King touts laptop proposal Governor seeks support, visits students in Hampden

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As his laptop plan languishes in the Legislature, Gov. Angus King has begun touring the state, demonstrating with the fervor of an evangelist what he says is “the richness and depth” computers can provide in the hands of all students in a classroom.

Visiting Hampden and Bangor on Tuesday, King called a portable, personal computer with Internet access “a book times a thousand.”

First, with a group of selected eighth-graders at Reeds Brook Middle School in Hampden, and later before a group of adults at the Bangor Public Library, King used wireless, portable computers to demonstrate how the Internet can be used to teach the battle of Gettysburg.

Using a Web site set up by the state Department of Education that has links to other Web sites, he led the two groups through a variety of exercises and searches.

The groups looked at online maps showing the position and movements of Union and Confederate forces on an hour-by-hour basis during the battle. He used the computers to play “Dixie” and “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” to demonstrate the patriotic tunes of the day.

One link led to a draft of the Gettysburg Address in President Lincoln’s own handwriting. And another guided onlookers through the 20th Maine’s defense of Little Round Top.

King is trying to win converts to his cause as his laptop initiative hangs in the balance during stalled state budget negotiations.

Just over a year ago, King proposed establishing a $65 million endowment fund to provide enough annual interest income to provide a portable, personal computer to every seventh-grader through 12th-grader in the state by 2007. He convinced legislators to set aside $50 million last spring, but they balked at the idea of giving away the machines.

A task force refined the plan, and recommended schools be given enough machines for seventh- and eighth-graders for now. The panel also recommended that the schools own the machines and determine how and when they could be taken home.

This spring, as state revenues tightened up, the House of Representatives went along with King’s plan, but the Senate decided to take the money for other purposes. The issue is now one of the sticking points in budget negotiations.

King said that he is moving on all fronts to bring opponents of the plan around to his point of view.

He said he has been meeting with individual senators, including Senate President Pro Tem Rick Bennett, R-Norway, on Monday.

He began his almost tent-revival type tour this week in Bath. The campaign’s purpose is not to drum up support among citizens to put pressure on their legislators, he said, but rather to get across “the power of this as an educational tool” and show the way it “engages” students.

A key is that all students get their own machines, King said.

Eighth-graders Lawrence Pelletier and Ben Goff both liked that idea.

Each classroom in Reeds Brook Middle School has two computers, one for the students and one for the teacher. There are also two computer labs with roughly 40 computers combined.

“Normally we only use computers for projects or to learn how to use new programs,” Goff said.

Having one to use on an individual basis would make projects much easier, because students could work on them a little bit at a time at school and then at home, Pelletier added.

Both boys’ families have Compaq computers, while the school has Apples, they said.

“You can’t take stuff home because they’re not compatible,” Pelletier said.

“You usually lose half your report,” according to Goff.

Linda Pomerleau, an eighth-grade teacher at Reeds Brook, said that she is “very excited” by the governor’s plan.

“Our kids are so computer literate … they eat it up,” Pomerleau said. “And we certainly use computers in this building for more than just keyboarding. We weave them into the classroom disciplines.”

But there were some doubters Tuesday.

While acknowledging the benefits computers and Internet access bring to schools, Phyllis Shubert, vice chairman of the Bangor School Committee and president of the Maine School Boards’ Association, said she is not a fan of the plan.

At the Bangor Public Library meeting, which was attended by about 18 people, she told King that her priority for using the money set aside for the laptop initiative would be teacher training and development in basic subjects to help students meet the standards of the state’s new Learning Results.

She also said she dislikes the proposal because when the state picks an educational program that it expects school districts to implement “it takes the ability to set priorities away from local school districts.”

But the governor expressed his resolve to fight to the end for his proposal.

“I have the passion of the recent convert,” King told the Bangor audience, noting that he didn’t use a computer until he started his own business at age 45 in 1989.

He said that he is “way more passionate” about his proposal now than he was 14 months ago, when he first unveiled it.

“It would be a tragedy to let this slip through our fingers,” he said. There is nothing policymakers could do with the expected $5 million in annual interest income from the endowment that would come “remotely close” to the impact of the laptop plan.

“I am totally committed,” he said.