AssortedStuff

In parts one and two of a multipart post, Larry Cuban looks at why school districts buy new technologies when there is little or no evidence they do anything to improve student learning, especially when most are having major budget problems.

From part one, he notes that consumer spending on electronics in the US is up despite the continuing recession.

At the same time schools are purchasing more technology products while also laying off teachers, increasing class size, and cutting program.

Economists can probably tell you why families are devoting scarce resources to new and better technology devices but why are schools doing the same thing?

The reasons public officials most often give for these purchases, past and present, is that the electronic devices will transform classroom practices, student learning, and prepare students for jobs in a competitive global economy. So, school boards need to back up these reasons with solid evidence for spending public dollars on new (and replacement) technologies that promise significant changes in teaching, learning, and administrative practice.

Where is that “solid evidence”?

The evidence for these electronic devices doing what is expected both in the U.S. and abroad is—as I read the research–at best, spotty—at worst, weak. Few careful and impartial observers of U.S., Europe, and Asia where governments have committed themselves to infusing technology into schools can say with confidence that the use of new technologies has led to increases in student academic achievement (as measured on either U.S. or international tests), altered substantially how teachers teach, or prepared students for to compete in an ever-changing labor market.

In part two, Cuban offers two reasons for this blind devotion to tech “solutions” that solve nothing: political and psychological.

This political explanation helps to make sense of why policymakers effortlessly skip over the lack of evidence to support major high tech expenditures. They figure that media photos of students happily clicking away on laptops–visible symbols–will trump the few research studies or critics who question purchases.

Turning from a political to a psychological explanation, districts buy technology because they suffer from “inattentional blindness”: They are too focused on a specific problem and lose sight of the big picture.

Or they suffer from some kind of blindness caused by salespeople promising tech-based “solutions” to whatever problem their schools might be facing without seeing if it fits in that big picture.

Of course, if the stuff looks good when photographed next to the superintendent, mayor, governor, and/or congressional candidate, so much the better.

Cuban, as always, makes some excellent points about our educational obsession with gimmicks.  Take the time to read both posts.

edtech, education, larry cuban, reform, technology

I’m sure lots of interesting stuff came through the data stream while I was gone but catching up with all, or even most, of it is not worth the effort.

However, one item that several friends and colleagues brought to my attention is a short article from the Post on one of my favorite topics, interactive whiteboards.

Even in these rotten economic times, schools in our area are spending lots of money on these devices, despite little or no evidence they do anything to improve education.

Increasingly, though, another view is emerging: that the money schools spend on instructional gizmos isn’t necessarily making things better, just different. Many academics question industry-backed studies linking improved test scores to their products. And some go further. They argue that the most ubiquitous device-of-the-future, the whiteboard — essentially a giant interactive computer screen that is usurping blackboards in classrooms across America — locks teachers into a 19th-century lecture style of instruction counter to the more collaborative small-group models that many reformers favor.

“There is hardly any research that will show clearly that any of these machines will improve academic achievement,” said Larry Cuban, education professor emeritus at Stanford University. “But the value of novelty, that’s highly prized in American society, period. And one way schools can say they are ‘innovative’ is to pick up the latest device.”

Innovative?  I’m still waiting to see an IWB being used for anything other than traditional teacher-directed instruction.

And for some research (other than the highly suspect Marzano study, paid for by Promethean) showing any significant, long-term effect on student learning, something commensurate with the high costs.

Update: As an added bonus, Sylvia shows you how to save most of the $6500 cost for the next big thing, the touch table, by using some of the original interactive classroom tools: finger paints and blocks.

edtech, education, interactive whiteboards, teaching

It’s spring so, as with most years, we’ve been getting a lot of questions about TSIP.

For those of you from outside Virginia, TSIP is the Technology Standards for Instructional Personnel, a legislative requirement for all teachers enacted about ten years ago.

Everyone with a teaching license must complete the TSIP requirements, either during their first year in the state or in order to renew their license.

Unfortunately, the requirements haven’t changed in a decade and generally conform to what a college advisor called the “inoculation theory of professional development”: you need it, you get it, you never have to bother with it again.

One shot and you’re done.

My thinking on the whole TSIP concept today just happens to coincides with a call from ISTE and other organizations for people to blog and/or tweet about the lack of any ed tech funding in the proposed federal budget.

