Pilot Programs

The Idaho Statesman, 3-23-2012, reported on the “technological revolution” at Eagle Elementary in the Meridian, Idaho, school district. The district used federal funds to purchase 43 iPads and 130 iPod Touches. Parent groups raised money for another 17 iPads. Each 4th and 5th grade classroom has six iPads, and each classroom from K-3 has ten iPod Touches. For the past three years, boosters have come up with $2400 annually for Discovery Streaming, on on-line content provider; this year the state is picking up the tab.

“‘We are all doing it, and we are all doing it at a high level,’ said [Principal Carla] Karnes. ‘Our engagement is 100 percent – students, teachers and staff.’”

“‘This is school at Star Elementary,’ said Meridian Superintendent Lynda Clark. ‘They are really leading the way at building those classrooms of the 21st Century.’”

The story goes on to outline some of the ways this technology is being used in instruction: students are able to plot their musical instruments as chart and graphs; they can move from one format to another, and they are able to turn their assignments in electronically.  They are able to record themselves reading aloud, and when they are satisfied, they turn their best “take” in electronically for grading. Math apps work like games.

There are trade-offs. Apps are cheaper than textbooks, but they need to be updated much more frequently, and electronic devices require much more maintenance than textbooks.

Star Elementary is not an affluent school, with 45% of its students at or below the poverty line.

State Superintendent Tom Luna approves, enthusiastically. He says “Technology is the key to leveling the playing field… What we see in every classroom is that every student is engaged, even though they are functioning at different academic levels, and teachers that are focusing on individualized learning for each child.”

What’s not to like? Nothing, really. Everything sounds copacetic. The one puzzling element is that this sounds so much at variance with the debate surrounding Students Come First last year, with substantial numbers of teachers, students, and parents finding plenty not to like. What’s the difference? Part may be in the different tone of discourse. This seems to be a local initiative pushed by teachers and parents, not a bunch of Politicians saying “We can make you do this, and if you don’t like it… Well, that’s the idea, isn’t it now?  And, by the way, we are going to get rid of 700 of you, into the bargain.” Superintendent Luna now says “What we are seeing here is that no teachers have been replaced with technology,” a far different tune from a year ago. Boys and girls, can you say “disingenuous?”

According to NPRs Here and Now, Burlington High School in Massachusetts went over to one iPad per student in the fall. Host Robin Young interviewed Principal Patrick Larkin.

Larkin acknowledged the cost, for the devices, for software, for training, for maintenance. The change cost about $500,000 up front. Some of this was defrayed by not having to buy new textbooks, some by closing out existing computer labs – now, every classroom can be a computer lab. There is no mention of teachers being laid off.

A fair bit of the discussion concerned textbooks. In the brave new world of digital learning, there are some ambivalent attitudes toward the traditional textbook and its digital counterpart.

At one point, Larkin said, “We won’t be buying any more textbooks. Textbooks are relics.”

Host Robin Young posed a recurring question: “But textbooks are carefully designed. So now who will frame the coursework?”  Traditionally, the textbook has, for all practical purposes, in many schools, been the curriculum. And, Ms. Young went on to say, “Aren’t textbooks based on what Texas wants?” For better or for worse, there is some truth here. The Texas State Department of Education makes textbook adoptions that are binding on the whole state. If, for example, the state adopts Magruder’s American Government, then that is the sole American Government textbook for the state, and it will largely determine the American Government curriculum across the state.

But Larkin says, “These computers are more than just textbooks.” Textbooks are guides to help us cover some of the curriculum. I don’t think there is a textbook that covers everything in the curriculum. Textbook publishers don’t send people out to ask our teachers what they think should be covered. Textbooks are not curriculum, says Larkin.

Todd Whitman, chair of history dept. explains (if not in these exact words, then to this effect), we’ve been doing it (no textbooks, no e-books), and I like it. It’s not like we have thrown out the curriculum. It’s the same curriculum, different stuff. Instead of saying “For tomorrow, read these pages,” and then tomorrow, we go over that material, it’s more like Group A, look for material on this, Group B, look for that, and Group C, look for the other thing, focusing on leadership, for example. Then, the next day, (if I were doing it), each group pools their findings and works up a presentation, which they deliver to the rest of the class.

According to Larkin, The learners should have a role in this. Why shouldn’t students be able to go off and find materials for themselves that are relevant to the curriculum objectives? This is a valuable skill, not just finding material, but evaluating its relevance and reliability – how do you know whether to trust this source? The teacher’s job then becomes pointing them in the right direction.

We’re not ordering e-textbooks either. That’s not a cost-saving proposition. They cost nearly as much, and you can’t pass them along from year to year like you can a paper textbook.

There are some lessons here with profound import for education “reform” (I would prefer to use words like “improvement” or “evolution,” although “true-believer” Reformists sneer at these words and scoff at them as impermissible concepts. In both places, we have local initiatives, not state or federal mandates. There is a high level of buy-in by students, teachers, and parents because all are involved. What a revolutionary concept: the stakeholders are acknowledged as such and are actually involved. Teachers not only have great latitude to choose the materials that will flesh out the curriculum, but it is necessary that they do so. Students, too, become active participants in learning, not passive receptacles waiting to be filled with textbook information, measured out in bite-sized dollops by the teacher. If there is not tax-payer money enough to finance the enterprise, parents seem willing to get behind it with fund-raisers. Everyone “has skin in the game.” As the delivery of knowledge is decentralized, individual students and individual teachers assume greater responsibility for the process of education and their roles come to the fore.

Does it matter? Yes, insofar as “the medium is the message,” how we learn is part and parcel of what we learn. Marshall McLuhan must be smiling down from where ever it is that all good media mavens go. Yes, he must be saying, it does indeed “take a global village to raise a child!”

Notice, that not only are these schools moving beyond exclusive reliance on textbooks, they are bypassing e-textbooks (which are textbooks that just happen to be paperless, after all), and exclusive contracts with “approved” vendors of instructional materials, which seem to me not so different from the “Texas way.” Both anchor “reform” to old ways of doing business. So, which will it be? Evolution? Continuous improvement, W. Edwards Deming style? Or will we “beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past?”

It depends on who really owns American education. But that is another topic for another day.

Eagle Elementary:

http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/03/23/2047106/star-home-to-the-itools-school.html

Burlington MA HS:

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2012/03/23/schools-textbooks-ipad

http://www.patrickmlarkin.com/p/ipad-pickup-registration.html

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