Boost for Laptops

It seems like yesterday that Gov. Angus King faced a reluctant Leg-islature, some skeptical parents and many uneasy or even hostile teachers when he pushed through his “Lunchboxes to Laptops” plan to put a computer into the hands of every seventh- and eighth-grader in Maine’s public middle schools. Only the kids generally supported the project.

Some legislators begrudged the $50 million expenditure, rightly aware of competing needs. Many parents knew little about computers and expected their little roughnecks to drop their laptops in mud puddles or maybe whack each other with them. Many teachers feared venturing into a new high-tech communication world. The kids already were learning the ropes and helped bring their parents and teachers into the new era.

Four years later, the laptop program has become well established, with the support of Gov. John Baldacci, cooperative parents, creative teachers and the help of the Apple Computer Corp. The state has accepted Apple’s bid to supply new iBook computers for all 36,000 seventh- and eighth-graders at an annual cost of $289 each, compared with $300 in its 2002 bid, to extend the program for another four years.

Private and parochial schools also may enter the laptop program through various arrangements in which they will ultimately pay for the computers. And about one-third of the state’s public high schools are supplying laptops to some or all of their students under the Essential Programs and Services school funding formula or through the use of local school funds.

Apple will continue to train teachers in methods of using the computers in classroom work. Most of them seem willing to answer e-mail questions about homework and next-day assignments, although some wisely impose a curfew on such questions.

Occasionally, a computer does get dropped or otherwise damaged, but Jeff Mao, coordinator of educational technology for the Maine Department of Education, considers the maintenance and repair situation fully manageable. The accident rate varies widely from school to school. He says it’s not the students’ fault, but some schools need help in managing the laptop program.

Maine remains the first and only state to have supplied laptops to every seventh- and eighth-grader. Some individual school districts have done so, and Michigan made a not entirely successful start.

But Maine remains the leader, and the credit goes to its state officials, the lawmakers, the parents and the teachers, but most of all to the students, who are well on their way to participation in a new high-tech world.