However, I’m not entirely sure that’s necessarily a bad idea.

I’m willing to bet that most of the half billion dollars allocated this year had very little impact on instruction anyway.

Most likely it was spent at the state or district level to buy expensive packages from educational conglomerates like Pearson (along with plenty of consultants, of course), promising “solutions” to whatever problem is at the top of your list.

But more to the point, I wonder if there’s really a need for “educational” technology anymore?

Does the artificial classification of hardware, software, web applications and the rest as “instructional” (with the inevitable conclusion that rest of the stuff is not) just get in the way of the basic idea that almost any technology could be used for learning?

And does the process also gives some in our profession the cover necessary to ignore anything considered “non-instructional”?

You know, all that tech the kids play with when they’re not with us or when we’re not looking.

We say we want students to be able to communicate and collaborate, to develop critical thinking and problem solving skills, and to become creative and innovative in their work.

Do we really need special “edtech” to make that happen?

Or just a better understanding of how people in the real world are using all kinds of technology to improve their personal skills in all those areas and how to help our students learn to do the same.

Maybe, just like our tech standards that linger from the previous century, the whole concept of “educational technology” is outdated and obsolete.

budget, edtech, government, technology

I wish our administrators could hear and understand the message that Scott dropped on participants at a recent TEDx conference in India.

His frank remarks were in response to some of the educators attending who expressed great confidence in how far advanced their schools are when it comes to the integration of technology.

I’m not sure you appreciate how far along are most of the schools here today. We’re far from average in terms of our implementation of technology.

The conclusion to Scott’s three minute talk sounds suspiciously he could be speaking about our overly-large school district.

So some of you are sitting there in the audience feeling pretty good about yourselves. And you should. You’re blessed with wonderful financial resources, fantastic facilities, and amazing faculty. But for those of you who think I don’t appreciate how far along you are, all I can say is that I’m not sure you appreciate how far you still have to go. (his emphasis)

Read his whole post. It may remind you of wherever you’re teaching.

edtech, education, honesty

THE Journal, the free edtech ad-delivery system, speculates on what will be five K12 technology trends for next year.

1. eBooks Will Continue to Proliferate
2. Netbook Functionality Will Grow
3. More Teachers Will Use Interactive Whiteboards
4. Personal Devices Will Infiltrate the Classroom
5. Technology Will Enable Tailored Curricula

Four items about hardware, one related to instruction.

That pretty well illustrates one big reason why technology has had so little effect on teaching and learning inside the walls of our schools.

We keep bringing in all these cool new devices and claiming that they will “enable” change.

And at the same time we continue to use the same traditional, teacher-directed educational structure – with some technology grafted on the side when it’s convenient or for a reward when we’re done with the “real” work.

You might also notice that items 1, 2, and 4 are all items that make personal connectivity and learning possible anywhere, not just in a formal school setting.

While number 3 represents a slightly digital version of the classic classroom arrangement with the focus anchored in one spot, the one most often occupied by the teacher.

change, edtech, future, hardware, speculation

Seth Godin, whose blog is well worth a daily read, wonders about the old cliche which says that if your only tool is a hammer then all problems look like nails.

The practical effect of this thinking is that “when the market changes, you may be seeing all the new opportunities and problems the wrong way because of the solutions you’re used to”.

His theme is business, of course, and specifically with how they’re using social media, but Seth’s basic concept still applies to the institution of American education.

For starters, we don’t seem to understand that the “market” has changed (drastically!), so we continue to pull hammers out of the tool box.

Although we talk a lot about “differentiated instruction” and “individualized learning”, the details and solutions tend to look like the same classroom hammers we’ve always used.

When it comes to the major education reform proposals of the past fifty years, we’ve pretty recycled the same old hammers by painting different politically motivated labels on them (think: Sputnik, Nation at Risk, NCLB).

Then there’s the little corner of the system with which I’m most familiar, instructional technology.

Millions of classroom computers, most connected to world-wide networks, with a variety of amazing communications tools should have brought about major alterations to our process of teaching and learning.

If we didn’t just use them as digital versions of the same analog tools we’ve always used.

We want laptops to be electronic textbooks or workbooks.

