School-issued laptops have been hailed as the answer to failing students in failing schools— the bridge across the digital divide— but now it's the laptops that may be getting held back. Call me a cynic, but I don't exactly find it shocking that kids are more apt to IM their friends and visit non-academic websites during class than take notes, but what is impressive is their ability to hack around their schools' network security to access even more forbidden material. The Liverpool Central School District in northern New York state has supplied laptops to students for seven years now, and found "literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement." Does your kid have a laptop? Did you have a laptop as a grade school student? Was it a distraction or a boon? And the question I really would like you to weigh in on is this: If your child does not have access to a computer at home, has having a laptop helped him/her out with school?
Blog Of The Nation
I am a 49 ish Registered Nurse In an ICU in Naples Fl. I don't know how to download songs or play games on the internet. I can email and search. Maybe downloading and games is a kind of learning too....
I am a community college librarian in Tucson, Arizona. Ask any school or academic librarian what THE drawback is regarding students' use of the Web for research and they'll say:
students are not employing critical thinking when evaluating Web sources to use in their papers (and they do rely on the Web far too much). Students are just as likely to rely upon "Joe Blow's medical information site" as the Johns Hopkins official web site. This would not happen if "low tech" was emphasized -- use your library, the contents of which have already gone through a quality control (editorial or peer review) process.
Critical thinking skills are the hallmark of an educated person and a mature democratic electorate. But they are skills that require work to acquire. Students largely do not recognize the value of critical thinking, and sometimes I feel educational administrators don't get it either. We're not "teaching computers," we're teaching how to think beyond black and white.
This reminds me of a time 15 years ago while working for an architecture firm. Computers work costly to obtain and maintain. Nobody but the CEO questioned whether the purchase was justifiable. We just wanted to use them. In the end it did not save money or time, but some clients as it turns out, would not do business with us unless we had computers with a certain program. Thus, the purchase of computers was justified for marketing purposes. I suppose they are justified in the classroom for similar reasons. It makes the school look good. What are we doing to really help kids learn?
Mr. Neglopante's comments:
I laudly applaud Nicolas' comments on "learning about learning". I have had a career of such learning, but didn't realize it in such profound terms. My degree is in Physics/Electronics, but most of my work has been in the Electric Utility industry, programming solutions in the real-time genre. Computer familiarity continues to be needed for more and more jobs in nearly all fields.
It's been fun and rewarding. Now I'm continuing my learning by encouraging current students via DOE's Science Bowl program.
I wrote about this story for PBS Online last week. I've been following K-12 technology initiatives for about 13 years - I moderate the Net's longest running forum on the role of the Web in education, and was the director of the Digital Divide Network before coming to NPR, for what it's worth - and I'm not surprised about the sequence of events in this particular case. As often happens in education technology policy, a small group of educators or administrators embrace the promise of a technology - in this case, laptops - as a tool for reforming education and classroom practice, often trying to make student creativity and collaboration a stronger focus. In order to sell the idea, they have to enlist parents, other educators, policymakers and even the media - and all too often, the goals get simplified to trying to raise test scores rather than broader change.
There's a problem, though - simply introducing any technology into a classroom setting will almost never raise test scores unless you do at least two things. First, you need to change the way you teach. If all you're doing is taking the same pedagogy that hasn't changed since the 19th century and doing it with the new technology, there's very little benefit. Second, you need to reassess assessment. The majority of today's standardized tests do nothing to assess the kinds of skills you gain from using technology, from collaboration skills to media literacy to critical thinking skills. If all you're assessing is math and reading scores, you might as well stick to using books and chalkboards much of the time.
Unfortunately, these nuances fall through the cracks when edtech programs get discussed publicly because they don't make good sound bites. So after a few years, when test scores don't rise and teachers have had an embarrassing MySpace moment or two, suddenly everyone labels the initiative a failure. Unfortunately, the failure is much, much broader than that. It's a failure of the imagination, and the will to reform educational practice.
I am part of a group blog called BlogSupergroup. While we haven't addressed this topic specifically, It was touched on a little bit by one of my co-bloggers in this post. Here is the pertinent quote, regarding a Middle School in Florida where my co-blogger used to teach:
Our school was a "C" school by Florida standards. In Florida, schools are assigned money by how high a grade they get. A schools get more money, F schools get the least. Our school was a "C" school, but not because of grades. In fact, I was told our students would never get higher grades on standardized tests or general academics. It was just the demographics. So to maintain a "C" grade, the school bought hundreds of computers, because technology level was used in calculating the grade. Now, most of these computers were not hooked up, and there was nobody to teach the students how to use them, but because there were computers physically located at the school, our letter grade was maintained.
I'll join Andy Carver on this, despite the "slap down" of my email by Larry Cuban during the show. Cuban may not want to admit it, but nothing in the classroom can rise above the competence of the person leading that classroom.
I read comments above, and I am once again stunned. Students "use the internet instead of learning research"? When was the last time you went to a card catalogue to find a book? The internet is nothing more (or less) than the world's perfect library, and if you are not teaching students to use it critically, intelligently, discretely and effectively, you need to stop teaching right now. And your students better learn the rules of public technology use somewhere - be it computers or handhelds or mobile phones. And they must learn how to use the same devices at home at work (or school) because they will need to cross this boundary a million times each year when they leave your classroom. So schools need to do this for the same reason they teach you how to write with a pen, and how to write a business letter.
No, it is not all the fault of teachers. Administrators, raised 40 years ago, want to train students for the world of 1957. They do not support teachers' development of new pedagogy, leaving teachers prepping kids for 1977. But in the end, the buck stops with the classroom - incorporate the technology that makes this the information age - or please find another profession.
Stop blaming technology for it's SIN. Just because I use F7 to auto spell does not mean I can't compose a sentence.
One to one laptops is a great concept. It's just a bad implementation. If a system is setup right, it can be used in a productive fashion. My four year old son uses our family laptop to learn letters and race cars at hotwheels.com. He can't reach porno sites or music sites because I have set it up to not allow this. It comes down to the expertise of the IT shop. I'm sorry these schools don't have the right "Geek Squad". I'm also tired of experts talking about how technology is not helpful for students. Lets keep reading 1970s text books. LOL I have learned more about the world from the Internet than I ever did in a classroom environment. Yes education is important, but your going to need more than a degree to get a job. I'm sure the next question out of interviews will be "What kind of computer experience do you have?" I hope you have the right answer. ;)
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