Maine Public Schools

Profiles in Success: Maine Learning Technology Initiative

Students Benefit from New Technology

Augusta, ME - Throughout his term in office, Maine Governor Angus King has been a tireless champion of education. In his 2001 State of the State address, King shared his vision that “Maine people will be among the best-educated in the world.” Adding that he would like his state to be known as “the most technologically capable society on Earth,” King supported the creation of the Maine Learning Technology Initiative. Supported by the largest purchase of wireless iBook systems by any school district or state to date, Maine’s initiative will ensure one-to-one computer access for all middle school students and teachers in the entire state.

“My central vision was, if we were the most digitally literate society on Earth, that had to have a positive result in terms of opportunity and income,” says King. “The second consideration was equity. We have a lot of well-to-do suburbs, and several very poor, rural areas, with a great disparity of income. So the computers would provide the equity tool ... and opportunity and equity are great motivators.”

Task Force Creates Plan
Accordingly, Maine’s lawmakers created a task force that included educators, legislators, and citizens from across the state to review the initiative. The task force devised a practical, phased plan to make cost-efficient, durable machines available to seventh- and eighth-grade students and teachers.

The Maine Department of Education issued a Request for Proposal and selected Apple through a competitive bid process to provide iBook computers for every seventh- and eighth-grade pupil and teacher by the beginning of the 2003-04 school year. Private donations and funding from the Maine School and Library Network are helping to support the laptop program.

Nine Schools Pilot Program
Nine schools across Maine took early delivery of the iBook systems. The demonstration schools are an eclectic mix of large and small, urban and rural, affluent and economically challenged. Yet all report a dramatic change in the learning model, and a level of student involvement never seen before.

“This has delivered the highest impact for the lowest cost of any government program I’ve ever seen. The computer is the defining tool of the 21st century; the digital deveice that more than any other single thing holds the key to good jobs.”

— Angus King, former governor of Maine

Take the case of tiny, rural Pembroke Elementary School. Thirty miles from the nearest grocery store, in a community where the changing economy has sent the unemployment rate sky-high, Pembroke’s 120 students enjoy few of the advantages of their more urban contemporaries. Yet, says Principal Paula Smith, the arrival of the iBook computers presented exciting creative and academic opportunities for virtually every middle school student at Pembroke.

“We’re a low-performing school in some academic areas,” Smith says. “But what I’ve seen since we got the laptops has been just amazing. We could easily graph the increase in student involvement and how students are using their free time. We don’t hear ‘Can I listen to my CD player?’ anymore. Now it’s ‘Can I use my iBook to learn something new?’”

A new learning model