Governor Mike Rounds and Secretary of Education Rick Melmer are beating the drums early for more money for education. They recognize the value of education and are willing to ask the Legislature to spend even more money to put the best teachers in every classroom...
...as long as those teachers are computers. Very tricky: the governor gets the legislature and 41 school districts to buy into the Classroom Connections program. Citibank floats the state a donation to get the pilot program going. And now that program has momentum, Rounds and Melmer will put the screws to the Legislature to increase funding to keep it going.
If our governor and education secretary really valued teachers, they'd be speaking in terms of priorities: "Yes, the one-to-one laptop program is nice, but it won't mean much if we can't compete with Minnesota and Wyoming for the top teachers to show kids how best to use those laptops as learning tools. We want to keep funding the laptop program, but by gum, we're not adding any money to the ed-tech budget until we find the funds to raise teacher salaries at least to cost-of-living parity with Minnesota." People first, then computers!
Ah, but we don't hear language like that from the state. Technology remains our primary goal; we'll get around to paying our professionals what they are worth some other time.
Where this undying faith in educational technology is anyone's guess. Just remember that the greatest teachers in history did their jobs without computers. Socrates just walked around town asking people questions, and the kids loved it. Jesus got his message across without a chalkboard, let alone without PowerPoint. Doc Miller taught me speech communication without Internet, and I can hold my own in front of an audience.
If we have money sitting around in Pierre to spend on computers, hooray! But first, let's make sure we're paying our teachers a moral wage (i.e., a lot more than what we're offering now). Then we'll have bought ourselves the moral authority to spend our money on other educational projects.
Just to confirm what everybody expected-- I subbed in a high school class where all students had laptops; yes, they were trying to play games and talk on the internet, rather than studying. Education dollars well spent!
ReplyDeleteI really like personal computers and the internet and blogs, etc. But, I don't quite see the benefits for students apart from teachers making more information available than can be pushed through a lecture, etc.
ReplyDeleteThat said, too much education is still done like it was in the middle ages when books were rare and very expensive.
It appears that educator reliance on computers to do their work has one primary result...planned obsolescence of textbooks.
The written text is tied to online instruction and problem sets which are changed every year or two making the used textbooks nearly worthless in future classes..even if the primary information hasn't changed significantly since 1960.
I don't know enough about how computers are used in schools now, but I suspect that the benefits are much less than the expense.
More fundamental is the need to switch from Microsoft products to Linux and open source software no matter how computers are used.
Those darn chatty kids... what ever shall we do with them? ;-)
ReplyDeletePlanned obsolescence of textbooks -- I hadn't thought of that, Douglas! But you're right: I look at the texts on my DSU reading list, and three are tied particular versions of software. The unavailability of used books will only add to students' debt and pressure them even more to take jobs right away instead of pursuing their interests.
How long are these laptops supposed to last? I work on a laptop which is 2 1/2 years old, and tne keyboard is about shot. I had to buy a separate keyboard to plug into the laptop (it works great BTW as long as I don't have to treat my laptop as a laptop as far as portability goes). The other choice was an expensive replacement of the keyboard itself. Just wondering who foots the bill when these laptops give out, are dropped, crash, or have the inevitable problems associated with computers. And what happens to a student's work/notes etc on the computer when it crashes? Don't think the old idiom "my dog ate my homework" is going to fly!
ReplyDeleteWho foots the bill? The parents do, of course. $1300-$1400 to replace the machine, or parents can buy a laptop insurance policy through the school for $25, then pay $200 for each damage claim. As stated here previously, laptops make public education expensive.
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