Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Why Aren't Schools Connected?
rtobyr writes "We use the Internet — E-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs to communicate with colleagues, friends, and family. When I was in Iraq with the Marine Corps, we used e-mail (secured with encryption and stuff, but e-mail nonetheless) to communicate the commanding officer's order that a combat mission should be carried out. My third grade daughter produces her own YouTube videos, and can create public servers for her games with virtual private network technology. Yet here I am trusting a third grade girl to deliver memos to me about her educational requirements in an age in which I can't remember the last time I used paper. Teachers could have distribution lists of the parents. The kids' homework is printed. Therefore, it must have started as a computer file (I hope they're not still using mimeograph machines). Teachers could e-mail a summary of what's going on, and attach the homework files along with other notices about field trips or conferences that parents should be aware of. Teachers could have an easy way to post all these files to the Internet on blogs. With RSS, parents could subscribe to receive everything that teachers put online. If teachers want to add to the blog their own personal comments about how the school year is going, then all the parents would see that also, and perhaps have the opportunity to comment on the blog. It seems to me that with the right processes, the cost and additional workload would be insignificant. For example, instead of developing a syllabus in MS Word, use Wordpress. Have schools simply not paid attention to the past decade of technology, or is there a reason that these things aren't in place?"
It seems odd that primary schools in at least the U.S. don't use technology to communicate with students much. My younger sister went to a private school that made reasonable use of Blackboard, but that seems to be the exception.
"Have schools simply not paid attention to the past decade of technology, or is there a reason that these things aren't in place?"
Poor people exist. And attend school. And there's an odd notion that we shouldn't make things even more unfair for them than they already are.
A) You can't assume every child and parent has access to the internet or computers. I work in a fairly normal catchment area of the UK and I'd say there are around 10% of families that fit into this category.
B) Too many excuses. You set homework online or through dedicated software and the pupils come back with 1001 excuses - "broadband wasn't working", "I couldn't download it", "it was in the wrong format", "printer was out of paper", "I've got it on memory stick and it still needs printing" All easily check-able and solve-able individually but not if you have 30 students. Give a child a piece of paper with homework on it, and if they lose it it's their fault (they could have come and collected a new sheet before the lesson), and if its not done it's their fault. Much much simpler.
Education has historically been slow to change. As an example, it was a technological breakthrough in schools to get VCRs in each classroom in the 90's. To communicate with students, the student needs to know how to check email/facebook/twitter/blogs/etc. However each one of these tools is blocked in the school I teach. Students are not allowed to email, no one is allowed to facebook, tweet, blog, etc. Why not? Because the media has shown that every teacher is a perv who uses facebook/twitter/blogs/emails to stalk students in order to molest them. While I know this isn't true, and the slashdot crowd knows this is not true, average Mom and Dad watching the latest Foxnews/CNN feed gets this idea that teachers use these communication tools for evil. Word got out that I collected students cell phone numbers. (I wrote a script to send an sms before tests, quizzes, due dates, etc.) As a result a district wide policy was put in place stating that teachers are not to text students under any circumstance.
Why this fear mongering? Lawyers. The district is afraid that a parent will sue and so the entire educational environment is stifled in the community.
I use Moodle extensively and have set up accounts for parents to view lectures,take quizzes and participate in discussions with the students. it is great. I email with the parents, I set up a blog which parent have the option to subscribe to vis RSS feeds. The parents are slowly getting into the habit of checking the child's grades online....This has been slow going though. I first started posting grades and assignments online ine the mid 90's... it is just now gaining steam... Just like it took the VCR to become commonplace, it will take 15-20 years to get current communication technology in the schools.
Look up common core standards... New "rules" of educations pushing "21st Century" digital learning standards...
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"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
This is a good part of the reason. Schools can't exclude some students, and so disseminating things electronically would make twice as much work for a teacher. But there is another thing going on, too. My girlfriend is a teacher. She used to teach middle school. She wasn't required to post homework assignments online, but there was at least a tiny bit of pressure to do so. She refused, and for what she thought were sound pedagogical reasons.
