Word: laptops
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y., will have the same sort of memory. For them, computers have always been there, a fact of life, in a way that no generation before theirs has experienced. Packer is at the cutting edge of an educational movement in the U.S. that is integrating laptop computers into middle schools and high schools--they're known as "laptop schools." But Packer has taken the idea a step farther. Its entire campus has been turned into a wireless Internet-access zone. Wherever they go, whatever they're doing--whatever they're supposed to be doing--Packer students...
...students don't make a habit of agreeing on things, but they agree on this: computers crash a lot. "Most computers that we have, have glitches," says Shomari, a sixth-grader at Packer. "They break every five minutes! After a while, you have no care whatsoever for your laptop. It's so, so, so annoying...
...teacher George Turner puts it, "There is no harder life than in a sixth-grader's backpack." One lesson the faculty learned fast was that if you're going to base your lesson plan on the computers, have a backup plan. If you don't, when one kid's laptop crashes, the whole class grinds to a halt...
Wireless has done more than give Packer students a new set of rules to break. The school's entire culture has changed. The place feels different, and not everybody is comfortable with that. Everybody you meet at Packer is carrying a laptop. Kids in the hall wave wireless cards and argue about where to download drivers. When teachers talk, there's a low, collective clicking sound in the background--the sound of hundreds of fingers taking notes via keyboard. "It was painful for me," admits Elissa Krebs, who heads the English Department at Packer. "Inevitably you would just have lines...
...about wireless technology--leads his students through a brisk review before an exam, pulling images of Greek urns off the Metropolitan Museum of Art's website. He makes extensive use of what's called a Smart Board, a high-tech blackboard that throws a giant version of Rush's laptop screen on the wall. It's touch-sensitive, so he can point and click on the board with his hand, navigating from urn to urn, zooming in on images when he wants to highlight a detail. He even uses his index finger to draw lines, and he sketches freehand directly...