Its a shame the initiative for providing lap top computers doesn't inclue 
students with disabilities.  Maybe this needs to be brought to the 
wirteer's attention.

Jeffrey Pledger
President, AbleTV, Inc. At 05:43 AM 8/23/01 -0400, you wrote:
>Dear Tech Friends:
>These are four articles from today's NY Times on ed tech -
>I compiled them to one e-mail and put the titles at the top for
>ease of perusing and handling.
>
>
>NYTimes.com Articles:
>Take-Home Test: Adding PC's to Book Bags,
>It's Not the Computer; It's How (and Where) You Use It,
>Keeping Up in Class With Software for a Hand-Held,
>Schools Try Hand Held Computers
>
>
>\----------------------------------------------------------/
>
>Take-Home Test: Adding PC's to Book Bags
>
>By LISA GUERNSEY
>
>
>
>BLOOMFIELD, Conn. -- ON a May morning in Mary Kay Rendock's
>fifth-grade classroom here, the sounds of the dawning school day
>were echoing everywhere. Lockers banged outside in the hall,
>10-year-olds chattered as they settled into their seats — and a
>crescendo of chimes emanated from 15 laptop computers as every
>student in the room booted up.
>
>  At Carmen Arace Middle School, where laptops are something that
>students carry with them every day, Ms. Rendock's students knew the
>drill. Before the tardy bell, they were already scrolling through
>pages on their screens, lining up at the printer in the back of the
>classroom and handing over their assignments.
>
>  "Boys and girls," Ms. Rendock said as she leafed through the
>stapled papers, "these are impressive."
>
>  But in the midst of all the activity, one girl was barely
>stirring. She sat slumped in her chair, staring at the black screen
>of a computer that wouldn't boot up. Ms. Rendock walked over to try
>troubleshooting. Looking worried, she asked, "Do you think you lost
>anything when you shut it down?"
>
>  Such are the highs and lows of laptop schools, a growing cadre of
>educational institutions that have taken the controversial step of
>equipping every student with a portable computer to use at school
>and at home. For years, technologically inclined educators have
>been pushing this approach — often called one-to-one computing — as
>a radical way to provide Internet access and word-processing
>programs to students at any time, anywhere.
>
>  Issuing laptops may be expensive, but advocates (not to mention
>customer-hungry computer companies) say it is far better than
>shuffling students off to shared computer labs, where sessions
>sometimes last no longer than 40 minutes once a week. And it is the
>best way, they say, to bring the power of the Internet to all
>children, even those in the poorest families.
>
>  Yet many educators are still engaged in vigorous debates about
>whether laptop programs are really the panacea that some claim. In
>school districts with emaciated budgets, are laptops worth the pain
>of cutting other resources? What about the costs of technical
>support and teacher training? Won't the computers be magnets for
>muggers? And who is going to make sure that students use them for
>schoolwork as opposed to instant messaging and video games?
>
>  "Before they spend money on something like that, they ought to fix
>the leaky roofs," said Kenneth Reinshuttle, executive director of
>the Fairfax Education Association, a teacher's union in Virginia.
>The Fairfax schools were the focus of similar criticism five years
>ago when officials floated a proposal to require laptops for each
>student.
>
>  But given the advances in wireless networks and the news that some
>laptops now cost little more than $1,000 each, the push to outfit
>students with computers has taken on an inexorable logic of its
>own. NetSchools, a company that provides hardware, software and
>wireless networking, is supplying computers to 68 public and
>private schools, up from 10 when it started in 1997. More than 800
>schools and 125,000 students are taking part in Microsoft
>(news/quote)'s Anytime Anywhere Learning program, which the company
>started with Toshiba (news/quote) in 1996.
>
>  Henrico County, a district near Richmond, Va., recently purchased
>a $19 million networking package that included 23,000 Apple iBooks,
>which are being distributed this month to every high school
>student. In Maine, Gov. Angus King persuaded lawmakers to use $30
>million of the state's budget surplus to supply portable computers
>for every seventh and eighth grader in the state, starting next
>year. And last year in Community School District 6 in upper
>Manhattan, administrators expanded a laptop program to include
>4,500 students.
>
>  "It's clearly taking hold," said Mary Cullinane, manager of the
>Microsoft program. "Now we just need to figure out a way to do it
>for everybody."
>
>  At Carmen Arace Middle School, a public school in a low-slung
>brick building serving grades five through eight, the laptop
>program was initiated in response to a concern far graver than
>leaky roofs. The school, administrators worried, was failing its
>students. Scores on standardized tests had plummeted at the school
>and absenteeism was running high.
