eduskeptic

In my last post, I wrote about the need for consistent high-speed connections in schools, accessible from anywhere on campus.  That is half of the issue.  The other half is the dinosaur in the room that nobody really has an answer for: the :”old” and the “ancient” computers that exist in schools all across the nation. “Old” would be a machine that is maybe 5 years old.  “Ancient” is anything prior to that.   A high speed connection does nothing when run through an older computer, no matter what make it is.  For some things, a current iteration of computer doesn’t really matter.  When teaching young children about computers and how to navigate through various programs, as long as they are older programs, an older computer works just fine.  Once one leaves the basics of how to use a computer, old becomes impossible.  The reasons?  Newly written programs are graphically very intense and need speed and memory to work at all.  Newly adopted curricula, at least in the state of California, comes with online components, for students and teachers.  They also require a speedy chip and lots of memory, along with high-speed access, in order to be used by students and teachers.  Without a computer that is up to todays standards, all the bandwidth in the world does no good.  It is much like travelling a 4 lane freeway at a comfortable speed, thinking that you will arrive at your destination on time and happy, and then finding that the 4 lanes abruptly shrink to 1 lane.  You won’t be on time, or happy by the time you do get there, much later than you could ever have imagined.  Once again it is likely that the children in class have better computers at home than exist in schools, unless the children live in a high poverty area, and they know what is possible. The school district generally isn’t able to replace all the computers in school on a regular basis.  It is very likely that there isn’t even a line item in the budget for such a thing.  In business, when it comes time to replace the hardware, it simply gets done, as it has been planned for and probably written down to the point that it has to be replaced.  School districts simply don’t have the ability to generate funds–we are not profit driven entities.  We get paid by the state for the number of children enrolled, and present.  Any other funding we receive is from grants, bake sales, and begging.  Being fiscally conservative helps.  We do get lucky from time to time when big corporations or community foundations, or individuals, offer funding for technology.  Absent additional funding, schools tend to use computers and related equiptment until they fall apart.  We get a lot of miles out of our computers.  What we need, in addition to a national committment for universal high-speed access, is a national committment to providing computers that are capable of using that speed to its fullest.  With the global nature of commerce and education running on computers, desktop, laptop, handheld, it seems to make sense to equip our schools and children with the necessary tools to compete, from Kindergarten through graduate school.  We haven’t seen any concrete evidence of such a committment for quite some time now. What we have seen is a lot of UFM’s (unfunded mandates).  More of that would be extreemly disappointing.  Joe Stafura writes about education being an exclusionary device.  Certainly, a weak national committment to proper technolgy funding can be seen as such.  A change, and concurrent funding, would be good, and perhaps, inclusionary.  As always, time will tell.

One of the problems at our school, and maybe at many more, is the overall ability to connect to the internet.  In theory, one should be able to connect at high speeds from anywhere on campus: the lab, the library, classroom, cafeteria, playground, either wired or wirelessly.  Without the ability to connect, at high speed, the entire technology initiative falters, sputters, then stops, somewhat like an old car with crud in the carburetor. Cathleen Norris and Elliot Soloway did a study some years ago that found connectivity issues, not reluctant teachers, was the biggest problem in spreading the use of computer generated learning.  I have big questions about how the internet and computers are advertised as a panacea for education problems, and always take such information with an entire carton of salt. I think that technology is vastly important in the educational system.  We do need to keep up with what the children are using and doing.  If we tap into what appear to be useful opportunities relative to technology I think that we really could be able to teach well.  Certainly, the technology industry thinks so.  Children, who are growing up with a very connected world, think so.  At our school, excited, technologically literate teachers have run into, and largely been stopped, by the connectivity issue.  When we do have computers that are capable of handling the intense graphics and memory requirements of the internet, we connect, and wait.  And wait. The enthusiasm for waiting for downloads is just about zero.  The teachers and students, for the most part, have high speed connections at home, either cable or broadband, and know what should be happening.  Sitting in the lab, or classroom, with an entire class of children with nothing to do but wait for the site to show up on the screen is a losing proposition.  It doesn’t matter what age the children are–kindergarten through highschool–it’s the same.  We lose a teachable moment, and the willingness to do such a thing on a consistant basis is slim.  I heard a good thought about techno useage at our school: the teachers most likely to lead the way aren’t, due to the slow or non-existant connect speeds.  They are, however, expectant, ready, and willing.  It is hoped that we will be able to have a fully working, and high-speed, network, with appropriate computers, very soon. I don’t know about other systems out there, but if a high percentage of them are anything like ours, there are a lot of expectant teachers and students out there–waiting.  The rub is that the message being put out in the press, and by the nclb people, is that we, meaning school people, just aren’t up to the task at hand.  A national committment to fund high-speed networks and the appropriate pieces of equiptment is needed to get past the waiting.  Politcal posturing about how much money is wasted in the educational system simply establishes a longer wait.  Keep in mind that the study done by Norris and Soloway was done “some years ago”. Comments from readers of this article are welcomed.

I just read an interesting post at Edutopia by Ben Johnson. He ran into Roger Wagner, hyperstudio inventor, and reports on the renewed interest in hyperstudio. Rather than the didactic mess that nclb has attempted to insert in place of actual learning, hyperstudio, or I must assume, anything like it, allows, gasp!, creativity, student interest, and learning. In this rather electronically connected age, using the available tools to foster learning should be a good thing. I’m quite sure that it takes a fair amount of work to build into a program, along with a dedicated and knowledgeable staff, but perhaps it is worth it. Read Ben’s post. Let me know if it makes sense to you.