Evolution of Classroom Technology (Jeff Dunn)

Jeff Dunn is Executive Editor of Edumedia. He posted his version of technological devices that influenced classroom teaching and learning on April 18, 2011. Because of space, I have dropped some of the artifacts he included. There are, of course, many definitions of instructional technology; this one relies on devices and machines. Dunn’s evolution of technology, then, tracks the different devices used in classrooms.  Another definition focuses on teacher use of the devices to advance learning in lessons. Even other definitions frame technology as processes,  ways of organizing classrooms, schools, and districts. And on and on. The following series of devices with Dunn’s commentary, then, is just one way of seeing technology in its narrowest sense.

Classrooms have come a long way. There’s been an exponential growth in educational technology advancement over the past few years. From overhead projectors to iPads, it’s important to understand not only what’s coming next but also where it all started….

c. 1650 – The Horn-Book

Wooden paddles with printed lessons were popular in the colonial era…. On the paper there was usually the alphabet and a religious verse which children would copy to help them learn how to write.

c. 1850 – 1870 – Ferule

This is a pointer and also a corporal punishment device.

1870 – Magic Lantern

The precursor to a slide projector, the ‘magic lantern’ projected images printed on glass plates and showed them in darkened rooms to students. By the end of World War I, Chicago’s public school system had roughly 8,000 lantern slides.

Used throughout the 19th century in nearly all classrooms, a Boston school superintendent in 1870 described the slate as being “if the result of the work should, at any time, be found infelicitous, a sponge will readily banish from the slate all disheartening recollections, and leave it free for new attempts.’

c. 1890 – Chalkboard

c. 1900 – Pencil

Just like the chalkboard, the pencil is also found in basically all classrooms in the U.S. In the late 19th century, mass-produced paper and pencils became more readily available and pencils eventually replaced the school slate.

c. 1905 – Stereoscope

At the turn of the century, the Keystone View Company began to market stereoscopes which are basically three-dimensional viewing tools that were popular in homes as a source of entertainment. Keystone View Company marketed these stereoscopes to schools and created hundreds of images that were meant to be used to illustrate points made during lectures.

c. 1925 – Film Projector

Similar to the motion-picture projector, Thomas Edison predicted that, thanks to the invention of projected images, “books will soon be obsolete in schools. Scholars will soon be instructed through the eye.”

c. 1925 – Radio

New York City’s Board of Education was actually the first organization to send lessons to schools through a radio station. Over the next couple of decades, “schools of the air” began broadcasting programs to millions of American students.

c. 1930 – Overhead Projector

Initially used by the U.S. military for training purposes in World War II, overhead projectors quickly spread to schools and other organizations around the country.

c. 1940 – Ballpoint Pen

While it was originally invented in 1888, it was not until 1940 that the ballpoint pen started to gain worldwide recognition as being a useful tool in the classroom and life in general. The first ballpoint pens went on sale at Gimbels department store in New York City on 29 October 1945 for US$9.75 each. This pen was widely known as the rocket in the U.S. into the late 1950s.

c. 1940 – Mimeograph

Surviving into the Xerox age, the mimeograph made copies by being hand-cranked. Makes you appreciate your current copier at least a little bit now, huh?

c. 1957 – Skinner Teaching Machine

B. F. Skinner, a behavioral scientist, developed a series of devices that allowed a student to proceed at his or her own pace through a regimented program of instruction.

[See an unusual video of B.F. Skinner describing “machine teaching” in a four minute video. It is a rare video and worth the entire post to see it]

c. 1958 – Educational Television

By the early sixties, there were more than 50 channels of TV which included educational programming that aired across the country.

1965 – Filmstrip Viewer

[T]his filmstrip viewer is a simple way to allow individual students watch filmstrips at their own pace.

c. 1970 – The Hand-Held Calculator

The predecessor of the much-loved and much-used [Texas Instrument] TI-83, this calculator paved the way for the calculators used today. There were initial concerns however as teachers were slow to adopt them for fear they would undermine the learning of basic skills.

1980 – Plato Computer

c. 1999 – Interactive Whiteboard

2005 – iClicker

2010 – Apple iPad

Perhaps your favorite device, past and present, was omitted from Dunn’s list. What’s missing? These are the mechanical and electronic devices, the artifacts in classrooms that future generations will marvel over but have little sense of why and how teachers used them. Excluded are the progressive and conservative pedagogies with which teachers used the devices, the software, and the organizations in which they were located.

