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Teachers Resist High-tech Push In Idaho Schools
First time accepted submitter Jack W writes "This morning's NY Times highlights the issue of learning in our public schools and the proper role of technology. The Idaho governor and his state school superintendent are advocating a legislative bill for a massive infusion of computers and on-line technology in schools and is meeting resistance from state teachers, particularly the part of the bill that requires high school students to take online courses for two of their 47 graduation credits. Superintendent Luna is quoted as saying, the computer 'becomes the textbook for every class, the research device, the advanced math calculator, the word processor and the portal to a world of information.' The article notes that the governor had received campaign contributions from technology companies and that Apple and Intel had played a part in drafting the bill."
The pointless application of technology just for the simple sake of technology seems a waste.
Now, a subject course where students have to buy and learn to program a $25 computer, no more expensive than a typical textbook, that would be a worthwhile application of technology in schools.
*sighs*
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
Some students and some classes could and should be taught online. However, these decisions need to be made by school districts, parents, and students. The governor shouldn't be placing a huge unfunded mandate on local schools just because Apple cut him a check.
If you think a little bit...... maybe the teachers are right about things?
Some common idea + "on the internet" doens't make a good patent.
Some same teaching + "on technology" doesn't make for good education.
All high school students know what a computer is and are hardly in awe of the 'portal to the world of information' any more than they are in awe of a telephone.
Doing something useful with it is the key---or spending the same money on something else which may give more value.
Teachers may, with good reason, believe that they will now be forced to use some odd creaky technology (edu-software is like that) without any decent level of tech support after the first year, and they'll waste all sorts of time on powerpoint nonsense instead of getting on with it.
The quality of education is not a result of the amount spent on technology. It is almost pointless to fight it, though, because these decisions are made for political reasons in a vacuum of real debate, metrics, or general considerations about what gets the best results. On some level the teachers have a right to resist this, as it's a further encroachment on their autonomy and freedom to teach as they prefer. On the other hand, if teacher unions did not fight every attempt to rationally measure student success, they might get a seat at the table discussing how to handle certain kinds of problems.
Wrong. Any teacher that fails to teach must be fired. I'm fairly sure some teachers can teach very well without computers/calculators/projectors/...
Don't mistake the tools for the end result.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
1. Lost/Stolen devices. Who pays for replacements? Why?
2. Damaged systems that need replacement. Who pays? Why?
3. Virus infections and such. What's the turn-around time on support for those? Will the school have extras to loan while they "clean" the students' machines?
4. Upgrade policy. Will the freshman class have better equipment than the senior class?
And so forth.
Throwing tech at a non-tech problem is stupid. And tech gets old really fast. And tech needs expensive support.
The first major push for computers in schools had more than just some computers. In addition to putting the Apple IIs (usually) into school computer labs, there were also initiatives like MECC to produce useful software for them, research from educators like Seymour Papert on how to use them to teach technical skills, etc.
By the late 80s this had mostly withered away, so that when my own high school in the 1990s replaced its Apple IIs with Macintosh LCs, the main thing they were used for besides word processing was... running the old Apple II software on the IIe attachment card.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If you think a little bit...... maybe the teachers are right about things?
About all things? I'm pretty sure not.
Some common idea + "on the internet" doens't make a good patent.
But EDUCATION + Internet = GREAT IDEA.
The fact is this. We live in a world where there is an amazing ability to learn almost anything online.
So why not teach kids, as early as possible to be able to take advantage of this amazing resource to learn when and where they want?
Something that can't go on forever will not, and the upward spiraling costs for downward spiraling benefits of a college education mean those that can truly learn online and make the best use of technology have a huge advantage - they could either go to a smaller cheaper school and supplement learning with technology, or skip college altogether and go a self-directed path.
All high school students know what a computer is
Well I can see you grew up rather privileged.
Doing something useful with it is the key---or spending the same money on something else which may give more value.
Like what? There is literally nothing more valuable to teach students now, because it is a meta-teaching.
Even if the actual execution is not that great (and with the public school system you can be sure it will not be) the very fact some of the courses are online will get more students to realizing they can learn from the internet.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And I'm sure that basic computer literacy is the biggest shortcoming of students that our education systems are pumping out today.
then they are pretty much computer illiterate. Sure they can use Microsoft Word but would be stupefied if LibreOffice or Google Docs were put before them. They memorized what menus to click through but not the concepts of the tasks so it is no surprise the educators in Idaho would oppose more use of technology if they were anything like here. They would be unable to use the technology to teach the kids. And "here" is in one of the top 20 largest cities in America.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
there has been no established correlation between technology in schools and improved academic performance.
