When my daughter started working on an Asus Eee, she immediately started using it to write more, as well as to check email. Though I found the Asus Eee to be a bit clunky compared to the other netbooks out there (e.g. Dell’s Mini or the Acer Aspire), I have to respect that it may work for students, not adults.

“Only four freshmen showed up at the University of Virginia in 2007 without a computer of their own, and the school has decided that it’s no longer worth the expense of running campus computer labs.” More from Ars Technica.
Source: via Stephen Downes

When you consider that universities may be dumping computer labs in exchange for students bearing their own equipment, it makes sense to see K-12 schools equipping students with netbooks. One 5th grade student from the district mentioned below implementing Asus Eees is worried more about increased access to technology. That student writes, What happens in our classroom that we couldn’t have before is that we have our own computer instead of going to the computer lab.

In other school districts, equipping students with netbook computers is already happening. One example is Littleton Public Schools in Colorado, where the Chief Information Officer Dan Maas poses some simple questions:

Across LPS, we have pilot projects of ASUS EeePCs in classrooms. We hope that you are enjoying the new computers and are learning more than ever before. Many people are asking about how your classroom has changed now that you have the EeePC laptops. Can you help us tell your story?

Here are some questions we have:

How does having a laptop computer help students write better?

What happens in your classroom now that you have laptops that could not happen before?

Now that you have had laptops in your classroom, how would you feel if you didn’t have them next year?

What do next year’s 5^th grade students coming to your classroom have to look forward to?

Below is a selection from the over 100 comments his questions generated…it is not meant to be exhaustive but to capture some of the flavor of the responses:

• These computers are a big part of my life as a fifth grader. They are life savers.Having a laptop helps me in writing because I’m not the most unorganized person, so I don’t have tons of papers to mix up and lose. I can type everything on my computer and not be worried about it getting lost. In my classroom, Ms. V doesn’t have to sit up at her computer and pull the website up on the projector screen. Before the computers, we were wasting time going up to the meeting area instead of doing our work. If I didn’t have a computer next year, I wouldn’t feel like it’s the end of the world. Although, I would feel sort of disappointed if we didn’t have computers next year.

  You wouldn’t understand how wonderful these laptops are unless you were a kid like me. These are wonderful objects of technology! Kids next year should really look forward to doing almost all of their work online. It’s so much easier for everyone because we don’t have to have the teacher show us the website and we don’t have to listen to them repeat everything three or four times.

• If we didn’t have laptops next year I would not like it that much. We do almost everything on our laptops. we wouldn’t be able to watch videos at our own pace, we wouldn’t be able to read our classmates responses on what we all think because we blog so many of our answers. If we didn’t have computers next year I wouldn’t be able to know what my classmates thought. The students that are coming into fifth grade next year have a lot of fun coming toward them. You type almost all of your writing assignments on the computers.
• Here is my story on how these laptops have made a difference in my 5th grade year. Having the computers for writing is much easier because we can make the fount bigger and all kinds of different things to help express ourselves in our writing. It helps us keep things where we want them and we practice everyday on our keybord, typewriting and it is really cool! We can finally work on our stories and other things without writing them on a piece of paper and that never used to happen before and we can comment on our classroom blogs, like we’re doing right now. It just makes life easier in the classroom.
• I used to not like writing but know I keep looking at the time and inside I am saying,”is it time for writing yet?”If you don’t believe me come visit us at East Elementary.You have to see it to believe it because your eyes will pop out.All those people who say that the eee’s haven’t helped us as a fifth grader we specifically want you to come see us.I don’t like to brag but these computers are awesome and so is my class and I. Do you know what a wiki is because I sure do.We used to save on our old school jump drives but my amazing wonderful teacher came up with a way to save online.
• When we first got our laptops I thought that they were for the teachers. But then my computer teacher Mrs.Kay started calling the students to get there laptop for the year.That change school for my class because we started using them almost every day for writing and blogging. But the thing it really changed was the technology.That’s my story and that’s why I want the people who don’t like the new mini laptops to come to 5th grade to see them and see my 5th grade class using them.

Read the rest of the comments online.

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