TECHNOLOGY & EDUCATION DIGEST
Digest No. 28 -- November 13, 1997
A Moderated Mailing List
Steve Wildstrom (steve_wildstrom@businessweek.com), Moderator

Return to Technology & Education

Craig B. Coogan (craig@c-e-o-s.com) writes:

In Digest 27 you asked:

[Fairfax County (Va.) Public Schools decided a couple of years ago that all sixth graders should get laptops. The proposal lasted about 15 minutes before being crushed by parent opposition. Anyone know of other cases?--MOD]

The Los Angeles Times ran an article in September(ish) on the Huntington Beach School district where some company donated laptops to every freshman. There is an optical (wireless) network. The students get and submit their homework off of an Intranet and do team homework from home on the Internet.

It's an interesting concept. I'm sure you can find the article on latimes.com in their archives.

Craig B. Coogan
Senior Partner, CEOS
Call toll free: 888-222-CEOS
Visit our site: http://www.c-e-o-s.com

ACT Academy in McKinney, Texas issues laptops to every entering student and has done so for several years.

Elizabeth H. Sword (ESword@prs.k12.nj.us)

An article appreared in Government Technoloy Magazine regarding laptops and students. Earlimart School District in a small farming community in central California partnered with CompUSA to provide laptops to 1,800 students from kindergarten thru eight grade. The students can opt to buy one at $1,400 which is equipped with Microsoft software.

All students use the computers during school hours and may take them home. Apparently, many hurdles were overcome to provide this program, but the goal is to level the playing field and develop self-motivated learners in a community where only 11 percent of partents have completed high school, Spanish is the primary language, and more than 60 percent of the students have a limited ability to read or speak English. I think more info is available on CompUSA's web site www.compusa.com.

Patricia L. Good
V.P. Finance & Administration
Lima/Allen Co. Chamber of Commerce
Phone: 419-222-6045
Fax: 419-229-0266
Web: http://www.chamber.lima.oh.us

"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and along these fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back as effects"
HERMAN MELVILLE

Hi, I am having a good time learning all those wonderful ideas on how should we be using computers and Internet to motivate, to teach our children how to learn. Definitely, they're quite good ideas, as creativity still is high, thank God, among us.

However, at no point I see any comments on the (low? high?) productivity level being currently achieved from the teaching environment. Should we just forget about this damnn thing or is it an important issue to use with parents. Any hint?

Thanks.

Washington.

Washington Braga, PhD

RE: The ratio of tech spending to training spending. You will recall our East Hartford, CT project. In that project the following profile:

Hardware/software - $150,000

Curriculum Integration Training of 14 teachers - 7 days each teacher - $10,000(plus release time and stipends)

Computer Literacy training of teachers - $2,000 and in kind from corporate buddies matched to each teacher

Email and other WEB services $6,000

Tech support of equip (handlholding on site) @ $6000

Tech support of teachers learning curve @ $5000

Project management (fund raising, resource management, vendor management, PR, reporting, auditing) - $30000

Community participation programs - $18,000

Evaluation, assessment, - $5000 and UCONN grad student inkind

Project Planning - $8000 - over one year of part time prep pre launch 700 students

14 classrooms

5 schools

4th grade science curriculum

Herb Halbrecht (hzh@acpub.duke.edu)

In response to Gary Dietz,whose ideas I concur with-(even like his product), I feel that the only thing wrong with his estimate of 5% spent on training and education is too high.

Eons ago, in another life, I was once president of the principal professional society of senior information executives in the US, SMIS, the Society of Management Information Systems, International. I conducted an informal poll of the heads of IT of many of the largest and allegedly most sophisticated mis functions in the country. Incredibly, the consensus was about 1% (not a typo-one per cent) was typically spent on training, a "soft" area, despite the fact that various papers showed that the payback- return on investment for money spent on training was at least 4 to 1.

The problems in the school system here in Durham, NC,is (unfortunately) probably not unique based on the very helpful comments I have received from several very helpful Tech - Ed listserv participants. The city has teacher training programs and facilities, but downtown, where weary and time constrained teachers opt not to go. This is why we at Duke, DILR, are trying to set up teacher training programs at the university facilities 5 minutes away.

Add to this the entire issues of priorities and focus, where probably 100% of preoccupation is preparing the kids to do well on core subject tests, wherein those marks are the major determinants by which teachers and principals are evaluated.

Previously , we tried to take kids out of other classes to teach about using the internet , etc. Teachers clearly begrudged this time. Now, the school has been rewired so that there will be internet access in every classroom, and we are trying to find ways to get the teachers to 'buy into' using the internet as a way to facilitate the learning process as part of their regular classes. The kids are not a problem at all. It's the teachers who have to be shown the advantages of new ways, where their own training and teaching investment is different. Overcoming this resistance to change by the teachers is the problem.

Again, I will welcome any advice from those who have had any success in this area.

Herb Halbrecht
(919) 620-0546
Fax (919) 620-0454

Michael F. Pitsch (TechnicalDocuments@compuserve.com) and Ian Orchard (I.Orchard@mac.co.nz) wrote about Macs vs. non-Macs in the classroom.

[See the 11/04/97 digest on Technology & Education at http://www.businessweek.com
/bwplus/teched/charter.htm]. -- MOD

Michael argues that students should learn what they will more likely encounter in the workplace. Ian argues that the Mac OS is 'transparent' and implies easier use.

Both, somewhat correct in their respective views, I believe, miss the point. In both cases, each argument (probably without meaning to), implies that our educational system should or does train people narrowly for certain situations, attempting to make work a 'no-brainer' in the words of some unenlightened managers.

Each operating system in the marketplace today has its good and bad points; no exceptions. Educators cannot see what will be in the marketplace a few years from now; even technical professionals cannot.

So the only route to ensuring that succeeding generations can work effectively (and yes... efficiently...) in the workplace is to expose them to a such a variety of systems that no matter what they encounter, they will be able to adapt to the new systems.

Not all school districts can afford to have a variety of systems networked and supported; but I think ways can be found to have our kids exposed to enough different systems that they will be able to adapt no matter what comes along.

Perhaps a trailer-load of Macs, Unix and OS/2 boxes could be bought and paid for by several districts, and tour each one during the year, while school classrooms hold Wintel machines. Whatever it takes, we owe it to future generations to keep them from becoming techno-rubber-stamped. Either-or is not the way of the future; diversity is.

Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
- Malcolm S. Forbes.

Tom Clifford
2311 Barritt St.
Lansing, MI
48912

cliffotj@state.mi.us
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/tomann

My name is Les Comley (lescomley@vut.edu.au). This is my first contribution to this mailing list.

Do any of you have information about the effectiveness of computer based education systems in achieving the learning outcomes we a required to provide? If so could you please let me know.

Regards to you all.

Les Comley
Curriculum Research and Development Unit Melton Campus
Victoria University of Technology
PO Box 14428MCMC
Melbourne 8001
Victoria
Australia

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