I feel the big trend in education since the 90’s has been more and more computers in the school. At my sons school this year they gave all the students I-pads. The idea was that all the students would be able to do their assignments on them and all the textbooks would be on the Ipads.
But they have decided next year to pull them. Problems with them include them being lost, stolen, or broken and problems with the networks being down or unable to handle the network load so things could not always be downloaded. It doesnt take a kid long to realize if their Ipad is broken, they cannot be held responsible for their homework. Also the discipline problems of all the kids wanting to be playing games and/or surfing the web all the time with them.
What do you all think? To me yes, they need computer labs but computers cannot be the substitute for good teaching. Plus they are expensive (initial cost, networks, maintenance, upgrades) to the point where you wonder if they are really any better than using textbooks and paper.
So to the parents, are your kids given a computer or semi computer like a Kindle or Ipad to take home? What do you think of them?
PS. Minor quirk - We have sometimes forgotten to plug the Ipad in overnight leading to nasty letters from school.
That’s the dream… To go mostly paperless and bring all that curriculum into the digital age to make easier for the students and teachers to cut through all those papers and drop the load of a bunch of heavy, expensive text books.
But it’s just not there yet. As you mentioned, there’s a billion inherent systematic problems with trying to keep literally hundreds of students keeping the fragile technology safe from damage, charged and not getting lost or stolen, etc.
Though, it’ll happen someday, as tech like these become more ubiquitous and cheaper. The shift in our culture in the last 15-20 years to digital everything has been pretty profound, but the system as such for school curriculum will need to be more foolproof and redundant.
As an side note, I think schools should have the teachers video stream the lecturing over such devices at home (log in with a computer, tablet, whatever) and do their “homework” at school. To me, that makes much more sense to flip those two ways of learning/schoolwork. Why spend the hour listening to the teacher droll on and on in class, as kids zone out, then have them do their schoolwork at home where there’s no one to help or answer questions?
It’s worth noting that textbooks are prone to most of the same problems—they get lost, damaged, forgotten and become outdated. They are also freakishly expensive. This is not to say that technology is the cheaper alternative, but there is a significant offset if you can actually get rid of textbooks.
As far as “flipping” the classroom goes, it’s not that simple–for one thing, if I can’t keep a kid interested in a lecture when I can make specific jokes tailored to those kids, go over to stand next to him when he’s drifting off, go on off-topic rambles for a minute when I see they need a break, etc. etc., how am I going to make them focus on a video? Why is a kid who can’t pay attention in class going to go home and develop a laser-like focus on a poor-quality video? And how do I ensure that he did? By definition, I don’t expect him to “get” everything–the design says he comes to class to work on assignments and ask questions. So how do I know if his questions are rooted in a deep struggle to understand, or he just didn’t watch the video? I end up reteaching it all anyway.
In my kids’ school they have iPads there for students to use during the day but many just bring their own laptops. A lot of video gets watched on break via the school’s wifi. They download some of their textbooks and assignments are often posted on the school’s network…yet their backpack still weighs a ton! I’m not completely sold on this much technology in the hands of the students…I pay a lot for good teaching. It would be nice if it wasn’t usurped by the shiny. In the case of this school it may be too late to put the genie back in the bottle
Textbooks are heavy and expensive. I don’t see how making them electronic is going to make them cheaper, as only a fraction of the price is made up by the cost of the dead trees or even distribution. You save on that, but now need an expensive device for reading the e-version. Heavy can also be solved to a large degree by making them modular so you don’t need to buy or at least carry the whole book if you’re only going to use a chapter.
As someone who’s always struggled with writing, I’d think that being able to type up your assignments would be much better than having to write them longhand. (Also, reading longhand is a disaster.) But then you need a real keyboard, not an iPad. (And PLEASE teach them how to type properly, that’ll save them five years of their lives over their career.) Also, the advantage quickly disappears once you start doing more complex stuff. Please let kids draw rather than make Powerpoint slides.
The real advantage of computers is that you can have computer-assisted learning. A computer can give you endless numbers of problems with instant feedback. Not sure to what degree schools actually use this, though.
