I spent nearly a decade working in a State education system in Australia, as part of an effort to integrate technology into the classroom. Obviously things are different in Australia than in the US, but I can respond to some issues here.
I’ve answered similiar objections a number of times.
My take on this is, that in a world where technology is ubiquitious, and given our increasing dependence on technology, we are doing our students a disservice by not giving them the opportunity to become technologically literate. This is even more important for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, where there families may not be able to afford computers in their homes.
Not necessarily. In fact lots of teachers and schools do very good work on machines that are not the most up-to-date. There are standard configurations which are upgraded every three or so years, and teacher’s laptops are upgraded every three years, but three years is about the standard age of a piece of equipment.
Nor is it necessary to keep upgrading the software or training on that software … most upgrades are not major ones, in general it’s just tweaking things. Any teacher who already has a grasp of how a particular piece of software works, probably won’t need special professional development to learn to use an upgrade.
There is something of a myth that you can’t do anything without the latest hardward/software which isn’t necessarily true. Much of what many of us use our computers for in a day to day, personal and professional sense, don’t require the latest high-end machine.
The State Government I worked for used special grants to buy computer equipment, so of it Federally-funded. The aim of those grants was to allow students to have access to computers and other technologies, the bigger picture was that both State and Federal Governments had their eyes on the global economy, where the importance of knowledge work and a technologically literate workforce was become increasingly important.
Each child doesn’t need a computer on their desk, research shows that the best, across-the-school ratio, is about one computer per three students, in their classrooms and easily accessible during their normal lesson times.
Research and experience also showed us that shared computer labs don’t work for the kinds of things schools are trying to achieve by integrating technology into classrooms.
There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that you want kids to learn to use computers as a useful tool for research, for writing up notes, for developing presentations, for publishing their content, for collaboration and communication.
The aim is that computers become a tool that students will be able to use fluidly, skillfully and appropriately. This can’t happen if the only access kids get is in specialist computer labs.
What generally happens with labs is that there is competition for access to the space, and that access tends to devolve by default, onto those class called “technology”. This either means that the Information Technology teachers get first dibs on the space, or that the space is only used for IT classes.
This means that if a teacher gets the use of the space, which might be once every couple of weeks, they have to teach a special “information technology” class which requires the use of the computers for a two hour block, not as part of their usual curriculum, but as a thing apart.
This doesn’t help students learn about how to use technology as a tool, amongst other tools, to help them with their learning.
Many kids don’t learn this at home because either their parents can’t afford a computer, or their parents don’t know much about them. Lots of parents don’t know much about computers. I spent an awful lot of time explaining how the internet worked to worried parents … I’ve got a pretty good idea of how technologically illiterate many people are. If you work in a technical environment, or or spend a lot of time on a computer, it’s easy to over-estimate the computer literacy of the average person.
And this is my point … it’s not about computers being taught as a specialist subject, it’s about computers as an everyday tool to faciliate all the things we use the technology for, including research, producing and publishing content, communications, collaborations, design, and hundreds of other things.
In the schools I worked with, typically primary schools had computers in the classrooms, senior schools (years 7-12) more typically had computer labs. What tended to happen is that kids left primary school with really good computer skills. I’ve sat in a classroom full of 8 year olds using multimedia software to produce animated videos about the animals they were studying.
Those kids get to high school and instead of having constant access to the computers, they might get a two hour block in the computer lab every couple of weeks, and their skills decreased dramatically.
As a result, high schools were funded to build access in all their classrooms, not just in labs, in order to allow students the kind of access they had in primary school.
A typical classroom where English is being taught would use a computer for a whole lot of tasks. Students might use it too do research on a topic they want to write about, they might look up newspaper and journal articles online, they might produce several drafts of an essay for assessment, they might use specialist software to publish their work in a variety of formats, they might participate in a collaborative project with other students in other schools in their State, country or internationally, they might contact an expert in a field of interest and task them questions.
Obviously in most senior schools there is also a specialist subject for students interested in technical careers in computing, but then, most of use use computers for professional and personal tasks, but comparitively few of us are programmers or network designers of whatever. Doesn’t mean we don’t need to know how to use the technology.
Two things that will always make a difference in schools are good teachers and smaller class sizes. The thing that makes the most difference is a good teacher. But a good teacher with access to good technology can do extraordinary things which not only enrich their students with learning that wasn’t possible before the technology was available, but enables to enrich their own professional practice.
If you’re interested in examples I can provide you with some.
There are lots of issues with technology in schools. It is expensive, it is often poorly used, it can be used by politicians as a substitute for doing the things they should be doing for schools.
In a school where kids arrive in the morning hungry, then computers might not be seen as important … but on the other hand, if kids are already disadvantaged, are you going to disadvantage them further by shutting them out of access to technology much of the rest of the world uses everyday?