Personal laptops may not be that crazy of an idea

Our View

In a time of budget constraints and program cuts, proposing purchasing personal laptops for all students seems completely nuts. That is what Columbus High School recently decided to do for all its students from sixth grade up, and it got us thinking: is it really that ridiculous of a proposition?

Our school has 11 computer labs, that is, rooms with over 20 computers. Each of these computers costs $685, with the exception of the new computers in the library which have a more complicated pricing system. More importantly, these computers take up a lot of space. The rooms used to house these computers are rooms that could be used for teaching. And there is even talk of creating more computer space by making additional labs. Why? Because teachers are constantly struggling to book times for computer use, as teaching today involves an increasing use of technology to be done effectively.

} This is the result of a world-wide trend; the use of technology is only going to keep escalating and education certainly isn’t a place where there is going to be an exception. It is inevitable that at a point in time, we are going to have to move to having each student have their own personal laptop. Desktops computers are not the future, so trying to patch the problem by slowly adding more desktops computers to our school is only delaying what needs to happen eventually. Grants are out there and so is a sustainable program, such as the one Columbus has adopted. The question is only whether to make this investment now, or keep spending dollars patching the problem only to have to make the investment later.