>
>  To jump-start a turnaround, the superintendent at the time came up
>with a proposal in 1996 to give every student — all 850 of them — a
>laptop computer and to install wireless networks in every
>classroom. The school board found support among parents and
>unanimously approved the plan, signing up for a $2.1 million,
>five-year program with NetSchools. To pay for it, the board cut
>several student aide and secretarial positions and used money that
>had been earmarked for PC purchases.
>
>  After three years of having students tote their computers
>everywhere, many teachers said, the school has come to feel like an
>entirely new place.
>
>  Everywhere you turn, children walk the halls with their
>blue-and-gray laptops in hand, usually carrying them like
>briefcases by their plastic handles. (The handles are NetSchools'
>solution to the problem of overstuffed and heavy backpacks.) Many
>of the laptops are covered with stickers so worn it is impossible
>to make out their images. A boy in Ms. Rendock's class had set the
>wallpaper on his computer desktop to display the cartoon images of
>Dragon Ball Z, a video-game series and television show popular
>among some pre-teenagers.
>
>  On that morning in May, students in classrooms across the school
>were typing at their laptops, scrolling through Web pages about
>Anne Frank, using e-mail to turn in math assignments and poring
>over online maps to learn about the Revolutionary War. When the
>machines were not required for a lesson, teachers barked, "Lids
>down!" and the room resounded with the snaps of computers folding
>up.
>
>  Test scores are starting to show improvement as well. In October
>1995, a little more than a year before the first laptops arrived,
>only 40 percent of eighth-grade students had met statewide reading
>goals. By 1999, the last year in which the test could be compared
>to the 1995 version, the percentage of eighth graders achieving
>those goals climbed to 60 percent.
>
>  Whether that upswing is directly attributable to the laptop
>program is, however, an open question, since new reading and math
>programs were instituted at the same time. But the computers are
>almost surely responsible, teachers say, for what many of them
>single out as the area of greatest improvement — children's writing
>skills.
>
>  Teachers say that students are more likely to practice writing at
>home, and they no longer roll their eyes when asked to write second
>drafts, since doing so doesn't require completely rewriting their
>work.
>
>  "They are revising and editing so much more," Ms. Rendock said.
>"They are able to improve their writing without me taking out the
>old red pen."
>
>  The positive impact on students' writing is echoed by several
>teachers at laptop schools elsewhere. One example is Fairfield
>Country Day School in Connecticut, a private school that for five
>years has required parents to buy laptops for students in grades
>six through nine. (Most private schools ask parents to foot the
>bill for the machines.) Elliott Higgins, a 14-year-old student,
>said that as soon as he got his computer, he was able to start
>writing more fluidly.
>
>  "Before, I would end up with a whole garbage can of paper," he
>said.
>
>  To address concerns about computers that are lost, stolen or
>damaged, some public schools have come up with unusual solutions.
>At Edison School in Union City, N. J., for example, where a few
>classes of students have been issued their own laptops,
>administrators keep the children at school until 5 p.m., so that
>their parents can drive or walk them home.
>
>  Shardaye Hampton, a 12-year-old at Carmen Arace, recites these
>rules about her laptop: "You've got to put it under the chair so
>it's not stepped on," she said. "And you've got to make sure you
>don't eat food over it, because the keys get sticky."
>
>  To deter problems, many laptop schools ask parents to pay
>mandatory deductibles and insurance fees. Still, the computers see
>their share of wear and tear. In almost every classroom, at least
>one student — like the glum girl in Ms. Rendock's class — is
>without access to his or her computer because of technical
>problems. Batteries die and power cords are scarce. Files are lost.
>At the Fairfield school, teachers and students learned from
>experience that when a person puts a pencil on the keyboard and
>then absent-mindedly closes the lid, the screen cracks.
>
>  At Carmen Arace, a full-time technician often has to keep ailing
>laptops overnight to fix them. During that time, students share
>with their peers or resort to paper and pencil.
>
>  When the computers do work, they usher in activities that may
>distract students from their classwork, like playing video games
>and sending instant messages. Although few studies have been done
>yet with younger students, a recent Cornell University study of
>laptop-toting college students showed major distractions among
>users in some classes, particularly those that did not require
>rigorous use of the laptops for schoolwork. At Fairfield Country
>Day School, a few sixth graders became so enamored of instant
>messaging in class — an activity banned at school — that the entire
>grade was not allowed to use laptops in class for a month.