Dilemmas in Researching Technology in Schools (Part 2)

If you are a technology advocate, that is, someone who believes in his or her heart-of-hearts that new devices, new procedures, and new ways of using these devices will deliver better forms of teaching and learning, past and contemporary research findings are, to put it in a word–disappointing. How come?

For those champions of high-tech use in classrooms, two dilemmas have had technology researchers grumbling, fumbling, and stumbling.

Gap Between Self—Report and Actual Classroom Practice

Journalist accounts and many teacher, student, and parent surveys of 1:1 programs and online instruction in individual districts scattered across the U.S. report extraordinary enthusiasm. Teachers report daily use of laptops and elevated student interest in schoolwork, higher motivation from previously lackluster students, and more engagement in lessons. Students and parents report similar high levels of use and interest in learning. All of these enthusiastic responses to 1:1 programs and online instruction do have a déjà vu feel to those of us who have heard similar gusto for technological innovations prior to the initial novelty wearing off. [i]

The déjà vu feeling is not only from knowing the history of classroom machines; it is also because the evidence is largely drawn from self-reports. And here is the first perennial dilemma that researchers face in investigating teacher and student use of high-tech devices.

Researchers know the dangers of unreliable estimates that plague such survey and interview responses. When investigators examined classrooms of teachers and students who reported high frequency of usage, these researchers subsequently found large discrepancies between what was reported and what was observed. None of the gap between what is said on a survey and what is practiced in a classroom is intentional. The discrepancy often arises from what sociologists call the bias of “social desirability,” that is, respondents to a survey put down what they think the desirable answer should be rather than what they actually do. [ii]

So a healthy dose of skepticism about teacher claims of daily use and students long-term engagement is in order because few researchers have directly observed classroom lessons for sustained periods of time where students use laptops and hand-held devices. Until more researchers go into classrooms, it will be hard to say with confidence that teacher daily use of computers has changed considerably with abundant access to IT.[iii]

While many researchers understand clearly the limits of self-reports, prize classroom observations, and direct contact with teachers and students, the high cost of sending researchers into schools prohibits such on-site studies. Instead, researchers face this value conflict in costs and time efficiencies vs. direct observation by fashioning compromises where they use survey questionnaires and, perhaps interviews—all self-reports. These researchers do not solve the problem of the bias of “social desirability” and unreliability of self-reports; they manage this perennial dilemma.

Recurring Dilemma of Inadequate Research Design

Another dilemma is that many researchers see electronic devices in schools as hardware and software devices that are efficient, speedy, reliable, and effective in producing desirable student outcomes such as higher test scores. These researchers have designed studies that have compared films, instructional television, and now computers to traditional instruction in order to determine to what degree the technology has shown that teachers are more efficient and effective in their teaching and students learn more, faster, and better. Such studies have been dominant in IT research in the U.S. for over a half-century “with the most frequent result being ‘no significant difference.’”[iv]

Other researchers, however, see the introduction of innovative technologies as interventions into complex educational systems that interact and adapt to the institution’s goals, people, and practices. They design studies that bring practitioners and researchers together to study real-world problems of how teaching and learning can be improved through the use of high-tech innovations. They are more interested in refining the innovation, adapting it to the contours of actual schools and classrooms rather than evaluating the success of the technology—which is what the dominant group of technology researchers are engaged in. While most researchers see electronic devices as tools, these researchers see it as a process, not a product of learning how institutions adapt and change the innovation.

For researchers who adopt this point of view, design-based interventions would make the most sense. Here researchers and practitioners work together to identify the problem that they would investigate, come up with hypotheses, design the intervention and then implement it. Collecting and then analyzing data on the intervention and its outcomes in actual classrooms and then teachers decide whether to put into practice the results means that the research is process-driven.

More design-based interventions might well reduce the grumbling, fumbling, and stumbling that afflicts researchers and champions of more hardware and software in classrooms.

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[i] Education Development Center and SRI International, “New Study of Large-Scale District Laptop Initiative Shows Benefits of ‘One-to-One Computing,’” June 2004, http://main.edc.org/newsroom/Features/edc_sri.asp: Saul Rockman, “Learning from Laptops,” Threshold, Fall 2003, www.ciconline.org ; David Silvernail and Dawn Lane, “The Impact of Maine’s One-to-One Laptop Program on Middle School Teachers and Students,” Research Report #1, February 2004 (Maine Education Policy Research Institute, University of Southern Maine).

