| Notes |
In late September 2001, the Department of Education issued the RFP for MLTI and after scoring all of the proposals selected Apple Computer, Inc. as the award winner. In late December 2001 the Department and Apple formally began to implement the Maine Learning Technology Initiative.
According to Garthwait and Weller, "By fall of 2002, more than 17,000 seventh grade students and their teachers had laptops during school."[8] By the beginning of the 2003-2004 school year, another 17,000 laptops were introduced to the new seventh graders.[4]
From the start, MLTI included professional development for teachers and principals. According to Geoffrey Fletcher,
The program brings Maine's principals together twice a year for either a half day or a full day, in clusters based on the counties they work in. During the sessions, staff from Apple, the supplier for the 1-to-1 program, demonstrate new applications that have been or will be installed on the computers, MLTI staff help with administrative and logistical issues, and members of both staffs discuss different ways these applications can be used with students.[9]
When the program was conceived, the MLTI team decided that school districts would decide whether or not the students could take the iBooks home at the end of the school day. As of January 2004, "more than half the school districts in Maine allow the students to take the iBooks home."[10]
One of the initial motivators for the MLTI was for students in Maine to be technologically literate.[11] At the time of the initiative, Susan Gendron was the Commissioner of Education for the state of Maine.[12] When asked about the rationale behind the technology initiative, Gendron said "we wanted our students to be among the most tech savvy in the country. But by ‘tech savvy’ we meant their ability to use computer tools for innovation, creation and problem solving, not their ability to defrag a hard drive or rip a CD".[11] Governor King stressed that the program was about "learning, not about technology".[11] |