>
>  Above all these concerns, however, is the question of money. Even
>with discounts from suppliers, the computers, including wireless
>networking cards, typically cost at least $1,000. Multiply that by
>thousands of students and the bill gets unmanageable very quickly.
>And that is not including the costs of training teachers,
>rebuilding courses to match the introduction of the Internet and
>paying for technical support — all of which teachers say are
>absolutely required if a laptop program is going to work.
>
>  "Simply making the purchases of the hardware is not going to
>change student achievement," said Barbara Stein, a senior policy
>analyst at the National Education Association. "That's why it is so
>key that it be part of an overall education plan."
>
>  Then there is the cost of the wireless networks. Mark Edwards, the
>superintendent in Henrico County, said he had already found that
>some school walls were so thick that he would need to double the
>number of AirPorts, which are Apple's wireless devices for
>delivering broadband Internet access.
>
>  Even Jerry Crystal, technology coordinator for the Bloomfield
>district who directed the laptop program, said he worried that the
>costs might start to look unreasonable in the eyes of
>administrators facing tight budgets. He has wondered, he said,
>whether the school could still increase student achievement by
>pursuing a far-cheaper approach using laptops that are distributed
>daily to limited numbers of students and pushed from classroom to
>classroom on carts with wireless access. And he is conducting an
>intense evaluation of the Carmen Arace Middle School to determine
>exactly what students are getting in return for those $500,000
>checks the school board has written each year.
>
>  It is an attempt, Mr. Crystal said, to answer a question that has
>hounded him since the laptop program started: "Are we getting
>$500,000 of improvement out of these kids?"
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/23/technology/circuits/23LAPP.html?ex=9995663
>26&ei=1&en=d7b503e92ad6541b
>
>/-----------------------------------------------------------------\
>
>
>It's Not the Computer; It's How (and Where) You Use It
>
>By SHELLEY FREIERMAN
>
>
>
>Statistics on computers in schools fly fast and furious. Nearly all
>of the public schools in the United States are now hooked up to the
>Internet, but the location of computers in the school and how often
>students have access to them may make all the difference.
>
>  "These statistics mask a lot of diversities," said Robbie
>McClintock, the director of the Institute for Learning Technologies
>at Teachers College, Columbia University. He gave two examples of
>how 100 computers could be allocated among 100 students: in four
>computer labs with 25 students each, or in five classrooms, where
>each of the 20 students would have a computer. "These distributions
>lead to a very different educational experience even though the
>ratio is the same," Professor McClintock said.
>
>  Students scheduled to work in computer labs for an hour each week
>often do drill-and-practice lessons in subjects like typing or
>math, he explained. Those in a classroom setting can use the
>computers anytime. In one 16-week program, for example, students
>use software to learn about the ancient world by excavating a
>virtual site in ancient Mesopotamia or Greece.
>
>  The best educational model, Professor McClintock said, is one in
>which a student can take a laptop home every night. "This moves the
>education program from the school into the students' hands on a
>24-hour basis," he said.
>
>  When asked to compare the growth of computers in schools to
>previous advancements in education, Professor McClintock reached
>all the way back to the 16th century and the introduction of
>printed books into Western culture. "This is a long-term process of
>fundamental educational change," he said. "Schools need to have
>plans for 10 or 20 years out to integrate the technology tools into
>their programs."
>
>  Ultimately, the value of technology in education is up to the
>teachers. "The experience can be very good," he said, "or it can be
>like wheeling a VCR into a classroom and turning it on."
>
>
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/23/technology/circuits/23SLAP.html?ex=9995577
>03&ei=1&en=db34dc195282de87
>
>/-----------------------------------------------------------------\
>
>
>Keeping Up in Class With Software for a Hand-Held
>
>By JEFFREY SELINGO
>
>
>
>THE days of the Trapper Keeper are over. An icon for students of
>the 1980's, the three-ring binder included folders for organizing
>schoolwork by subject and featured covers of popular rock and movie
>stars, all enclosed by a handy Velcro flap.
>
>  Today students are increasingly carrying hand-held organizers like
>the Palm or the Visor outfitted with software to help them track
>assignments, prepare for tests and even conduct science
>experiments.
>
>  "It makes my backpack a lot lighter," Jay Novack, an eighth grader
>at Ann Arbor Open School in Michigan, said of his Palm. "It has all
>the stuff of four or five books."
>
>  Already common among college students, Palm-based hand-held
>devices are now beginning to show up in some high schools, middle
>schools and even a few elementary schools, said Elliot Soloway, a
>professor of education and computer science at the University of
>Michigan.
