Comments on Netbooks for All?

• Posted by MJOakes on October 23, 2009 at 8:45am EDT

• Seems as though institutions need to be moving more quickly toward creating expectations for college study that include portable access to the Internet, and to basic digital apps. It's increasingly a productive and important part of education, like notebooks and calculators. And of course, I know that's a well-known part of the argument. But I wonder if institutions have too timidly danced around this issue for too long, as we fret about the cost issue for the segment of students that might least afford netbooks (or laptops).

  This is a trade-off it might be time to force college-bound students to more directly confront. It might also be valuable to gather some data on what kind of computer equipment students already have. While we discussed this over years at a (former) small liberal arts institution, we discovered that nearly 85% of our incoming freshmen were already registering their own portable PCs.

• Faculty and Changed Student Expectations
• Posted by stevenb on October 23, 2009 at 9:00am EDT

• You raise a number of good issues that going with netbooks would create at your institution. I don't think netbooks, just yet, can replace all desktops in computer labs. Most only have 1 gig of memory and that's just not satisfactory for running more intensive software needed by students in STEM fields or design. The one issue I didn't see you mention is how equipping all students with netbooks changes what happens in the classroom. It could change student expectations for how faculty will incorporate the netbooks into their teaching methods. It could be rather pointless to equip everyone with a netbook and then have faculty lecturing over a bunch of powerpoint slides and never doing anything interactive that could get students to use the netbooks for learning. I think that's been one big failure of these initatives in the past. Give all the students a laptop. Now what? Then faculty tell the students to put away the netbooks in class because it's a distraction from the lecture. That's pretty discouraging for digital natives. Just something to think about.

• It all boils down to policies
• Posted by Dr. Pepper , Academic-in-training at US northeast on October 23, 2009 at 9:45am EDT

• When netbooks first came out, I would have said that they were just a fad and not generally useful for the classroom.  As regular laptops are becoming monsters to haul around, and as netbooks are becoming more capable than before (more like sub-laptops), I think that they can be useful for class.

  Most students (if you exclude those in the sciences with needs for special software) essentially need a word process, a spreadsheet and some presentation software - all of which Open Office provides for free and is available for netbooks.  All other services used by students are on the web.

  Having said that, on our campus, due to state laws, we've got a mandatory health insurance policy for anyone who is a full time student. If you don't have it, you get it and pay for it - no exceptions.  The same could be done with netbooks.  You need to have one you will get one through the school, if you have a laptop, drop by the IT department to get a signed waiver, and of course this applies only to those who are full time.

  I get your point about internet access, but word processing can be done offline, and you don't need a $60/month modem to be online.  Many coffee shops and book stores these days have free wifi.  If business people can leech off the free wifi, then students looking to make their way into the world should be able to do so as well :-)

• Young People SHOULD take on certain kinds of debt
• Posted by Eric Gates on October 23, 2009 at 9:45am EDT

• Dean Dad,

  I understand the desire to protect young people from falling into debt purchasing their own school materials. A lot of young people just are not ready to enter the credit markets. They get fleeced.

  But there is a beloved ecomics lectuerer at the University of Chicago named Alan Sanderson (http://home.uchicago.edu/~arsx/) who vigorously and persuasively argues that young people, with their lives ahead of them, SHOULD take on certain kinds of debt. A few examples -- travel, education, and, I'm sure, an inexpensive laptop computer falls in there.

  Why? As opposed to borrowing money for toys, beer , expensive takeout food, sharp clothes, and other temporal things (expenses really), investing in one's future at 22 as opposed to 82 has tremendous leverage, and the long-term benefits easily outweigh the debt load.

  Seeing the world, keeping up with technology, getting an excellent education, whatever it costs, at 22, it is worth it.

  I never bought a stock, a bond, oil, gold, or any other investment that paid nearly as well as the money I invested in my education.

  So, no, I don't think the school should purchase laptops for students.

  But once we get ourselves out of this credit crisis, and things return to a state of at least semi-normalcy, students getting an education in the 21st century should no more think about going to school without a decent laptop, than they should think of going without pants or a shirt.

• Grants?
• Posted by MEDonnelly , Assistant Professor, English at Broome Community College on October 23, 2009 at 9:45am EDT

• I wonder if there might be some campus-based Foundation or external granting institution that might be willing to fund netbooks or even real laptops (increasingly affordable) for less affluent students. That way, it wouldn't be a "tuition" expense as such. Professors could make expectations clear, the application process could be covered during orientation or registration, and money intended to benefit students could do so directly.