Parents like it when their kids learn the latest technology, apparently not realizing that by the time the kids are let loose in the real world, that technology is ancient and irrelevant.
iPads were part of the reason our business folded. We sold school textbooks primarily. A number of parents came into my store to complain that their kids couldn’t concentrate when using the iPads, the temptation to use things like Snapchat etc. stopped them from studying. The consensus amongst a very small sample of parents that I talked to about it was that iPads were a boon for naturally studious kids but were worse than textbooks for more middling or struggling kids. I have no idea if this notion is borne out by any research.
My third graders use Chromebooks–super-cheap laptops that only run Google products, basically. The main advantage I see to them is that students can submit work online, and I can sit at my desk, read their work, make comments, and turn it back to them very quickly, without losing paper. if I need to, I can call a student over to my desk and talk with them about something. Also, it’s easy for me to put student work in a folder they can all access, so they can see what everyone else is working on.
It makes certain parts of writing instruction much more powerful.
And yes, computers can be distractions–but so can paper. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to stop a student from drawing robots fighting monsters and get back to their math work :).
Eventually all books will be digital and e-readers will be dirt cheap. When that happens it will make sense to make textbooks available digitally. And it’s a good idea to have some desktop computers at school so kids can learn programming and research skills.
But giving every student a tablet today is a foolish waste of money. They’re fragile, expensive, and quickly become obsolete as new versions come out. They don’t help kids learn, they’re just a distraction.
Of course all great points. I guess why I say, “That’s the dream…”
As far as the flipping, I totally get you on the more organic, “captured audience” of the student’s attention. However, think of the pros: you can boil down the lectures into 10–15 minute chunks. The student can then hole up after a slightly shorter say of school, watch his courses, then you can do a brief summary of the lesson and have a more focused and enriching experience of doing course work. You’d still have that natural, tailored and organic interaction with your pupils, just in a different dynamic that may be better for the kids, after all. Besides, I’m sure you could figure who’s slacking on watching the canned lessons.
Also to consider: A pre-recorded lesion not only allows you to only have to perform it once, but the students have it at their disposal (i.e. It’s not a one-off). If they were distracted or zoned out, they could rewind and fast forward over parts they think they need to absorb again. And parents will be in a much better position if their kid isn’t grasping the lesson, they could watch that bit, and help their kid understand what the teacher is saying.
I know there’s been countless times as a parent when I’m helping my kid with homework, and I have no idea what the lesson was or how to help him answer because I’m not there when the lesson is going on. I ask him, we’ll do you have notes or what did your teacher say about this, only to hear, “I don’t know/remember.”
One such program is being investigated for either outright corruption or sloppiness in bidding. It’s a long damn way from investigating one program to declaring all efforts to get iPads in schools to be scams.
Reading that article more carefully, I’m really not seeing any room to call it a “scam.” Pearson is far from my favorite company, and I think they wield orders of magnitude too much influence on public education. But one think I can’t accuse them of is deliberately putting out shoddy products. What they create tends to be highly polished and well-produced and fairly comprehensive, if not always what I think is best pedagogical practice.
Purchasing iPads without a suite of apps is a dangerous pedagogical practice: how many teachers have the expertise, time, and willingness to find appropriate apps and to design lessons that take advantage of them? I think the system was wise in looking for both hardware and software. Their methods for finding them were less than stellar, and rollout was less than stellar, but this looks to me like incompetence rather than malfeasance.
iPads are overkill and rife with distractions. I don’t get why schools don’t use Kindle Fires instead. They cost less than $100, and already have a built-in system that encourages actually reading and using educational apps on them over watching movies and playing games (Kindle Freetime). A school-based version of Freetime would be relatvely straightforward to develop.
Most of the advantages you’ve listed could happen if they just went ahead and recorded me in class. I think this is probably beyond the scope of this thread, but I think you are hand-waving away the significant downsides and overestimating the advantages of the upside.
