Slashdot Mirror
How To Help Our Public Schools With Technology?
armorer writes "I'm a programmer engaged to an inner-city public school teacher. I've been thinking for a long time now about what I can do to help close the technology gap, and I finally did something (very small) about it. I convinced my company to give me a few old computers they were replacing, refurbished them, installed Edubuntu on them, and donated them to her classroom. I also took some vacation time to go in, install everything, and give a lesson on computers to the kids. It was a great experience, but now I know first-hand how little technology these schools have. I only helped one classroom. The school needs more. (Really the whole district needs more!) And while I want to help them, I don't really know how. With Thanksgiving a week away and more holidays approaching, I suspect I'm not the only one thinking about this sort of thing. I know it's a hard problem, so I'm not looking for any silver bullets. What do Slashdot readers do? What should I be doing so that I'm more effective? How do you find resources and time to give back?"
Look for old computers on freecycle/craigslist that you can put Edubuntu on and what-not. CRTs are hard to get rid of so I've found them being given away for free.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
I work at a small and fairly wealthy rural ISD, a far cry from a struggling inner-city operation, but one of the best things you can do is get to know your school board. Their meetings are open to the public, and often have plenty of time for Q&A. Calling ahead can land you a slotted time to make a presentation. Convince them of the need for technology, and if you can stress the actual VALUE short and long term, you may be surprised at their willingness to budget for this sort of thing.
-Buddy of DoQ
Why are these PCs on the internet? I bet if they were firewalled off and actually used in class they would be a boon to education, not a liability. If the teacher needs a site for them to use it can be whitelisted. Its incredible how thoughtlessly PCs are deployed in schools. You need access and internet controls from day 1.
This.
My high school, when I first got there, had an Apple //e in certain classrooms. They were never used for anything educational at all, unless you count some kids looking up "dysentery" after they died from it a hundred times over in Oregon Trail.
Then, for some reason, we got a Computer Lab room. One dozen shiny new 486 computers. No software, not even the latest version of Oregon Trail. No direction whatsoever with them. The most the students did was play Solitaire and Minesweeper. Some used Write (the predecessor to WordPad) to type up things, but hardly ever school-related.
Meanwhile the art teacher bought her own paper and pencils for the students to use because there wasn't enough budget.
I recently worked applied for a job with a local school system as IT support and got to know one of the techs there pretty well.
One of the things he told me is that, although the schools* accept donated PCs from well-meaning people, the techs (like techs everywhere) don't really want to support thirty different hardware and software platforms. They will use it if they can but if they can't it gets dropped in the recycle bin. Some people just assume that schools will take anything because those are poor, publicly funded organizations and it is okay to just drop off those pentium IIs with puppy linux installed.
What may be a warm fuzzy feeling for you might be a big headache for someone else.
*Yes, this is a suburban school. Your mileage may vary, yada, yada, yada. The point is that you should ask the technical staff (if there is one) or at least the school principal if the school can use the stuff.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
Give the children vouchers so they can go to better schools and learn about technology as they need it through life in the better opportunities that they'll have from not being forced into the government monopolized system?
In 1999, Sugata Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an Internet-connected PC, and left it there (with a hidden camera filming the area). What they saw was kids from the slum playing around with the computer and in the process learning how to use it and how to go online, and then teaching each other.
In the following years they replicated the experiment in other parts of India, urban and rural, with similar results, challenging some of the key assumptions of formal education. The "Hole in the Wall" project demonstrates that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge. Mitra, who's now a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University (UK), calls it "minimally invasive education."
Listen to this presentation from Ted Talks
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html
I agree with you about those places but I would say that if you're serious, go further up the chain. Call the white collar companies in your area, especially ones like ad agencies that replace their stuff frequently, and see if you can get equipment direct from them.
Here in Portland we have a group called Free Geek that has done a fantastic job of this kind of thing. You certainly should look at their site and might want to consider getting their video, though they're not specifically education-oriented.
Lastly, frankly, if your goal is to educate, instead of specifically to "put computers in schools", then consider getting active in your local infoshop, especially if you can get some friends to get active there as well. A good community computer center will reach more people per machine, people who *want* to be using those computers. They also have the freedom to do what works rather than what the schools will allow. Again here in Portland, we have an excellent example, a place called the IPRC, or Independent Publishing Resource Center. It, in turn, was originally modeled on a New York City place called ABC No Rio, though it has long since gone waaay past what No Rio offers. On top of everything else, an infoshop can then partner with a free school, or, as they're sometimes known, a "free skool". As an educational publisher and somebody who has been involved in every organization I mention above, who has also helped put computers in so many schools that I've lost count, there is little that would make me as happy as to see more active free schools in low income neighborhoods that provided classes in things like the biology of local species or sociology and psychology taught using local human behavior.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
You clearly have never attempted to teach a group of people anything.