>
>  "Games are going to drive kids to buy the Palm, and they're going
>to bring them to school," said Dr. Soloway, who has developed free
>educational software for the Palm operating system through the
>university's Center for Highly Interactive Computing in Education.
>"Eventually, teachers will have to figure out a way to use them in
>the classroom."
>
>  So with a Palm and a Visor loaded with nearly two dozen
>educational programs, I decided to become a student for a week,
>keeping track of a packed schedule of class assignments and
>cramming for potential pop quizzes. While most applications involve
>a nominal registration fee, many are available in free trial
>versions. All of them work with any hand-held computer using the
>Palm operating system, usually version 3.1 or above.
>
>  One of the most common student uses of a hand-held computer is to
>keep track of assignments and grades. Due Yesterday
>(www.due-yesterday.com), $15, and 4.0Student (www.handmark.com),
>$19.99, are good replacements for pocket calendars. Both provide
>tools that allow you to enter information about courses, including
>meeting times, contact information for professors and assignments.
>They offer views of due dates that can be customized by the week,
>by individual course or with all classes included. Assignments and
>test dates can be exported to the Palm's datebook and to- do list
>with either program, allowing students to coordinate schoolwork
>with the rest of their lives.
>
>  Due Yesterday also includes a feature called "due next," which
>alerts you to your next assignment and how many assignments you
>have turned in late in that class (just in case you want to skip
>writing that English paper to finish studying for a chemistry
>exam). For the student who is always fiddling with a calculator to
>determine his grades, 4.0Student presents "what if" scenarios to
>predict grades through the end of the semester. It also calculates
>grade-point average based on grading policies for the class or the
>school in general. Data from the semester can be backed up and
>stored from any computer with Web access at fourostudent.net. (The
>Web-based service costs $39.99 for one year and includes a copy of
>4.0Student.)
>
>  Once your schedule is entered into the Palm, several programs can
>help with homework assignments or with preparing for the big test.
>A suite of programs called ImagiMath (www.imagiworks.com), $39.95,
>includes ImagiCalc, a full-function calculator; ImagiGraph, for
>plotting graphs and even animating them; and ImagiSolve, a math
>worksheet that helps solve equations with a tap of the stylus.
>Students around the sixth-grade level can try Bubble Blasters
>(www.handheld.hice-dev.org), a free math game developed by Dr.
>Soloway's center at Michigan with floating bubbles that contain
>answers to multiple-choice questions about fractions, decimals and
>mixed numbers. The object is to choose the correct answer before
>the bubbles float away.
>
>  Another entertaining way to learn math and science, although much
>more expensive, is ImagiProbe, another ImagiWorks program, which
>sells for $329 and attaches to the back of the Palm. More than two
>dozen sensors can be added to the probe, which allows a user to
>conduct science experiments. For example, you can measure the pH
>level of your backyard pool, the dissolved oxygen in a nearby
>stream or your heart rate while on a treadmill. The data collected
>over time can be plotted on graphs on the Palm, and notes and
>sketches can be added. When you finish an experiment, you can beam
>the results to other hand-held devices. Most of the sensors cost
>between $30 and $70. ImagiWorks also sells kits that include the
>probe and a few sensors.
>
>  To prepare for quizzes or tests, students can try BoneUP
>(www.palmgear.com), $10. You can create multiple-choice, true-or-
>false and flash-card questions in a variety of subjects and decide
>in which order the questions will be asked and how the program
>should handle wrong answers (for instance, whether to give you the
>right answer). Bone UP also tracks the questions you answer
>incorrectly and poses them more frequently. Quizzes can be edited
>in Palm's memo pad and beamed among classmates.
>
>  If you're getting ready to apply to college or graduate school,
>Kaplan, the test preparation company (www.kaptest.com), offers
>Kaplan To Go at $24.95 to $29.95, which allows you to practice for
>the Scholastic Assessment Tests, Graduate Record Examination or
>Graduate Management Admission Test in specific test areas or take
>full practice tests. The software includes a glossary, in case
>you're a rusty on integers or irrational numbers, and pop-up menus
>explain why an answer was incorrect.
>
>  Aside from tests, reports and research papers usually make up the
>remainder of a student's assignments. But using a hand- held device
>to type anything of substance is time-consuming, even if you have
>retrained your hands to learn the Palm's Graffiti handwriting
>recognition program. If you're planning to use your hand-held
>computer to write papers, it's best to invest in an attachable
>pocket keyboard, which sells for about $100. I wrote this story on
>a Palm, using a collapsible keyboard and the word processing
>program WordSmith (www.bluenomad.com), $29.95.
