Should every student have a laptop?

Ok, so I’ve been reading all sorts of stuff on the digital divide lately, and also pondering the implications of various recent policy statements about technology and education. I mentioned the Tech Tonic report earlier, and there is also a national plan that the US government puts out.

So here is my question: what if every child had a laptop with wifi access, and all of our communities had wifi enabled? I'm not one of those utopian tech enthusiasts who support technology for everything, but I continue to be deeply discouraged by the narrowness of our media (particularly mainstream news). What if we made it possible for anyone who chose to, to enter into the process of contributing to our shared narratives?

I've been thinking a lot about this lately at Luther. What if every one of our students had a laptop with wifi access? Would that make any kind of difference? I started to think about the different possibilities that might arise in teaching: the ability to work with people "inside" and "outside" of our campus boundaries at the same time, the ability to access global information during class, the ability for students to create a learning "desk" that has all of the basic information they want to work with (as well as networking tools) formatted in the way they feel most comfortable with, the requirement that students actually be as tech-savvy as many of the people in the congregations they'll serve (and I'm not just thinking wealthy congregations, but farmers who use tech all of the time, and seniors who use tech to communicate with grandchildren, etc. etc.).

What could this mean? How would it alter our campus computer infrastructures? How would we make it affordable for students? To what extent would such a commitment grow out of our desire to support Christian leaders? (this last question seems like a no-brainer to me).

I've often wondered why more churches don't become wifi hotspots, deliberately allowing their wifi access to extend beyond their borders. What if our students grew really used to having such access, and thus were more motivated to make that happen in their churches? The possibilities seem endless to me, and more and more important.