid out by the task force is similar to one in place in Piscataquis Community Middle School in Guilford. The school has a 1-to-1 ratio of laptops to seventh- and eighth-grade pupils, and the machines are owned by the school. The only major difference is that the pupils cannot take the computers home.

Under the scenario drawn up by King administration officials, the endowment would first be tapped in the fall of 2002. Over the next nine years, an average of $3.6 million would be spent annually.

Even after replacing the machines after six years, there would be an estimated $56.4 million in the endowment in June 2011.

In the first two years, a total of 242 school buildings would be equipped with machines for 16,532 seventh-graders and 15,952 eighth-graders.

A machine already on the market designed with students in mind looks like regular laptop computers that someone dipped in water and then tossed in the dryer and shrank.

The device is about the same size as an 81/2-by-11-inch sheet of paper and a little more than 2 inches thick.

The devices are rugged, according to Jim Doyle, Gov. King’s technology adviser, tough enough to be stomped on or to have soda poured onto the keyboard and keep on working.

Instead of a typical computer hard drive, which spins a disk, these devices have solid-state cards to store memory. The display screen is 6 to 10 inches diagonally.

The machines can connect to the Internet or a local area network either by radio waves or infrared waves. They are battery-powered and have built-in modems.

School buildings would get wireless hubs so students could connect to a network. Buildings would be checked to make sure their connection to the Maine Schools and Libraries Network could handle the increased traffic.

On the other end, the state needs to add 44 to 88 servers to the Maine Schools and Libraries Network in Orono and Portland to meet the new demand.

The task force will reconvene Jan. 8 to refine and ratify its recommendations before submitting them to lawmakers.