“Since the MacBook program began in 2003, the college-going rate in the Greene County School District has increased from 26 percent to 90 percent.”
I know it’s a bit of an advertisement. I wonder how other variables like teaching methods affected their study. Of course they’re biased because they’re selling mac products but I believe the college-going rate did go up. I think part of the reason it worked is because people are “willed” towards technology. This is technological determinism as described by Carl Mitcham (1994) (Petrina and Feng, 2008). Too bad they only mentioned using the Mac applications that come with it. There’s so much more!
Our school district bought one computer for EVERY grade seven student a couple of years back. They cancelled the program because it was too expensive to maintain the computers which were damaged and lost by the students. I wonder if they did a cohort study before deciding to buy all of those computers? The total cost was probably the same as giving just as many teachers a smartboard. Boo hoo! Where is my smartboard?
Petrina, S. & Feng, F. (2008). Primer for defining and theorizing technology in education, pt. 1. Vancouver, BC: Tech no-Printing Press
Increasing Student Achievement with Mac. Retrieved from http://www.apple.com/education/stories/greene-county/#video-greene-county
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