I think anyone who wastes money on shoving technology into schools should be fired. Yet I have a vested interest in it being otherwise (I make ebook readers and tablet computers).
there are strong correlations between economic affluence of the community (i.e. rich folks) and performance in schools. I'm not sure how that can be used to improve our schools, but better than some imaginary assumed linked between technology and success.
The other big waste is text books, why would low-level courses need new text books every 3-5 years. I would rather we spent the money on creating open licensed text books than on a nearly disposable laptop or tablet that becomes worn out or obsolete in 2 years. (I said "the money" as if schools have any just laying around. HA!)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Throwing money on expensive gadgets that do nothing to improve the educational process is a complete waste of money
Making it far easier to access up-to-date information is great for the education process. You'll never replace teachers but technology like this is clearly advantageous. What is it specifically you're opposed to?
Now, please rail on now about how worthless Chromebooks are and kids can't possibly get an decent education with just the Internet.
Well, ok. With "just the Internet", how does a child learn to identify and prioritize information he receives from the Internet?
You have to have some place to start. Throwing a kid onto the internet and saying "learn it for yourself" isn't a productive way to teach kids anything. How do you counteract the damage if the first website they come across teaches them that 2+2=6 or something equally wrong? How do they realize there is a foundation for all of the advanced topics they will come across, and better yet, which foundations are relevant?
I'm a dues-paying, card-carrying member of a teachers' union (at a community college), but I can't help feeling that this is the kind of thing that teachers' unions in the US have brought upon themselves.
What should happen is that K-12 teachers should be professionals, and they should be treated just like other professionals, such as doctors and engineers. When is the last time you heard an engineer claiming that although his bridge fell down, he shouldn't be held accountable? When's the last time you heard a premed saying that it was unreasonable to expect him to do well on the MCAT, because African-Americans do worse on it, on the average, than whites and Asians, thereby proving that the test is racist? Or a doctor whining that it was unreasonable to expect him to use MRI scanners, because he hasn't had the training?
What left the K-12 teaching profession vulnerable to political interference was its history of failing to hold itself to high professional standards. That opened the door to NCLB and a general tendency of politicians to try to tinker with things that ought to lie within teachers' own sphere of professional competence and discretion.
What the politicians in Idaho are doing is stupid, but that kind of incompetent tinkering is the natural result of K-12 teachers' unwillingness to act like professionals.
Find free books.
I think that a lot of people that push for technology (and don't have a vested interest) in the classroom don't realise that, good grades doesn't equal a good education. They try to make out that technology will increase their intelligence, i think it will just make it easier to spoonfeed students, it won't make them any better at developing their own ideas, conducting their own research, nor improving the quality of someones education.
Probably the biggest problem is, tests only identify those who are the best at regurgitating information, arguably, they need to know the information first, but exams don't really test how well students can conduct their own research (finding answers on google isn't research) nor how well they can formulate their own ideas (which is impossible to do on google, but hard to discern by a third party, ie teacher)
I think people should realise that technology has its place, and isn't an extension of somebody, technology is just a tool and not always the right tool.
In Colorado, on-line schools have been shown to be less effective than face time with the teacher -- dramatically so.
There's no reason to think that doesn't scale, and if it scales that means that those on-line courses would be ineffective.
The best math teachers I ever had shared one thing in common -- they disallowed calculators in their class. And as fun as a kindle or ipad may be, I'd wager a hefty sum that reading a novel in paper is (at least currently) more intuitive and less of a barrier to the material than reading it electronically. I hate to be a "get off my lawn" type, but I feel that schools should be actively resisting any technological "aid" to teaching that is not something directly taught by the class.
Math classes should be "show your work."
Language, history, and Literature should be "show your notes."
Intro to programming should be "show your algorithms" -- more switch design and less "hello world."
I can see benefit to computers in more advanced programming courses, as well as in history courses that want to include videos and/or art. But really, there is very little place for a computer in sub-college school work. People need to learn to think on their feet.
Just my $0.02.
The plan requires high school students to take online courses for two of their 47 graduation credits.
This sounds like a cost-cutting measure. Online classes are for times when the alternative is not having the class. They're "better than nothing", not "better".
If a school wanted to offer students a course in programming but didn't have anyone capable, then it might make sense to arrange for them to take an online course offered by a third party (preferably a tech school or college in the same area). It doesn't sound like this is anything close to what they're doing.
Why not?
Are you trying to suggest that all money spent on education is wisely spent, producing useful results and better educations? If not, then it's just possible that some of the money is spent foolishly, and could be cut without doing damage to the education delivered.
