I completely understand why we should give every kid a laptop. However some questions need answering...... (and are looked at in the article)
Computers are expensive to purchase, and expensive to fix - who pays for that in less well-off districts? In my wife's district, each kid could afford a Macbook out of pocket; in the city of Mpls districts, they use the same football uniforms for decades, and a large percentage of the student population receives free hot breakfast and lunch...... examples of poverty and lack of resources simply preclude a functioning laptop program.
Many competent adults (my team
) cannot function outside of simple Outlook and Word. While kids should in theory more easily adapt to technology, if this is all about email, document prep and internet, does everyone need a
laptop?
Universities have issues with music piracy, students on Facebook in class, MRPG taking time away from studying etc - at least at a pay for education establishment like college, you get what you pay for - but at a public school, you'd need huge content and filtering software to keep kids on-track. This isn't impossible of course, but again labor intensive and probably quite controversial as legitimate websites would be blocked, and bad websites can get through....
Just a few off the cuff comments. Certainly not insurmontable, but 100% digital literacy is a pipedream. We'd be better off hiring better teachers and paying teachers more.