Expensive interactive whiteboards are too often used for one-way transmission of knowledge, in very much the same way as the traditional analog chalk version.

Students write research papers and create presentations using sophisticated software for an audience of one.

And here in the overly-large school district we’re taking binders full of central office-blessed curriculum materials and test questions, putting it all in a big database, and declaring this to be a paradigm shift.

As Godin has pointed out many times in his writing, in times of crisis, economic and other, smart companies inspect every aspect of their business processes and find new opportunities to grow hidden in the bad news.

Instead of stocking up on new types of hammers as we in education seem to be doing.

Image: Hammer for what…? by Per Ola Wiberg (Powi) used under a Creative Commons License

business, economy, edtech, education, reform, seth godin, tools

It’s not hard to find stories of college professors who ban laptops from their classrooms, usually due to their fear (probably justified) of students not paying attention to their lectures.

However, you wouldn’t think that teachers in countries that have purchased the XO machines from the One Laptop Per Child project would be forbidding children from using them.

But that seems to be exactly what’s happening in Ethiopia, ironically for essentially the same reasons as those in our universities.

The Ethiopian school system like Rwanda’s, is designed around rote memorization – the teacher copies material to the board and students write it down in notebooks. Then there is a national test that determines progression in the educational system – a test based on the ability to recalled the memorized facts.

This model is very teacher-centric. Teachers should have all the knowledge, and students, by cultural definition are there to listen, not to question, and will not be as smart as teachers until they have passed the national test.

An education model where teachers are the source of all knowledge.

Learning completely centered around standardized testing.

Technology added to classrooms with little teacher training and no integration with the curriculum.

Sounds very familiar, doesn’t it?

edtech, education, ethiopia, olpc, xo

It’s that time of year again: standardized testing season.

Increasingly in our overly-large school district, students are taking those tests online, sucking almost all equipment and bandwidth from actual instructional uses for a month or more.

Unfortunately, it’s not just an American phenomena as the BBC profiles a new testing system being tried in Norway.

About 6,000 students in Norway are doing exams on their laptops in a trial that could soon be rolled out across the country.

Every 16-19 year-old in Nord-Trondelag county in Norway has been trying out the laptop-based system.

The secondary students are given a laptop by the government when they turn 16 to help them with schoolwork.

During exams the specially-tailored software springs into life to block and record any attempt at cheating.

Ok, taking tests on the computer and software to stop cheating (I wonder how long it takes before some enterprising student hacks that). Very nice.

What’s really interesting, however, is part about the Norwegian government routinely issuing laptops to students of a certain age.

Apparently, they consider personal computers to be an essential part of learning, something that should be provided from educational funding.

Here in the US we certainly have mastered the talking points about how important technology is to instruction.

We just aren’t as good as other parts of the world about the follow through.

bbc, edtech, norway, standardized testing, technology

If I didn’t know better, I’d think that Ms. Cornelius teaches in our overly-large school district.

She has a few excellent suggestions for school IT folks.

I would only have one item to add to her list…

Get out of your offices and spend some quality time in a few classrooms with some real teachers and real kids. Watch how they use technology and observe for yourself what Ms. Cornelius is talking about.

And while you’re in the vicinity, talk to some of those educators and learners and ask them about what they need to make the learning process easier instead of always trying to force everyone to go with those “industry standards”.

Thus endeth this month’s IT rant. :-)

edtech, IT, teaching

Google released version 5 of their Earth software this week and their engineers have done a great job of improving what was already an excellent resource for teaching and learning.

The most notable new feature is called Touring in which you can record a fly-through tour of stops you’ve placed on the map and save it into a KMZ file for easy sharing with others.

But that’s not all. Touring also allows you to record an audio narration at the same time and save it into the same file.

To show everyone what can be done, Google presents a tour of the Hawaiian Islands with stops at the sites of Jimmy Buffett’s 2009 tour, complete with the man himself performing Margaritaville as the sound track.

Just download the KMZ file (remarkably small at 8mb) and open in Earth 5.

Then take a look at the short tutorial on how to create your own tour with sound, also posted this week.

Better yet, show the demo and tutorial to some students (maybe one of the other demos that don’t involve Jimmy singing about drinking :-) and let their imaginations work.

Very cool stuff!

edtech, geography, google earth, jimmy buffett, travel