Note that many western countries spend less on education than we do, for better results. If they can do it on less, why is it impossible to cut costs on our education system?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
"We need more computers in the classroom!"
OK, what are you going to do with them?
The school district I grew up in (in yuppieville) has decided that every student should have a tablet computer.
My response was, why?
There is virtually nothing a tablet computer is going to do that can't be done with some combination of pen, paper, and an overhead. And in most cases, the pen/paper/overhead is going to be more effective.
I'm actually surprised the teachers are opposed - in my old district it's the teachers pushing the technology buy. Then again, most of the teachers there kinda stink.
paintball
But it does not follow from this that this proposed spending will efficiently remedy a lack of computer literacy in the students. That requires that students lack computer literacy now, that the spending will fix this, and that it will do so at reasonable cost.
I'm too removed from this situation to make a judgement, but the views of the teachers deserve careful consideration.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Superintendent Luna is quoted as saying, the computer 'becomes the textbook for every class, the research device, the advanced math calculator, the word processor and the portal to a world of information.'
Here's the only question that matters: What research-based evidence supports this view that a computer is a better and more effective medium for accessing this information than the present status quo of books, the library, the handheld calculator, and a desktop computer?
Because, to put it in terms of business, if there isn't a decent Return-On-Investment with buying all this tech, than no citizen or politician should put money up to invest.
I get "that look" regularly, when I hand a young cashier $10.34 for a $4.34 sale -- she saw the $10 bill and poked that number into the register which is now telling her to give me $5.66, and I'm telling her to give me $6. Completely baffled.
Sometimes I think about trying the old Abbott and Costello routine where I say I don't have a five so I'll pay with a ten, and then when I get a five back in change I say "ok, now I have a five, here's a five, give me back my ten."
We recently evaluated a new math curriculum/program for our school. When the time came to buy textbooks, almost all of our teachers told us they preferred the online material. The reasons they cited:
Students lose textbooks, or do not want to carry them home. Online resources are more easily accessed.
Parents want to check-in on their student's progress more frequently than a few times per year. Online access allows this.
Teachers like "ready made" interactive materials they can display on smartboards/projectors without having to resort to paper and overheads. It makes class preparation quicker, and the lessons more engaging.
We did eventually buy a few textbooks for students that prefer them, or lack technology resources at home, but the days of one book per student are going away fast.
I was being quite sarcastic. My suspicion is that in our culture today kids will have no shortage of experience working with technology. I don't necessarily see a problem with having a course teaching certain computer skills. But I don't know that it is necessary to force teachers to use computers in every class.
I recently was at a dollar store and and the cashier couldn't make change for $2 from a $1.13 sale. She had to pull out her calculator.
All this being said, if you want to treat teacher's as professionals, then it seems reasonable to entrust them with the decision of what tools to use. Maybe that will involve technology. Maybe that will involve good old pen and paper.
There is one thing that we know about education. The higher value the student places upon and takes responsibility for learning, the better the student does. If a student wants to learn, they can learn despite bad teachers, or bad online courses. The better the tools and more opportunity a student like this has. The more they will learn.
Sometimes a student lights this flame inside all by themselves.
Sometimes a teacher lights this flame for them.
More often than not though. It is parental involvement at home that makes a difference. Everything from reading to a child, installing the love of learning, to just making sure learn good study habits and get their homework done.
Parents who do not do this at home and rely on teachers to do it because "it is there job" are the real problem. Even the best teacher can not be guaranteed to be able to do this with the number of students and time they have in class. By definition, not all teachers can be exceptional. Many will fail at this because they don't have what it takes to inspire. It is still the parents job at home to do this.
vi +
No, School is supposed to be about training them to have sufficient basic skills to enter the job climate.
Parents are supposed to teach kids how to think for themselves...
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
My wife is a secondary school German and French teacher here in the UK.
Her school has a very tech heavy setup, with smart-boards in all the classrooms and all the kids have netbooks.
She really loves the smart-boards, they are incredibly useful because they allow her to use much richer teaching material much more easily than in the past, mixing video, audio, and even letting her create interactive games for the whole class.
The netbooks on the other hand are much less useful. In a class of 30 the odds of all the kids remembering to bring them, and all of them working properly is pretty small. They get broken and lost or infected with viruses. The school's IT team have done a really good job, but with 1200 students it's a sisyphean task to keep them all running.
Don't get me wrong, I think the kids having the netbooks has been a good thing overall, but it's not a magic bullet.
But most importantly the use of the new tech has been driven by the teaching staff, not imposed on them from above, so what they have actually serves an educational purpose.
Politicians should stay out of the minutia of teaching and let teachers and school mangement get on with it. Government should stick to just making sure that the results are good, and intervening where necessary, not ruling by dictat.
