Handing them a laptop and having them go wild is exactly the way to do it.

If they brick it, they have to work out how to fix it.

As one of the kids who was lucky enough to get a BBC Micro, I had zero support. No-one else in my family even knew how to turn it on. No teacher at my school could support me because none of them knew how it worked either. If I broke it, I had to fix it. And no Stack Overflow, so no code to copy-paste. I had to go back to first principles every time and work out what went wrong and how I could make it go right.

Best education you can give anyone.

You're not average. Get out of your bubble.

We had laptops at my high school 10 years ago, some of us learned how they worked inside and out, most did not.

When the curriculum depends on having a functional laptop, teachers wont want to wait around for kids to figure out how to fix their laptops. 90+% will go go the tech. Little Johnny who's already struggling with math class will not be helped by having a non-functional laptop. Not everyone needs to know how computers work.

EDIT: Probably you are like me and many people on here who found the HS curriculum easy and boring and stimulated yourself by hacking around with computers instead. This is not everyone's experience of HS, some kids legitimately struggle.

Can you install, like on normal Chromebooks, Crouton on school Chromebooks if you know how to ? Because then kids have good opportunities; just for doing their school stuff, doing browser (and server) dev if they want to and dive in deeper with Crouton. All for $100-200.

> As one of the kids who was lucky enough to get a BBC Micro, I had zero support. No-one else in my family even knew how to turn it on. No teacher at my school could support me because none of them knew how it worked either. If I broke it, I had to fix it. And no Stack Overflow, so no code to copy-paste. I had to go back to first principles every time and work out what went wrong and how I could make it go right.

What is this weird obsession that we have with making children do everything the hard way? I understand that we want them to apply critical thinking and for them to grow into self-sufficiency, but why do we suggest these archaic hazing rituals?

We've made strides in many areas of technology. We have the power to troubleshoot a non-working laptop, unsuccessfully diagnose, and then re-image it to a saved state in less than a school day. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be consequences, but I think we can put Timmy's time to better use.

They same reason we teach them basic math that a calculator can easily do. The primary reason for schools it to learn. Learning to type "8 * 7 =" is different then learning what it means to multiple 8 by 7

These are two entirely different things. Is the goal to get them to troubleshoot a computer, or are they being issued laptops to enable their education? If it's the former, then I can kind of understand. Trial by fire and all that good stuff. However you just said yourself:

> we teach them basic math

Keyword here is teach. We do not give them a math book and tell them to figure out what 8 * 7 means. We break down the concept of multiplication into its constituent parts. In that same vein, we should enable the child to learn how to troubleshoot the system.

Like I said: I think we can put Timmy's time to better use.

>but why do we suggest these archaic hazing rituals?

Well, life is an archaic hazing ritual.

Which is all well and good until my students aren't able to - you know - do basic educational tasks because their computer 'is broken'.

If I - as a teacher - can do an immediate 'restore to neutral state' with core educational files and programs retained then by all means open them up.

Otherwise, I have to be curmudgeon and say that the existence of the computer in the classroom is to more effectively complete educational tasks. If having an open system gets in the way of that then the system should not be open.

The Chromebook 'powerwash' seems to fulfill this requirement nicely[1] - you can even let students drop the machine into Developer mode, play with Crouton[2] and so on, and if (when) things go wrong, poof, a single chord at startup and you're back. 1: https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/183084?hl=en 2: https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton

This would have been great for you and me, but 95% of students won't even try. My kids barely know how the TV works, and have zero interest in learning how computers work, despite my efforts.

your kids know how the TV works better then you do. If you don't realize this you're not paying attention. Just because they don't care to write web apps doesn't mean they don't know what they are doing.

I'm sorry can you expand on that? I don't know how could average kids understand AC/DC Power, Signal transmission, different display types, etc better than average adults, especially those interested in technology, maybe I'm missing something from your comment?

I can, see you took my statement of "works" to mean they could explain to you why the Higgs field allows particles to have mass and then extrapolate that up to explain the existence of a TV. I simply meant they know how to use it for its desired purpose, better then most adults do.

If they did they wouldn't ask me to turn it on and find their shows for them. I finally had to put my foot down and now they are starting to do it againthemsekbes and maybe soon will be better than me at it.

But they still won't know or care how their computer works, or how to program.

I had a BBC Micro 10 years after they were being chucked in the bin. I was poor.

Still, that BBC Basic manual and copies of Micro User were mighty helpful - the manual was excellent! I am sure you agree.