You clearly have no idea of what you speak. True, I no longer teach 20-30 military trainees using 20-30 computer systems WHILE I teach, but that doesn't mean I didn't do it for 10 years previously. It also doesn't mean I didn't teach a high school technology class for two years with the same layout (because I most certainly did). It certainly doesn't mean I don't frequently go out to our Defense customers and teach them how to use our software. It also doesn't mean I don't teach technical communications at our local community college either. In short, no, I don't teach public high school, but "never attempted to teach anything" is a bit harsh.
But, other than that, if you'd like to discuss the merits/disadvantages of teaching in a lab, then I'm all ears. Come to think of it, now that I feel so dirty having responded to your personal attack, allow me to add something of substance. In this horseshoe formation, you can only keep their attention by NOT LETTING THEM PUTZ AROUND on the computer while you are teaching, unless that is a required part of the teaching. I really simple trick (requires no locking down/configuration of anything) is to have all the students turn off their monitors when not in use. Also, have them turn around and face the center. If your layout can allow it, have two seats--one in front of the computer and one to the side, where they can put materials. Have them sit in the seat NOT in front of the computer. Then, when the task requires introducing the technology, they work happily at their terminals, without the distraction of their dear teacher blabbing away. You walk around from terminal-to-terminal, taking an ACTIVE INTEREST in the activities of your students..you know..teaching--supervising. Unfortunately, most teachers just cut them loose and let them do whatever.
I worked for a program that brought computers into inner-city schools in NYC. I was responsible for overseeing two computer labs that received after-school use, and a dozen laptops that went in a rolling media cart. The laptops were running Edubuntu. I was on a six-month contract and so I don't have as many answers as I'd like, but here's a few lessons learned.
MOST IMPORTANT:
- You can't give the school computers, particularly running Linux, and walk off - even if the teachers are tech-savvy (most will not be). Your project will die off quickly if you don't make a long-term commitment to support it.
Edubuntu-specific:
- Linux support for wireless drivers is less than perfect. Skip wireless, or test thoroughly. Flaky wireless gave our Edubuntu project a poor reputation very quickly.
- Also test the printer drivers.
- Many schools have inane requirements that you'll need to support. For instance, our program required that the students be tested using software from Scholastic that was Windows-only and made of fail. The school neglected to tell us that this was a requirement at the time we decided to go with Edubuntu. We also weren't told that they'd want them for a comics-making course - there's no comic-making software for Linux.
More generically:
- Everything not nailed down will walk off. Not just mice and power cables, but even stupid things like monitor-to-PC VGA cables walk. Make laptops get checked in and out. The cables connecting peripherals to desktops should be inaccessible to users.
- 3 out of your 4 non-ruggedized laptops will need replacing after a year.
Scratch from MIT is also good to teach kids of most school ages. It teaches programming and logic in real-time. You can change the code while the loops run, etc. Currently, my son's school teaches GameMaker stuff to older elem. kids but I wish they did use Scratch.
Give to Donors Choose.org. You can browse around for a classroom that you like, for a project that you like, and you give money directly to it. From there, the classroom will send you thank you notes and give you warm fuzzies.
Generally speaking, it's a good way to give back. Most schools don't want you to just come in, dump some old equipment on them and leave. They want new equipment and all the warranties etc. There's a little bit of overhead on the charity, but it's within acceptable ranges.
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned freegeek. It's not an overnight magic bullett type of thing. But here in Vancouver it has sprung up from nothing in 2 years and is growing fast, self-sufficient, recycling a lot of computers. Something like this is a great way to get the ball rolling and get the school administrators who far too often know little but Windoze propaganda to understand the issue. Then later they can make their budget allocations and bulk purchases a lot more wisely and the huge amount of money going into technology in schools can be useful instead of just more corporate welfare. Freegeek has the infrastructure and many volunteers, classes, do do this sort of thing quite impressively (though obviously not on a scale to replace proper regional governments)
Stupidity is its own reward.