From Anastasia Goodstein over at Ypulse:
In my fantasy world one or all of the tech companies would outfit every new and older teacher with a brand new laptop full of software, bookmarked with the coolest and best educational sites and resources online and an iPod. Every teacher would attend a three day paid training where they explore these sites, build their own site, create a blog, load their favorite music on their iPod and learn to Podcast. They should create a profile on Myspace or a Live Journal and explore those worlds. They should play The Sims or Everquest. Basically they should be immersed in everything their students are with the addition of new and cutting edge sites and technology they can use in the classroom.
Ok, so let’s see…about $139 billion paid out in teacher salaries last year, divided by 185 days times three tech-immersion days = $2.25 billion cost. That’s about what we add to the national debt every day.
Hmmm…
Well, that’s just the salary and benefits cost, of course. Don’t forget the hardware.
Figure we’d get a special deal from Dell, Gateway, etc for buying in bulk, so we can get top-of-the-line laptops for just $1000 each. Apple gives away the iPods – it’s for the kids, Steve. Microsoft gives away the OS and bundled software, maybe in exchange for the DoJ taking it easy on them for a little while?
Volunteers “stage” the machines (pre-load and configure the machines and pack for shipping), and local pizza and donut shops provide in-kind donations for the massive staging effort.
There are about about 3.8 million teachers (excluding preschool, kindergarten, and special education), so we need about $3.8 billion for the hardware.
Paging Messrs Gates, Allen, and Ellison…
Every teacher? Not every subject, not every topic covered requires technology. I’d hate to see our choir changed to accomodate technology, ditto our phys. ed. classes (students do need to run around, you know, not just sit in front of a computer with earbuds dangling). And at what age do we do this? A PreK student needs to develop face-to-face social and gross motor skills before anything else, wouldn’t you agree?
And why not make libraries the staging ground? The obesity issue alone should rule out pizza, donut and Starbucks. Besides, in a libary you might find some of that really cool old technology to enjoy – I think it’s called a book.
Also, do we really want to use MS products? Until Gates and Ballmer are ready to really improve the product so that it’s reliable and easy to use let’s consider Macs or Open Source. And hey – OSS is free.
Dreaming is good: it leads to innovation. But practical application requires more thought. I’m not seeing a lot of that here.