What happened as a result of distributing notebook PCs to all junior high school students?

BySen Chang

As IT education fever increases, attempts to give notebook PCs and tablet terminals to students and to utilize them for computer education are getting more active. However, schools that have continued attempts to distribute notebook PCs to all students for free without collecting and discarding laptop PCs from all students will decide to end education for all notebook PCs distributed. did.

Why a New Jersey school district deciding giving laptops to students is a terrible idea | The Hechinger Report
http://hechingerreport.org/content/new-jersey-school-district-decided-giving-laptops-students-terrible-idea_16866/

Hoboken junior high school · high school in the state of New Jersey, USA decided to distribute notebook PC for educational purposes free of charge to all students of seventh grade (first grade of junior high school in Japan) from 2009 and use it in class. The necessity of computer education like this is commonly recognized throughout the United States and there are many schools that do similar projects, according to the Digital Education Center the budget for computer education in 2013 is about 240 million dollars 24.7 billion yen) to 10 billion dollars (1.8 trillion yen).

However, Hoboken stopped the conventional computer education program and decided to collect and discard all the notebook PCs distributed to the students.


The Hoboken school's free notebook payment program says it was a trouble from the beginning. When computer network engineer Jerry Crocamo joined the program of the school in 2011, all the students in the third grade, seventh, eight and ninth graders were holding laptops, but every day It was overwhelmed by the repair request coming in like. The students were infected with notebook PCs and viruses whose screen was broken and notebook PCs and batteries that broke the screen, "They broke if you dropped the book", "It was sitting on top of it, it broke", "It got broken if dropped" It seems that he came bringing the notebook PC to Mr. Crocamo constantly, and even if introducing a hard type case to prevent damage, "stop completely lost notebook PC" cease to come in It seems he could not do it.

In addition, although Mr. Crocamo had introduced tracking software for theft prevention to all notebook PCs, laptop PCs that were lost and never found were out.

Hoboken introduced software called "Net Nanny" that prevents porn sites and online game sites from being accessed to distributed notebook PCs, but such countermeasures have been adopted by "12-year-old hackers" It was totally meaningless and there was no bulletin board showing the details of how to hack Net Nanny on the net, there was no way to prevent hacking one after another.

BySalim Fadhley

In addition, as the performance of distributed notebook PCs was low, many notebook PCs in the class crashed and even "disaster" that "it takes 20 minutes to start educational software" was said that Hoboken "Said Mr. Howard McKenzie, a mathematics teacher at the University of California. According to Mr. McKenzie, I gave up the laptop which was too late and eventually rely on electronic whiteboards in the end.

However, from the point of view of the educator, it is a nasty thing to do as a notebook PC, but it seems that it was the same for the students. Mr. Michael Ranieri of Hoboken High School third grader talks that the distributed notebook PC was good to be collected. The notebook PC provided free of charge was requested to sign a memorandum that "In the unlikely event of theft, parents will pay for it in case they are stolen." Ranieli tells us that laptops were retrieved and it was not necessary to be afraid of theft and it was released from stress.

ByDennis Lam Sweden

Even in Japan, attempts to distribute laptop computers and tablet terminals free of charge to students and to incorporate them into education are actively attempted, but in the case of Hoboken school, it is only necessary to give hardware to provide educational purposes without adequate care It seems to give us the lesson that it is very difficult to fulfill.

◆2014/08/01 12:30 Addendum
Immediately after the article of The Hechinger Report was posted, the Hoboken school was flooded with opinions, concerns and complaints by e-mail and telephone. On the other hand, on July 31, 2014, Hoboken School Board of Education stated that there was no mention of important facts in the press and misunderstandingAnnounced a statementDid. The summary of this statement is as follows.

WNYC news and The Hechinger Report reported that Hoboken collected laptop PCs provided free of charge to students and "discarded", but Hoboken has not disposed of notebook PCs. Originally, the educational program which has been continued for several years before distributing notebook PCs to the seventh and the eighth graders is an experimental program which was carried out with subsidy from the administration, this notebook PC Collecting was done with the end of the program, 100 laptop PCs, which have reached the end of their useful life, will be bought by the recycling company by the bidding method and the remaining 200 units will be continuously used for educational purpose It is becoming.