>
>  Wordsmith is compatible with Microsoft (news/quote) Word and has
>the feel of a word processing program built for a computer,
>although it was designed for a hand-held device. Like all word
>processing programs, WordSmith lets you choose fonts and point
>sizes, align text to the left, center or right, and cut and paste.
>It also has the same kind of search- and-replace features as
>programs for desktops and includes keyboard shortcuts. A major
>drawback of WordSmith is that it doesn't include a spelling
>checker. Company officials say they plan to include one in the next
>version, to be released this fall. Until then, if you're a poor
>speller, you might try WriteHere, a bare-bones but free word
>processor developed by Dr. Soloway at Michigan
>(www.handheld.hice-dev.org). It includes a spelling checker.
>
>  Finally, when you're ready to print your assignments, check out
>Printboy (www.bachmannsoftware.com), $14.99 and up. The software
>allows you to beam almost any document directly from your hand-held
>device to an infrared printer. If you don't have an
>infrared-equipped printer, you can buy an adapter that converts
>your printer to accept beaming, or simply connect the Palm with a
>serial cable, or do it the old- fashioned way -- hot-sync the
>document to your desktop.
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/23/technology/circuits/23BASI.html?ex=9995575
>03&ei=1&en=baa9edff5bb0ec47
>
>/--------------------
>
>Schools Try Hand-Held Computers
>
>By LISA GUERNSEY
>
>
>
>WHENEVER school boards start swooning over the potential of new
>educational technology, skeptics often make a deflating point: In a
>few years, they warn, some gadget will come along that will make
>this one seem dated.
>
>  This year, that new gadget is the hand- held computer. Palm
>organizers and Pocket PC devices are being tested in a small but
>growing number of schools.
>
>  The largest proving ground may be Consolidated High School
>District 230 in Orland Park, Ill. There, more than 1,700 Palms will
>be distributed this fall in the program's second year. Another
>large deployment — one device for each of 850 high school students
>— is occurring this month at Forsyth Country Day, a private school
>in Winston-Salem, N.C. Dozens of other schools, public and private,
>are experimenting with hand-held devices among select grades and
>classrooms and for specific assignments.
>
>  The pilot programs are early signs of another technology debate
>that may soon hit school districts: Which is the smarter
>investment, a fleet of laptops or a pack of palmtops?
>
>  To Rick Martinez, director of instructional and information
>technology for the Alamo Heights Independent School District in
>Texas, affordable portability is the selling point for hand-held
>devices.
>
>  "We cannot afford to purchase computers for every student in the
>classroom, but we can afford these devices for our students," said
>Mr. Martinez, who equipped a high school biology classroom last
>spring with iPaq hand-held computers and specialized software from
>MindSurf Networks, an educational technology company. For every
>laptop he might have purchased, Mr. Martinez said, he can buy three
>or four iPaqs.
>
>  At River Hill High School, a public charter school in Clarksville,
>Md., iPaq computers are being distributed to ninth graders. Lin
>Storey, a literature teacher who coordinates the program, said she
>appreciated how easily the devices could be toted. "For what we do
>in an active, vibrant classroom, we need the kids to move around a
>lot," she said.
>
>  Students with laptops are more likely to be glued to their seats —
>a drawback for teachers who want to engage children in shared
>projects in the classroom or on a field trip, she said.
>
>  Educators who have tried the hand- held devices in class also
>praise their calendar functions, which can alert students to due
>dates, and their beaming abilities, which encourage students to
>share and critique one another's work.
>
>  But not everyone is convinced that hand-helds are the next
>must-have machines. Some schools have banned Game Boys because they
>create distractions. Why worsen the situation, some educators ask,
>by giving students a device that needs only a few downloaded
>programs to become another game machine?
>
>  It is the small screen size that worries Trevor Shaw, a technology
>coordinator at the Dwight-Englewood School in Englewood, N.J., who
>writes for eSchool News, a monthly newspaper about school
>technology. In an article last fall, Mr. Shaw said he liked the
>devices' portability, but did not envision students' using them for
>in-depth research or writing.
>
>  "I think asking my students to compose their term papers on one,"
>he wrote, "would amount to cruel and unusual punishment."
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/23/technology/circuits/23PALM.html?ex=9995567
>66&ei=1&en=430ed970adf71aca
>
>/-----------------------------------------------------------------\