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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?"
How much technology did they have in the first place?
You see, I'm still not sold on the idea that PCs in every classroom is a solution to the woes of modern education but it would be nice to know what your experience is compared to mind. I haven't been in a non-college classroom in nearly 20 years and at that point it was mainly the computer labs plus a handful scattered between other departments. The PCs outside of the computer lab didn't seem to serve any educational use at all even though students had access to them.
Also, a bit off topic but, why isn't this an AskSlashdot topic? I think that line is getting badly blurred.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
They need dedicated, enthusiastic teachers who:
- push the students to succeed
- maintain discipline (and are backed up by the administration when parents complain/sue)
- make the students do the work
- inspire the students to do better
- don't take shit from the students
The school needs more.
The school needs TEACHERS, people who actually know how to use the equipment and how to teach others to.
Just putting equipment in the room has been a failing and expensive step for as long as personal computers have existed.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Yeahhhh.....I think maybe you've been smoking a little too much chronic and drinking a little too much malt liquor...
My blog
I only helped one classroom. The school needs more.
The problem I always have with these statements is that this seems to be the end of it. "Getting" the technology into the classroom is not really that big of a problem ... there are huge numbers of companies that would gladly take the tax breaks available for donating old computers to schools (that may not put computers on every school desk, but it would be a start).
No, the real problem is finding something USEFUL to do with all that hardware. Just as pens, paper, and chalk aren't enough to teach students math, piles of computers and ethernet switches by themselves aren't enough to teach students .... well, anything.
And if you aren't willing to make a sustained, long term commitment to maintain, repair, and upgrade the hardware, along with ongoing teach training, course development and integration into the greater learning environment, all that hardware isn't going to be any more useful than a truckload of donated boat anchors.
Widescale computing technology deployment in classrooms has, for at least 25 years, been some kind of hold grail. But it's always been a "learning solution" in search of a problem.
The most important thing you can provide is computer education for the educators. There have been far too many times when a school district (or grant foundation) lays out millions of dollars, and every classroom gets a shiny row of networked computers ... which lie unused all year. Unless the teachers know both how to use the technology (which you can provide) and concrete ways it can improve their lessons (which may be the hard part), you'll be wasting a lot of effort.
Part of the problem is that in most districts, teachers are no longer able to do the things you mention; the necessary power to carry out that responsibility has been taken away, by regulation and bylaws and lawsuits and a whole mess of other bureaucratic crap. You seem to recognize at least some of this with your comment about lawsuits, but I'm not sure you realize how deep it goes.
Of course it's still important to have dedicated and enthusiastic teachers, but there's only so much good these teachers can do when the system hamstrings them on the day they sign up. You also need a system that allows the teachers to teach.
Most public school teachers are clueless when it comes to technology. At best, half of the math and science teachers will be technically savvy, while less than 25% of the English and social studies teachers will know the difference between a browser and a word processor. At the elementary level, you're talking 10%, tops.
It's the whole "teach a man to fish" thing. Having a single teacher on staff that is technically savvy breeds dependence on that one teacher and continued naïveté. If all teachers on staff except for a handful are clueful, the others feel obligated to catch up out of peer pressure.
The fact that you're installing Edubuntu is great, but teachers will go to the one technological in-service they get per year and wonder where the "Start" menu is when they get back to their school and sit down in front of one of your machines.
I'm a former high school teacher. Teachers are under exceptional amounts of stress in a classroom. You're performing in front of an audience for several hours every day. Anything that they're even slightly uncomfortable with will be left behind in favor of the familiar. You can either give up or you can work to breed familiarity.
I'd say keep up building machines, but also volunteer to offer in-service or after-hours training. You might not have to do it alone — you could probably get one of the clueful teachers at the school to teach sessions during the day or after school. But I promise, if you build machines and don't provide any kind of support for how to use them, they'll only gather dust.
I wrote my Ed thesis on this. You've gotta start with the teachers, as they are woefully unprepared (some argue unwilling) to integrate technology into their lesson plans. What good is a 1:1 student:computer ratio if the teachers don't actually have students use the computers for their work?
A second, lingering problem is trying to figure out what we actually do with computers. There are far too many old-fashioned minds that think education should teach kids about computers, which is an outdated paradigm for sure.
Keep the Computer Science classes for those truly interested in that field, but quit trying to pretend the computer is a magical box that requires special skills to operate. Realize that any 8-year olds know how to click a mouse, type some words, go on the Internet, etc. (the same assumptions cannot, however, be made about their teachers) and stop trying to teach them to be Computer Scientists.
