Good and Bad Uses of Tech in Public Schools?

skot asks: "I am a high school math teacher and recovering journalist working on an article about innovative (and insane) uses of technology in the classroom. I have seen schools plunk down thousands of dollars on handheld computers that teachers and students basically use as notebooks - fancy, expensive notebooks. I have also seen teachers try to forbid their students from using the internet in a research project. I'm sure many Slashdot readers have lived through experiences like this - and more. If you want to share your stories, I'd love to hear 'em."

Comments

Sources

[fm6]

Bad: Not grading them on their sources "Bob's Website of SuperFun Stats says that..."

This is a particularly important point. Some teachers who don't like the web as a research tool point to all the web sites with a conspicuous bias. But fact is that all sources have biases. It's just that the bias is a little less conspicuous in the Enclyclopedia Britannica than it is in, say, the Green Nazi web site.

That's one of the most exciting things about the web. When I was in K-12, it always bothered me to see my classmates accept everything they found in standard reference works as the purest gospel. Nobody recognized that dictionaries and encyclopedias are written by fallible humans, subject to peer and political pressure, cultural bias, and a permanent tendency to oversimplify. When I see kids educating themselves via the discordant voices of the web, I envy them a lot

Re:Fiber

[dkizzier]

Let's take a look at the problem here. First of all, I don't think you probably have all the information that the tech commitee had when making their decision. There are a lot more factors to take into account than just internet access. I am the I.T. department for a K-12 school. We have fiber to the desktop in about half of our building. The rest of the building has fiber connections, but we are still using CAT 5 for the network. BTW, I do have a bit more than a couple of Cisco classes under my belt. You mentioned that the network was mostly 10mb hubs, etc. Okay, I can see your point of moving to switches, that's a good move. However, what kind of cabling do they have and how old is it. Maybe they're using CAT 3 currently and need to run new cable anyway to transition to 100/1000 mb. At that point, I would seriously consider fiber as an alternative. The fiber will have a longer life, is stronger and less prone to EMI. You can also install longer runs with fiber, which offsets the cost of secondary wiring closets and additional switches. Remember, wiring is an investment. A little extra effort upfront can reap huge rewards down the road. Maybe they don't need the bandwidth right now, but who's to say that they might need it in a year for some sort of video conferencing, or streaming video feeds? My fiber lines are 7 years old, but I don't foresee having to replace them anytime in the near future (5 - 10 years).

Remember that teaching is the goal, not technology

[k12linux]

I have a fairly extensive technology background, but basically zero teaching background. This means I can do a great job of proving servers and infrastructure, but not in evaluating how tech should fit into the classroom. As a result I can't really train our teachers on that aspect either.

That is something that needs to be done by someone who knows how to teach. This also means that simply installing new tech and showing the teachers how it works is not enough. Money has to be budgeted to provide real curriculum integration. Money to is needed to provide training, and to get the teachers to attend the training.

Unfortunately from what I've seen during this era of budget cuts, these integration inservices seem to be getting slashed early on. Worse yet, when they are offered, they are after hours and teachers aren't willing to attend... even for a stipend.

We have a very good tech infrastructure in our schools and a lot of tools that our teachers could use. Unfortunately only a handful know what's available, know how to use it, and know how to fit it into their curriculum correctly. The worst ones try to make the computer be a teacher instead of using it as just another tool.

I'd be interested in hearing what other schools have done about these training issues.

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