  I don't think the issue of wifi off campus is such a huge deal: increasingly, public places have wifi, and some municipalities are moving toward blanketing whole geographical areas. Our campus is completely wireless (and we're a small CC in a strapped state), and there are several communal areas where students gather to use their laptops. If they need to download something before they head home, they generally know that.

  The most serious issue I see is the battle of the bandwidth, but frankly, that cat is out of the bag once you grant wireless access to anyone.

• Posted by Alicia , Grant Admin on October 23, 2009 at 12:45pm EDT

• Good idea, I'd say.

  But, I'd have to agree with some of the points raised. Netbooks are skeletons at best. I just graduated in '07, and I know some of the programs I was required to use wouldn't have run "cleanly" on 1GB of RAM. If a student had to do any sort of in depth media project (video editing, graphic and/or web design), a netbook wouldn't get it done. And, also, on the classroom atmosphere: Students with laptops did all kinds of things in class from homework, to surfing the web, to Facebook, to watching videos on YouTube with the sound muted. This happened even in small rooms. If the class was boring that day or they had work to finish for their next class, they simply didn't pay attention.

  With all that said, I was fortunate enough to receive a scholarship for a laptop my sophmore year. It was for low-income business students and also based on academic merit. I used that computer to get through the rest of college. I wouldn't have, otherwise, been able to afford it (without using loan money.

• Issues
• Posted by CEC , VP Technology at RVCC on October 23, 2009 at 5:45pm EDT

• It seems to me that in an open enrollment evironment like most community colleges it is hard to reconcile the cost for part time students and then the mix of haves and have nots if it is not mandatory for all.

  In addition, if the requirement is to add instructional value (beyond a publicity/marketing ploy) the laptops have to be accepted by a wide range of the faculty to deliver or supplement instruction or else the student will question the additional cost. Software costs should also be taken into account.

  Perhaps the answer lies in the adoption of hand held mobile devices that can be required for all students or for special cohort type programs (e.g. Nursing). The devices can work on the campus wireless network and off campus if the student has a provider. The additional cost can be reduced by supplying etext and ebooks to offset the cost of text books.

  I think it is a path we will all be traveling sooner rather than later but with the caution of making sure we do not create a class of "have nots" as an unintentional outcome.

• Too Many Distractions
• Posted by CC Prof on October 24, 2009 at 10:45am EDT

• I think that the issues that Dean Dad raises would make it nearly impossible to justify making laptops or netbooks mandatory for students at most community colleges. However, I have two objections to such a policy. I teach philosophy, and I don't really need computers in my classroom. My classes focus on reading, talking, and thinking. My students are already distracted enough by their phones, and I don't see how more gadgets are going to help them focus on what we are doing in the classroom.

  Finally, some of the posters above just don't seem to understand the financial situation of some community college students. Any additional cost to some of our students will cause some of them to drop out. I just had a student drop out because his roommate was arressted. He couldn't pay the rent for both and he didn't have the money to relocate quickly, so he had to work more and drop out of school. I have another student who is unemployed and is trying to decide whether it is more important to eat or go to school. Additional costs, no matter how small, will put financial pressure on some community college students.

• Lessons from around the globe...
• Posted by vfichera on October 24, 2009 at 10:45am EDT

• In the early eighties, the French invented an electronic network called Minitel, ostensibly to replace the proliferation of telephone books across the country, but Minitel actually quickly morphed into a nationwide mini-Internet. How did the French transition into this online form of telecommunication? By giving free minitel computers to any telephone subscriber who agreed to renounce receiving paper telephone books. I still recall a discussion with a French PTT agent who was frank with me around '85 or so saying, unfortunately the U.S. was rather backward when it came to information technology.

  During the past ten years, the Chinese have been networking the outermost reaches of their nation with satellite communications installed by the government for educational programming.

  I'm not saying that these systems don't have their drawbacks (notably the Chinese system does provide for government control of such communications with the attendant censorship of world-wide renown). But what these examples do show is that other countries have "equalizing" plans for access to technology on a nation-wide scale -- an idea whose time has not yet come on the American continent.

• Posted by Greg on October 26, 2009 at 2:45pm EDT

• Interesting. Seems another push is to eliminate all electronic devices from the classroom becuase some talking head does not want to share their time with students surfing and texting. I also wonder how many of the colleges from 10 years ago that made it mandatory that all students show up with a computer, or provided them with a computer out of their tuition dollars, are still requiring this of students?