[N]o matter how good the design, and despite rigorous tests of impact, I have never seen technology systematically overcome the socio-economic divides that exist in education. Children who are behind need high-quality adult guidance more than anything else. Many people believe that technology “levels the playing field” of learning, but what I’ve discovered is that it does no such thing. —The Washington Post
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I do agree with this article. Although our school has a superb computer teacher. We have a lab of pc’s that each class visits once a week. They have integrated the stuff they do on the computer to coincide with thongs in regular class and even art class. Those computers seem to work efficiently. However, we have a bunch of net books that are available to our older grades to type projects on. Those are always broken. It takes a lot of time for the teachers to try and troubleshoot the problems. And there aren’t enough for an entire class to work similtaneously. There is no money to replace them and limited resources to get them fixed. It is tough.
I find this article very timely. My childrens’ school, a Catholic School, is moving to a one to one device program next year for Middle School ( 6th-8th Grade). They will be using Chrome Books. They did extensive research to figure out the best device to fit the needs of the students. They have hired a Teacher that will be a Technology Assistant and will actually co teach with the classroom teacher and help implement the program. Another staff member heads up the IT. I still have my doubt the program will be ideal as they make it out to sound, but am impressed with all the research and resources the school has invested in. .And while I can see the benefits, I also dread another device to keep track of.
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This is such a complex issue. Of course there are classroom environments that can’t handle technology “as they are constructed”. Inner city schools have what is called “high complexity”. In a classroom, in order to succeed, a teacher has to group their students by some measurement, have a curriculum for that group, and hope that group remains cohesive. In inner-city schools, that complexity-level is sometimes as high as 7. This means in order for the teacher to be successful, forget about any tools, they need 7 distinct lesson plans and hope they (the teacher) can balance all 7 over the course of a year. There’s also evidence that the best teachers can only handle 3 different lesson plans and be successful. This is where flipped classrooms, technology, and replacing paper content with interactive content is critical.
Thanks for those details, David. One of the reasons my wife and I homeschool is to avoid all the cruft, but I recognize that not everyone can make that choice.
Homeschooling is only a solution if the parents (in my mind) have high emotional intelligence, patience, and the wherewithal to implement and maintain a curriculum for their kids. There are many that don’t have those tools and their kids suffer. Texas is notorious for parents homeschooling their kids on very narrow concepts that lean towards their own personal beliefs. That is not success.
(sorry for the rants, despite Textfyre’s demise, I’m still very passionate about this subject)
Flat out Luddites. My experience in suburban Chicago is that people will say Kindle’s are evil (paper books are the only “right way” to read), computers are a waste of time and what’s giving our kids ADD, kids spend too much time on computers for entertainment, they shouldn’t be using computers for school too, and my favorite, “I want my kids to go to school the same exact way I did 30 years ago.”
David, in your experience, what are the “skewed perspectives of technology” of which you speak?
Having attempted to build an educational technology company myself, I am very saddened by this article. Not because I agree, but because I know all too well how the “system” works. The complexities of introducing any new curriculum whether it be computer based or not, is simply beyond any one agency to change. The parent-teacher associations, usually run by mom’s looking to pitch-in, have their skewed perspectives of technology. The government aspect is also beyond any rational description. In large metropolis school districts, a sales cycle can be 18 to 24 months. The likelihood of your contacts leaving office is high, which will often reset your sales interactions back to zero. And teachers are already overwhelmed with what they need to do today. They are not invested in or capable of supporting new and untested curriculum. They’re already being ranked and rated on the success-measurements currently in-place. In order to get them to “buy-in” to anything new, they have to have a free-pass on evaluations. But this is impossible because the number of parents willing to have their children be a part of an “experiment” is very close to zero.
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