We live in an age of irresponsible children and helicopter parents. If an assignment is on the board and a middle schooler has to copy it down and keep track of his assignment book, he's learning something. He's forming a habit. That little boy or girl is learning to take responsibility for himself. Moreover, the parent will have to keep tabs on his or her kid, and ask about the homework assignments. In this way, the parent is contributing to the child's moral development. Now, I realize that this is considered a loaded term in our politically correct society, but responsibility is a matter of character, and building character is one of the things that goes on in school, and is certainly one of the things parents ought to encourage the development of. If a parent, instead, spends every evening looking up on the Web to see what the kid's homework assignment is, that parent is not being a parent but a valet.
In short, there's an argument to be made for not putting assignments and other things on the Web.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
It's amazing how educated people got when there were not computers. I got into an argument with my daughter's private school over technology in the classroom. They were arguing over laptops (Mac/PC) and then over formats (Google Docs/Word.) I sat back and said if this is the whole goal of the school to 'bring in' technology, I will be withdrawing my child. They looked at me confused. I told them that if they are that determined about HOW they write the material versus WHAT the material they write is, then they are not educators, but lazy bums. I also argued with a parent who is a very smart guy, very wealthy and very successful. He argued that the education system is broke, that it is terrible, that technology needs to be pushed into the realm. I gave him a simple thought . . . If the education system is so broken, how did you do so well in it? Another parent who runs a nerd company doing PC repairs was arguing that the schools current machines were running XP on Shuttle boxes. He kept arguing how old the OS was. I told him, "If the school upgrades to Windows 7 or Mac OS X, do you think all the students will suddenly get straight A's?" People miss the perspective imo. Would I like to have gotten away from the paperwork nightmare that the school generated and sent to me? Sure. But I realized it made my child have to come talk to me. That act alone, opened up an opportunity for conversation. In essence, I could be a PARENT. When I wanted to find out how she was doing in a class, it was simple, I emailed the teacher directly. I used the old business trick and gave the teacher 48 hours to respond. If they didn't, I sent another notice and CC'd the principal and the board members. I got the answers I was looking for. There are lots of studies out there that have shown that there is no gain for electronic based teaching for the student. There is tremendous gain for electronic based teaching for the owners of the school. This is no different. There is a LOT to be said about the ability for a student to have interaction with a human teacher and human students.
Blaming the teachers' unions proves you are a fucking retard who listens to too much Rush Limbaugh.
Where you should blame are the fucking Retardicans who demand to have a first-rate educational system while not wanting to pay a fucking dime of taxes to support it.
You want to know why school IT is "bottom of the barrel"? It's because the schools themselves are physically falling apart. Class sizes are 35 kids or larger now, up from 25 a decade ago, despite decades of studies showing that education quality declines with larger class sizes. Most schools have computers that are 6-7 years old and barely holding together, school infrastructure for email and web outreach is likewise a joke, and as likely as not it's all administered by the one tech-savvy teacher on staff who gets a measly 8-10 grand bonus per *YEAR* to spend an extra 20 hours a week trying to hold it all together with duct tape and baling wire.
They can barely convince teachers to keep teaching in the system as it is. Why? Because it's shit wages forever, you have to spend at least 5 grand a year on "continuing education" and take outside classes on your own just to fucking remain certified, you have to spend your own money on any classroom materials other than the books chosen by the curriculum administrators and the chalkboard or whiteboard in the front of the room, and then when the next budget crunch comes around, all the teachers in the state have to take a pay cut and then get blamed for being "the problem", like the fucking Retardicans and that college failout retard Scott Walker in Wisconsin pulled recently.
You want to have schools that teach well and give all kids an opportunity for a good education? LEARN TO BE WILLING TO PAY FOR IT. The US educational system, thanks to the Retardicans, is like trying to pay Yugo prices for a car but expecting you'll get a Lamborghini. NOT. FUCKING. GOING. TO. HAPPEN.
Next time, before spewing all that venom on how the US is not spending any money on education, please check your facts:
http://mercatus.org/publication/k-12-spending-student-oecd
"As we can see, with the exception of Switzerland, the United States spends more than any other country on education, an average of $91,700 per student between the ages of six and fifteen."
How much of this money goes to actually educating the kids after the unions take their cuts, I don't know. But saying that Republicans "demand to have a first-rate educational system while not wanting to pay a [...] dime of taxes to support it", is simply not true.
Throwing more money at the problem won't fix it.
Fix the families. Restore family values. Education and all other aspects of life will follow.