“Flipped” maybe makes sense if the alternative is a lecture hall with 500 kids listening to a professor. But when I teach stereotypes in “Benito Cereno” or how the Balance of Payments shifts in response to fluctuating interest rates, I need to TEACH that. I need to look people in the eyes, let them answer my questions, let them construct their own understanding, I need to make them laugh, I need to surprise them, I need to build in pauses for them to think and anticipate where I am going, I need to see their body language so that I can adjust my pacing and examples to what they are responding to. It’s dynamic. None of that will happen if they are watching a video while playing League of Legends and smoking a joint.
Short answer? No
20 years teaching and I still haven’t seen how they help real students in real clases with their real problems. Id love for them to have their books on some sort of e-book reader, but writing or typing on a 10" screen is hell for any medium to long task; and if they get physical keyboards it goes to hell.
Book are expensive, but where I teach (one of the 20 most expensive schools in the country) we have a book bank and reuse the books for at least five year; heck the book I’m using are 8 and 9 years old.
Unless you cripple it, kids will find a way around any filter you put.
Maybe a full color, 12 or 13" e-reader could do it, but not yet.
Except in those cases where you are breaching the tech gap with really poor kids and giving them the chance to use technology when they possibly don’t have electricuty or running water.
I think they can be, if implemented properly. I would probably rather see it implemented with something like eInk readers/tablets. Using expensive, highly desirable things like iPads is foolish; kids (especially adolescents) are careless thieves and you’re just asking for them to get broken or go missing.
it wouldn’t make textbooks any cheaper since as iljitsch says it ain’t the paper which makes them cost so much. but there’s no reason to make kids haul around lbs. of paper textbooks all day just because that’s what we did (and we liked it, dammit!) and the ability to include instructional videos would be a plus; some things are easier shown than explained.
The problem with the current state of things is it seems like school districts seem to get sold a bill of goods that’s little more than:
I’ve taught a “flipped” classroom for 3 years now in a middle school setting. I love it, and so do the kids and also the parents. The kids watch an introductory/condensed version of the topic - most of my videos are between 12-17 minutes long, and I rarely show more than 2 videos per week. IMO, the advantages include:
More class time for activities, labs (I teach science), projects, etc. I do a lot of performance tasks, project-based learning and things that require a lot of class time. I wouldn’t be able to do as much if I were lecturing in class. This allows students to come in to class front-loaded with information, and do activities with me to guide them as they apply and reinforce their learning.
Whole-group lectures are painful for me and the kids. For some kids, I go too fast and they’re begging me to stop so they can finish writing notes. For some kids, I go too slow, so they’re bored and off-task and causing problems. Some kids “get it” right away and then they’re bored and off-task waiting for the kids who don’t get it to ask a million questions. What takes about 15 minutes on video, takes at least 45 minutes in class.
By watching the video and then coming into the classroom, the kids are already prepped with some information. So I can do a short review with them and answer questions - many of which the other students answer, because they saw the video and understood it. Or sometimes kids will stop by before school or during recess to ask a quick question, or they’ll send me an email. It’s more personal, one-on-one attention that I can give them in a fraction of the time.
The kids love having access to the videos to watch at their own pace, anytime. They can pause to write notes, stop and rewind to watch something again, and rewatch the videos to refresh before a quiz or test. It’s a dream for kids who were absent!
Many parents tell me that they sit and watch the video with the kids - or at least they’re listening while they’re cooking or whatever and the kids are doing homework. And now they feel they can follow along with the learning, and help in case their child struggles with content.
There are lots of ways that technology in the classroom has enhanced student learning, but from the teaching side of it, for me the flipped classroom is the biggest advantage.
You also have to wonder that if a certain superintendent signs off on a muti million dollar contract for a computer system, if there isnt some money exchanged under the table?
Out kids’ school district supplied extra books for each class. One set for the classroom and one for each kid to keep at home. This kept the young ones from being pack-horses struggling with heavy backpacks all day. By high school they were back to one book since they were big enough to haul them around.
I don’t have to wonder that, but if you provide a scintilla of evidence that that’s happened I’ll gladly look at it. Superintendents of large districts sign off on multi-million dollar contracts, not every day, but regularly; it’s a part of their job. Some are corrupt, but some are not.