In January’s State of the State speech, Governor Baldacci outlined his plan to extend the MLTI (Maine Learning Technology Initiative) iBook laptop program to Maine’s high schools, starting with next year’s ninth graders. He also announced a plan to give access to the iBooks to parents, who can use them to access worker training programs designed by the Departments of Labor and Education.

Maine’s MLTI program is a resounding success, and should be fully funded and extended into high schools. As with a similar program in Henrico County, VA., student academic test scores are up, dropout rates are down, and attendance is up. Plus, technology-savvy kids who may have been unpopular “geeks” in the past are now finding new ways to “fit in”. Eighth graders, about to “graduate” from middle school into high school, talk about dreading school life without their trusty iBooks. Just this last week I met a school administrator in the airport (we were coming through Security together with our PowerBooks). She told me that the MLTI program was one of the best things she’d ever seen happen in education. Maine’s program has been a model for educators from all over our country and the world.

When the MLTI was in its infancy, there was a lot of Microsoft/Windows/PC FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) floating around out there about the state’s decision to go with iBooks and Mac OS X. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20, but consider where we’d be if Maine had entered into a deal with Dell for some model of Dementia notebook loaded with Windoze . The curriculum may have been a little different.

Biology and Social Studies. Middle-schoolers could have explored “anatomy” and “human relations”, as descriptive (and explicit) pop-up web browser windows appeared while they were doing web research on the Bill of Rights.

Mathematics. They may have solved problems like: “If Johnny begins downloading and installing the latest Critical Security Update at 56 Kbps, and Jennifer begins downloading the latest virus definitions from MacAfee at 128 Kbps, which laptop will have a “Fatal Exception Error” first?

Communication Skills. “Hello, Tech Support? Yes, I’ve rebooted a couple of times. No, I haven’t spilled anything in it.”

Philosophy. Despite the “out of the blue” computer messages to the contrary, they would have clung to a stubborn belief that the modem that was on their laptop yesterday, was still there today.

© 2004 Peter F. Zimowski