Start thinking about how the students can USE the tool to learn as opposed to teaching students how to make the tool work. If they do the first, the second takes care of its self.
I'm typing this on a computer I obtained for free off of Craigslist. PIII 700 megahertz. It does absolutely everything I need it to do: video, youtube, Word, XP, WIFI. It does not run fancy games.
It's a damn shame that a majority of such computers are now in the landfill, since companies just throw them away. In addition to creating more waste, you have deprived someone of a perfectly good computer.
There is no organization that properly routes, vets, and refurbishes these types of computers to people who need them. Perhaps computer makers are actively discouraging them.
I'd be willing to start one up with enough seed money.
I think this sort of exchange is the way to go. With Moore's law making computers cheaper and cheaper, there will always be a steady supply of usable computers headed for the landfill.
If you support OLPC, then you should support such an exchange of technology.
I'm currently working at a large urban school district deploying LTSP based thin clients. Access in the classroom to education web sites is extremely useful and shows measurable results. First pilot schools significantly improved their reading and math scores. It is also a nice reward. Many of these kids have no computer at home and 15-20 minutes of free time is a treat. Some even skip breakfast to get in line outside their classroom for computer time before school starts. It isn't a cure all, but as long as you integrate technology tools into the instructional mix correctly, it can be a wonderful supplement.
You will make the most difference by helping some kid(s) by tutoring them. There are lots of organizations around that will connect you with the students that need help. Search one out in your area. You are not going to make a big difference by giving them hardware.
Wait a minute...
Checking listings on those websites is a great recommendation, but as someone who has tried to donate like this to another type of underfunded public organization let me say donor beware!
Even if you are able to make the donation legally, and politically (ie: another cash-strapped dept doesn't complain about fairness of who gets the benefit from your donation etc.), it is difficult to cut the cord after the donation.
Whatever you are donating needs to be recognized by whatever type of group maintains infrastructure for the organization.
While providing computers to help educate is definitely the greater gift in terms of changing the learning environment for every child, it might be wiser to spend time individually helping to educate the children(after school program?).
The problem is not too little technology. All too often technology is crammed in where it doesn't belong, under the supervision of people who aren't capable of maintaining or correctly utilizing it.
Unless you are teaching something intrinsically tecnological, the utility of a bunch of computers is limited, doubly so if there is no budget for maintenance.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
If your goal is to have a society of social misfits that would rather text each other than ever speak to another person again, you are on the right track.
Half of the companies I work with on a regular basis are staffed by people that simply do not know how to get along with others. Face it, you have to deal with the people you would rather not see again. If you can't learn that skill it is a shame and society at large has failed you. Don't make it worse.
I think that there is something to be said for that. I work in school IT myself, and there are definitely some things for which computers are invaluable, others for which they are certainly convenient; but I hardly think that computers are a magic bullet.
The real problem is this: Computers are perhaps the greatest "force multipliers" for people's abilities and personalities since the advent of mass literacy and public libraries(perhaps ever; but I don't know, and don't need to take up that point). Unfortunately, they will multiply a person's tendencies for good or ill.
If you have a kid(or adult) with some time on his hands, reasonable autodidactic tendencies, and some interest and enthusiasm for something, the internet is the best thing ever. Virtually any technology related subject is yours for the learning online. You can look at opencourseware stuff, you can talk to actual scientists who blog about science, you can access huge amounts of data on all sorts of subjects(and access library catalogs to look for the rest), you can get in touch with organization of all kinds, etc, etc. For somebody with drive and enthusiasm, the internet is basically the best thing ever(obviously, people before the internet had opportunity, some had a lot of it; but the internet is really good at making a fair amount of opportunity available to anybody who can access it).
Unfortunately, if you have a kid(or adult) who doesn't have much in the way of drive or interest, or is easily distracted, the internet can and will latch on and suck them dry. Flash games, funny youtube videos, porn, pimping your myspace, etc, etc. Now, none of that is bad per se, some amount of mindless entertainment is harmless enough; but if you are the sort of person who can get distracted by such, the internet has several lifetimes worth, with more added every day.
Unfortunately, computers and the internet haven't really changed the game of education. They let driven kids kick ass and unmotivated kids fail hard. The real trick, which is unfortunately much harder than getting computers in front of kids, is getting kids who will benefit from being in front of computers.
In observing teachers I've had, and teachers at the school I work in, this is the aspect of good teachers that impresses me most. A great teacher can actually inspire students, turning mere rule followers, and even the downright troublesome, into learners. Once you have learners, you just need to stand back and help out where needed, they'll figure it out. Teachers who can make learners, though, have my respect.