[ii]John Newfield, “Accuracy of Teacher Reports,” Journal of Educational Research, 74(2), 1980, pp. 78-82, Sociologists point out that self-reports of church attendance are inflated. See: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2657482

[iii] Efforts to get sharper findings out of different sources and methodologies—often called “triangulation”—can be helpful to reduce skepticism of self-reports but problems remain. See Sandra Mathison, “Why Triangulate?” Educational Researcher, 1988, vol. 17, p. 13 at: http://edr.sagepub.com/content/17/2/13

[iv] Tel Amiel and Thomas Reeves, “Design-Based Research and Educational Technology: Rethinking Technology and the Research Agenda,” Educational Technology and Society, 11 (4), 2008, pp. 29-40.

Answering the Big Question on New Technology in Schools: Does It Work? (Part 1)

What drives many district and state technology leaders bonkers is being asked time and again by their school boards, superintendents, parents, and media: What does the research say about whether we should invest in iPads, tablets, and 1:1 laptops?  What they really want to know is: does the new technology work? Is it effective?

Of course, some district technology leaders and superintendents already know the answer; they forge ahead to buy iPads for kindergartners in Auburn (ME) or hand out over 6,000 to every high school student and teacher in Lexington  (SC). They do not need researchers to tell them that these devices “work.”  They believe and know that they will work.

For those technology leaders, however, who want to provide credible answers to the inevitable question that decision-makers ask about the effectiveness of new devices, they might consider a prior question. What is the pressing or important problem to which an iPad is the solution? Asking that question first uncovers the confused set of purposes that surround buying and using high-tech devices in classrooms.

Drawn from reports of superintendents, school board members, and technology champions, here is a short list of those problems that will get solved by 1:1 laptops and other devices.

*These devices will motivate students to work harder, gain more knowledge and skills, and be engaged in schooling.Engaged students will achieve higher grades. When the  Auburn (ME)  school board authorized the purchase of  iPads for kindergartners, their leaders assured them that reading scores would rise.

*Students will be prepared for an information-driven labor market. Or as one superintendent put it: “Students have to have digital competence, and to be competent, you have to have access. Using current-day technology should be a normal part of what we do. We need to close the gap between schools, education and the real world.”

*High-tech devices will erase the gap in access to knowledge that exists between poor and wealthy. The superintendent who bought 6,000 iPads said:  “It’s an equalizer. There’s no difference in learning advantage from the poorest to the most affluent.”

*Using laptops and tablets will transform traditional teaching.

There are, then, many immediate problems that high-tech devices and software could solve. Now the question of whether these hardware and software solutions “work” can be asked. These varied solutions attribute great powers to these devices and software to solve problems of  students disengagement,  lack of job preparation, the gap between the worlds that children and youth experience inside and outside school, socioeconomic differences in access to knowledge and skills, traditional classroom lessons, and, finally, the problem of low academic achievement of U.S. students.

That is  one big heap of purposes squeezed into the question of whether 1:1 tablets and laptops “work.” Especially since there is hardly any research evidence that these high-tech devices solve these complex problems.

Think for a moment about investments in schools that do have a solid basis in research evidence. Where research clearly shows that certain practices do, indeed, “work.” Take preschool education. Study after study done on three and four year-olds who were in preschool programs (e.g., Perry pre-schools, Abecedarian) and their progress through schools and into adulthood show short- and long-term gains in academic achievement, earnings, and other behaviors. Or consider the research on career-technical academies where students get prepared for both college and career.  Researchers have found over the past four decades solid results for students who have graduated from these programs.

When it comes to research supporting major purchases of laptops, tablets, and similar devices, such a cumulative body of evidence is missing-in-action.

So if the research pantry is nearly empty, why do districts buy iPads?

They want to use hardware and software to solve difficult problems. But school boards and superintendents also buy high-tech devices because they want to be seen as technologically innovative and ahead of other districts. In this culture, the value of technology is equal to social and economic progress. Because school boards are completely dependent upon the political support of their parents, taxpayers, and voters to fund annual budgets, being seen as ahead of the game in technology garners public support. Not to adopt new technologies, even when funds are short, means that district leaders are failing their students and against progress.

