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Wednesday, September 4, 2002
EDITORIAL:
Copyright © 2002 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. | ||
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The Class of 2008 will be unlike any that came before it in Maine. That's when the current crop of seventh-graders graduates from high school. These are the first students who, on a statewide basis, will have had the benefit of using laptop computers full-time in middle school. This month about 17,000 Maine seventh graders will be getting their laptops and beginning a journey into a new era in education. Teachers, parents and the taxpayers who are supplying the laptops should remember that this is a long-term, multifaceted investment. The real payoff for the kids, after all, won't be until they graduate high school or even college, a decade from now. Also, laptop learning has two distinct components. One is content-based. Students will be able to learn more stuff with greater ease thanks to the resources of the World Wide Web. The other is form-based. Besides learning more about history, science and poetry, students will also be learning how to use computers and be comfortable with them. By the time these kids graduate, there will be very few jobs that don't involve computer use. Truck drivers and factory workers will use them as often as college students. This is the future that the members of the Class of 2008 will encounter, and they will do so with confidence.
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