page_title: Maine Learning Technology Initiative
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Maine Learning Technology Initiative / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Hewlett Foundation Open Educational Resources grantees meeting, 2013
context_page_description: The Maine Learning Technology Initiative is an initiative that gives learning technology to all of the 7th-12th graders attending public schools in Maine, Hawaii, and Vermont. Currently, it hands out a school's choice between either iPads, MacBook Airs, Hewlett-Packard ElitePads, Hewlett-Packard ProBooks, and CTL Classmate PC Netbooks to students. Before that, it gave iBooks and later MacBooks to students. When it began in Maine in 2002, it was one of the first such initiatives anywhere in the world and first in the United States to equip all students with a laptop.
context_section_description: In 2000, Governor Angus King proposed The Maine Learning Technology Initiative, to provide laptops for every middle school student and teacher in the state.
  One of his primary reasons was a $71 million budget surplus in 1999. He "immediately called for a large portion of this surprise windfall to be put into an endowment for ‘the procurement of portable, wireless computer devices for students.’" After the initial public reaction to the plan it became clear that more discussion and examination of this concept was needed and thus in the summer of 2000 the Legislature and Governor King convened a Joint Task Force on the Maine Learning Technology Endowment which had the task to look in-depth at the issues around this proposal and recommend the best course for Maine to follow. In a Wired Magazine interview, Governor King said, "'I think we're going to demonstrate the power of one-to-one computer access that's going to transform education...the economic future will belong to the technologically adept.'"
  John Waters explains that the keys to the success of MLTI are the professional development accompanying the implementation of the program, the strategic vendor relationship with Apple, and quality local leadership.
  In early 2001 the Task Force issued its report with the recommendation that Maine pursue a plan to deploy learning technology to all of Maine's students and teachers in 7th and 8th grade and then to look at continuing the program to other grade levels. The Task Force report also included several guiding principles which have been embedded into the work of MLTI. During that spring legislation was authorized to begin the program for the school year beginning in September, 2002.
  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." By the beginning of the 2003-2004 school year, another 17,000 laptops were introduced to the new seventh graders.
  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.
  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."
  One of the initial motivators for the MLTI was for students in Maine to be technologically literate.  At the time of the initiative, Susan Gendron was the Commissioner of Education for the state of Maine.  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".  Governor King stressed that the program was about "learning, not about technology".  King was searching for initiatives that would lead to a dramatic improvement in education.  He met with Seymour Papert, an educational technology guru to discuss an increase in student to computer ratios as a means of improving education and the future workforce.  Papert is also currently one of the principals for the One Laptop Per Child initiative, which is a Miami-based initi
caption: Jeff Mao in 2013
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