Paul Leader
First some quote from TFA:
...Some teachers in the Los Angeles public schools, for example, complain that the form that supervisors use to evaluate teachers has a check box on whether they use technology, suggesting that they must use it for its own sake.
That is a concern shared by Ms. Rosenbaum, who teaches at Post Falls High School in this town in northern Idaho, near Coeur d’Alene. Rather than relying on technology, she seeks to engage students with questions — the Socratic method — as she did recently as she was taking her sophomore English class through “The Book Thief,” a novel about a family in Germany that hides a Jewish girl during World War II.
Ms. Rosenbaum, tall with an easy smile but also a commanding presence, stood in the center of the room with rows of desks on each side, pacing, peppering the students with questions and using each answer to prompt the next. What is an example of foreshadowing in this chapter? Why did the character say that? How would you feel in that situation?
Mr. Otter said of a teacher like Ms. Rosenbaum, “If she only has an abacus in her classroom, she’s missing the boat.”
I am a physics guy who is just as tech immersed as many posters here. But one of my main worries with the "modernization" of the educational system that is being pushed on multiple fronts these days is that it will cause us to lose touch with deeply engrained educational legacies that are at the heart of western civilization itself. I am speaking for one of the Socratic method, where we learn by constantly questioning. The type of thinking that Socrates displayed is at the heart of our civilization. It lies at the root of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution. It helped us overthrow despotic absolute monarchs. It led to the development of our democratic systems. I think most of us really do not realize how much Socrates changed the world.
The Socratic method is a way of educating that is "real time" and "interactive". A teacher asks questions, and as a student answers, further questions are asked. The student and the teacher each try to analyze the soundness of each other's logic. This method accomplishes many things, but one very important facet is that it instills in a student the habit of questioning everything. It encourages students to habitually seek after knowledge and truth.
I suspect many readers will not have experienced this type of education to any great extent. Our system has evolved into one that encourages rote memorization of facts. Many of our teachers are information dispensers. Possibly that is why many readers think there will be very little change if education becomes a matter between a student and his/her computer. But perhaps some of us have had a teacher or a professor who has somehow reached us, who caused us to think, who kindled a fire inside of us. In a world where teachers become bystanders to education, I worry that such experiences will become less and less frequent.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
It remains more or less the same as with books, lab equipment and classroom resources. Why does everyone expect something new when there's no real management and processing difference in what type of resource has been compared.
Yeah, like that time my history book got a virus while I was looking at pictures of naked statues... before anyone realized what was happening, the whole damn library had been infected, and they had to white-out all the pages and re-print everything... What a mess!
P.S. On the plus side, all the students got a week of free vacation, so it's not all bad.
You can't staff a school and pay the salaries we do in the US and spend less than we do on education. My school district has about 10 administrators that earn over 100K/yr (incl Superintendent that makes $160K/yr) and 400 teachers, 100 of which earn 85K/yr (over 18 years in our district). Teacher salaries & benefits consume 2/3rds of our annual budget - the other 1/3rd covers Administrators, 5 principals, 5 school buildings, busing, electricity, textbooks, activities, etc.
Where do you propose we trim to pay for sprinkling tech all around our 4,000 students? Teachers argue they are underpaid as it is, our schools average 40 years old, and we outsource most busing to save on the cost of buses...
Oh, and to someone else's point, MSFT offers OS, Office and related software for $30/desktop/laptop, and Apple doesn't really discount hardware purchases for schools. Dell, HP, etc offer schools the same discount large corp get...
Ken
No. There is an amazing ability to find information online, but learning requires evaluation and incorporation of correct information.
Gee, then wouldn't it be nice to have someone help you figure out how to evaluate and incorporate information online.
You know, something like, perhaps - A SCHOOL????????????
Perhaps one getting a large technology grant??
?!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wish I had mod points.
My thoughts exactly. The school my kids go to allowed them to use calculators to do homework. I saw all sorts of GIGO errors in their work; fundamental simple errors. They were frustrated with math. So I took their calculators away and made them do math long hand. Before long they understood numbers and how the answer should look like - before they use the calculator.
Kids also think "research" is sticking a phrase into google and copying and pasting the result into a paper. The last thing we need is more mindless computer drones who can't do anything but punch stuff into a search box and mindlessly repeat the drivel that shows up on screen.
Adding computers to the classroom does nothing if it's not a part of a curriculum built around computers. That means teachers have to be trained to use the technology in an effective way, the textbooks (or course materials) have to include computers, and lastly, there has to be support for computers.
Why can't legislators realize that everyone learns differently? Oh yeah, lobbyists.