So the truth of the matter is that research studies that show positive effects of technology hardly matter.   Occasional studies that do show promising results for new technologies are dragged in to cover the near nakedness of research, much like a fig leaf, to justify the high costs of these new devices in the face of little evidence. The fact remains that no one knows for sure whether the new hardware and software appearing in schools work. They are all beta versions with glitches that teachers and students end up discovering.

Are Rocketship Schools the Future? Part 3

The answer is maybe. But not for all schools.

Like KIPP, Aspire, YES Prep Schools, Uncommon Schools and other charters including regular schools that have aimed at enrolling low-income minority children and youth–the bottom tier of the U.S.’s three tiered system of schooling (see post)–hybrids like Rocketship are the latest generation of the “effective schools” movement that began in the late 1970s.  Aimed at urban failing schools, Ron Edmonds’ work on whole-school reform energized districts across the country as they replicated his five features (strong principal leadership, climate of high expectations for students, focus on basic academic skills, etc.) that seemingly accounted for high-achieving slum schools. John Danner meets Ron Edmonds (Interview).

What the standards,testing, and accountability movement has done for the past two decades is create different models of “effective schools” to rescue students from toxic urban schools. Rocketship schools founded just before the recent economic recession offers a less expensive hybrid model that combined historically underused technologies to customize learning basic skills with conventional classroom teaching aimed at stimulating creativity, thinking, and enriched forms of learning (see features of Rocketship schools in Part 2).

As in the past, these models concentrating on historically under-served populations have adopted features from one another particularly as budgets are cut and technology costs drop. So a Los Angeles KIPP Empower Academy, for example, adopts blended learning and becomes a hybrid. Or the Houston (TX) district creates schools that contain the features from KIPP and other high test-scoring models.  .

My hunch is, however, that Rocketship, like KIPP and other options now available, will not penetrate most middle- and upper-middle class white and minority school districts. Over 80 percent of charters are in cities. Suburban charters have grown in the past decade as assuredly as demographics–urban minority residents moving into first-ring suburbs–have changed. Perhaps, the Evanstons (IL), White Plains (NY), and Daly Citys (CA) of the country are places where Rocketship schools  might be welcomed but I would predict that few upper-middle class Palo Altos (CA), Northbrooks (IL), and Lexingtons (MA) would embrace Learning Labs and Teach for America recruits. Nor would donors ante up funds–as they have in generous amounts–to help establish such suburban charters.

The point is that Rocketship schools and similar ventures are niche projects tailored to rescuing the poor from low-performing schools in an environment where state and local spending has declined and will continue to drop for the next few years. That is not a criticism but merely an observation looking back nearly 40 years to the Effective Schools movement.

I, for one, believe that educational models like Rocketship entering urban districts during hard economic times stretch the imagination  of what educators believe can be done with children and youth. I also believe that schools borrowing from the Rocketship model is both sensible and wise. The model will be critiqued and flaws will be found, as one would expect with any innovative intervention in a high-risk venture. Remember, like most businesses, many new schools, be they charters or otherwise, fail.

But the Rocketship or Kipp or Green Dot model is not tailored for all schools or all children. These elementary and secondary schools are a stripped down chassis of an “effective school.” Commonly such schools have few arts and humanities offerings, little science and social studies, and is sharply focused on getting students academically ready for the next level of education. Not so for affluent suburban schools and independent private ones. They have rich offerings in all of the above areas that the stripped down chassis lacks.

Also consider that the teaching staffs of schools such as Rocketship often have staffs with hardly anyone over 40 years of age or a decade of experience in teaching. Heavily dependent upon recruits from Teach for America and similar programs, these schools have high turnover rates.

Finally, there is no evidence that Rocketship graduates do well in secondary schools since no  cohort of fifth graders has yet been followed into high school. Separating customized instruction in basic skills  from higher level skills and socio-emotional learning, creative and critical thinking in regular classrooms is an IOU to children and parents that such a split will lead to lower rates of high school dropouts, higher rates of graduation, and college admissions for Rocketship students. Thus, absent such evaluations, it is a promissory note, not a fact.

