If you were going to design a school, using the latest technology, what do you think would be the “basic” necessities?
What kind of computer/laptop/iPad (or variation) would be best? (These will be given to every student in school.)
This choice has to be capable of using eTextbooks, but also doing work using Adobe products (as well as some other specific software, depending on course of study), basic word processing, wireless connectivity, online courses as well as on-ground courses. The goal is to keep the price to about $600 per unit. Granted, a deal could be made with the manufacturer to lower the price, due to volume, but keep the $600 as a ballpark amount.
Has anyone here had any experience using solely (or mostly) eTextbooks for their classes, and did you like using them?
Instead of overhead projectors beaming on to a screen in the classroom, would large, flat screen televisions be an advantage?
The school where I teach is seriously considering some major changes in the coming year and has begun to look into options. Any additional insight you might have (other relevant technology, software, planning, etc.) would be appreciated!
Age level is hugely helpful. You’re looking at high school or above, right?
I’m in elementary school. We have SmartBoards, and I love them due to their interactivity, but I could see them not being as useful at a higher age.
What would be the advantage of flat-screen televisions? The projector bulbs are incredibly expensive (a few hundred dollars each) and last for around a thousand hours, so I could see the TVs having a lower maintenance cost, but what other advantages would they have?
We thought they might be better as far as quality of picture (due to light coming in from windows) and have been told that they can be adapted to use as a smart pad, writing on them and using them for better multi-media presentations. I agree that that is not a priority, but has been pushed by several staff members as an improvement.
This probably won’t be any help to you, but the only answer I can give is to avoid moving in this direction entirely. A couple years ago I started this thread about computers and education. I recommend reading the entire thing; it has plenty of evidence–both annecdotal and real research studies–showing that computers do not help and may harm the cause of education. There are several reasons. Probably the most prominent is that students with computers and internet access will spend their time chatting, playing games, swapping pictures, and so forth, rather than paying attention to the lecture, demonstration, or whatever they should be paying attention to.
However, even if you could find motivated students who could resist the temptation to goof off in class, computers could still hurt. The reason is that people do not absorb information from an electronic screen as readily as they absorb it from a printed page. This has been established through many studies. When people read a physical page, they are much more likely to read all of it than when they read from a screen. On a screen, their eye tends to rove around, trying to pick out important things while skipping over whatever is perceived as unnecessary.
As someone who just finished 19th grade, I agree with ITR that the use of laptops in class is rather overrated. For a student the main purpose of the classroom is to take notes and interact with the professor, neither of which is enhanced by a laptop. Let’s say your learning about cellular respiration. How the hell is a student going to quickly reproduce this image on a laptop? In addition, the sound of 20 students typing away produces a significant din. Even though most of my profs in grad school provided their notes/powerpoint presentations before class, we simply printed them off and took notes by hand rather than sit there with an actual computer. The only thing I used my laptop for in class was to play games, chat, and/or do other work during particularly boring lectures
The great thing about laptops is that they make the work you do OUTSIDE the classroom easier/more convenient, in that they allow you to research/work on assignments from anywhere. But in my opinion it’s the students responsibility to supply those sorts of supplies, and laptops aren’t really that superior to desktops when it comes to writing papers or doing research.
When it comes to projecting notes, size matters. If you can sit in the back row and see the instructors overhead more clearly, it’s totally worth it IMO. But are you really going to find a flatscreen monitor that’s 8 feet across like a projected image?
I’ll also point out that after 7 years of higher education, the most effective teacher I ever had was probably my 10th grade bio teacher. Every time he taught a process (say the reproductive process of mosses, for example), he’d first give us the notes on the chalkboard, then have the class gather around a table as he sketched out the process before us, narrating as he went. His high-tech teaching instruments? A roll of paper towels and a sharpie.
My school’s experiment with e-textbooks is over. The delivery system doesn’t matter: you can’t force students to learn against their will, and you can’t prevent willing students from learning.
Bad students will fail regardless of which computer you give them, while good students will learn in spite of what you can’t give them.
I just heard a story about another school that, instead of fancy computers, gives all students a trip to Europe for one term.
I weep. I just this year got upgraded from a light-bulb projector to a document camera/projector. I’d give my eyeteeth just to have the damn projector mounted in the ceiling instead of taking up floor space in my crowded classes of 30+ kids.
What do I really, really want? 100 boxes of paper.