Here is where I change the quote–“I saw the future and it works”–made originally by journalist Lincoln Steffens after he saw the early years of Soviet Russia.  After this recent trip to Los Suenos Rocketship school and listening to John Danner, I would amend the quote to read: “I saw the future and it might  work for many urban poor children if we knew more about what happens to those students in high school and beyond.” I agree that the amended quote is not as memorable as Lincoln Steffens’s words, but, hey, that’s the best I can do now.

Rocketship Schools and The Future: Part 2

Rocketship has three charter schools in San Jose (CA) in 2012. Mateo Sheedy elementary (K-5) has been described in various places. I visited Los Suenos elementary last week. And Rocketship schools are spreading.

Just recently, the Santa Clara County School Board (CA) granted 20 additional charters for K-5 elementary schools to Rocketship Schools. By 2016-2017, Rocketship will be operating charters in eight school districts, serving over 15,000 low-income Latino children. In addition, Rocketship received a nearly $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to open charter schools in Oakland (CA), Milwaukee, New Orleans, and Chicago. The pace of opening new charters and growing Rocketship schools in the next five years puts John Danner and his organization on the national map alongside KIPP, Green Dot, and charter school models that promise success to low-income minority parents and students.

The features that distinguish Rocketship schools from its neighbors in San Jose school districts and elsewhere are straightforward:

*Longer school day

*Teachers available outside classroom school hours

*individualized education plans for every student

*Widespread parent involvement in school

*Extensive computer resources devoted daily to customized basic skill instruction

*Credentialed teachers in self-contained classrooms work on writing, critical thinking, and soci0-emotional learning

*Less expensive to operate than neighboring public schools

I saw all of those features at work in my morning at Los Suenos. After the visit, I and two other visitors met with CEO John Danner to discuss Rocketship schools. We talked for nearly an hour. What follows are a few of the questions and answers that flew back and forth in a spirited conversation.*

Q: What makes Rocketship innovative?

A: The key idea with Rocketship is that there is a place for classroom instruction and for individualized instruction exactly at the developmental level of a child. We created a school model that incorporates both – we have six hours of classroom time and two hours of Learning Lab, which is where we do our individualized instruction, with tutoring and computers.

Learning Lab is not staffed by teachers; it’s staffed by instructional coaches, who generally have high school or college degrees but are not certified teachers. They get paid $14 an hour. We hand them a scripted curriculum; they oversee the work children are doing on computers, and they’re perfectly capable of providing instruction as long as we know exactly what each child needs to learn.

The net effect is that we save, with schools of about 500 kids, about half a million dollars a year, and we reinvest that then into the things that matter most for the school – training our teachers very, very well; empowering our parents; developing our leaders; paying our teachers a 20 percent higher salary than surrounding school districts.

Q: What connects classroom teachers to the Learning Lab to help teachers track individual kids?

A: We have Gates money to do fine-grained data analysis on basic skills of each kid in Learning Lab and then give teachers that information to help them in making their lessons on thinking and socio-emotional learning richer and targeted. Also I think teachers will want to access a variety of instructional options at distribution hubs. No one has built this yet, so Rocketship has begun developing something called Teacher Dashboard, and it will figure out where a kid should go, instructionally, and send them there.

Q: Do you see the Rocketship model of hybrid learning dispensing with teachers down the road?

A: Not at all. Our teachers are awesome. It’s not either/or. We just think that individualized instruction is better for basic skills. Do you really want teachers spending time on rote learning instead of critical thinking?

Q: Do you intend to move from elementary to secondary schools?

A: No. Teaching different academic subjects and the lack of software in those areas and the size of schools overwhelm me with the complexity of working with older children and youth.

Q: As you move out of San Jose to more Rocketship charter schools in California and other states, what is your vision?

A: Online learning should be responsible for the majority of basic skills learning,  freeing our teachers to use classroom time to teach students how to think. We believe that we will see … a 50/50 online/classroom hybrid model [with] properties that helps us scale up. First, we will have 10 teachers at each campus instead of 20. With 10 teachers on each campus, we have much less need for talent. With the extra money we save ($1M), we can double teacher pay to well over $100,000 per year. With Learning Lab … delivering 80% of basic skills, teachers can spend their class time to teach values and higher order thinking skills. We think that both financially and from a talent perspective, the model gets more and more compelling as we drive online learning forward.

Part 3 on Rocketship reconsiders the quote: “I have seen the future and it works.”

_________

*During the meeting with Danner, I did not take notes or record the conversation. I recalled some of the questions that I asked and Danner’s responses. I also read a number of published interviews with Danner that asked similar questions. I provide links to those sources. Readers can see a short YouTube positive description by co-founder, Preston Smith, of the first Rocketship school in San Jose.

Readers can also see a John Danner talk on Rocketship in 2010.

“I Saw The Future and It Works”: A Visit to a Hybrid School

The quote in the title ran through my mind as I spent a morning in the Learning Lab and one classroom at a hybrid elementary school (K-5) in San Jose (CA).  With about 500 mostly Latino and low-income students chosen through a lottery, Los Suenos is a Rocketship charter school, in a rapidly expanding network of hybrid schools in California and across the nation.

With an extended school day beginning 7:55AM and ending at 4:00, a staff of 16 certificated teachers, 8 Learning Lab specialists, and parents who are expected to volunteer 30 hours during the school year work, a band of adults work closely with kindergartners through 5th graders. Each child has an individual education plan.  Nearly all of the teachers are drawn from Teach for America; none looked over 40. They make home visits and are available before and after school to both students and parents.

Much has been written about elementary schools that combine online learning for part of the school day with teachers in regular classrooms teaching lessons. See here, here, and here. I wanted to see a hybrid in action. Before unpacking the above quote, however, I want to report what I saw that morning.

All through the day on a rotating schedule, kindergartners and upper-grade students move through the Learning Lab which can accommodate up to 80 students. Each class is there for one quarter of the school day.

In these brightly-colored cardboard cubicles, each student has a computer and mouse.

Kindergartners through 5th graders find their name on the screen, login, and begin the reading or math program. Eight Learning Lab Specialists roam the large room. College students and parents in the community, the aides monitor what children are doing in their math or reading program, answer questions, and intervene when students’ attention fades or they are off-task. When students finish a lesson and pass the accompanying test, they raise their hands and an aide gives them a sticker which appears to be highly prized.

There are also round tables in the room where Learning Lab Specialists tutor small groups in either math or reading skills for short periods of time.

After the Learning Lab, students line up and aides take them to their classrooms (for information on Rocketship’s mission, staffing, and schedule see Rocketship Overview).

I visited a 2nd grade classroom where 28 children were sitting in a half-circle on the floor. Their energetic, enthusiastic teacher (a second-year Teach for America recruit) asked the children to answer the question whether immigration to the U.S. was good or bad. This question launched a project from which student teams were to find answers. The teacher was going over the different activities that each team would work on in their project. She had Bloom’s taxonomy on a chart next to her listing a hierarchy of cognitive skills. The taxonomy was like a ladder going from the bottom rung of remembering facts to the top one of using critical thinking when making judgments. The 7 year-olds knew from previous lessons each rung on the ladder.

I watched as the teacher read from a slip of paper describing an activity (e.g., pick a way to solve the immigration problem)  and then ask the children to talk to their team-mates and decide in which cognitive domain on the chart before them the activity should be put.  After a few moments of students talking to one another, she asked group members where she should stick the slip of paper. Students waved their arms to be called upon each time. After each domain had an activity pasted on it, she then asked the children to form into their preassigned groups and discuss how they would begin their project. The teacher had assigned roles for each student to perform in their small group (e.g., leader, time-keeper) with different colored dots at their desks. The students went into groups and began discussing their project.

What I saw in this lesson was a novice teachers engaged in ambitious teaching with 7 year-olds. How much the students understood of Bloom’s Taxonomy to apply it to the project they were working on and answer the overall question on immigration, I have no idea. What I saw was 28 students wanting to please their teacher and engaged in the part of the lesson I watched.

I left the classroom and went to meet with John Danner, CEO of Rocketship schools. Danner had started a software company and, after a few years, sold it when he was in his early 30s. He then became a teacher for a few years before he and a former Teach for America graduate came up with the idea of Rocketship. The next post describes the interview and other observations of the school. In the final post on Rocketship schools I will unpack the quote “I Saw the Future and It Works.”

How New Technologies Can End Age-Graded Schools

Using high-tech devices smartly can customize the age-graded school out of existence. Every student with a personal device at hand daily in classrooms can transform schooling into a 1:1 learning experience with teachers as guides has been the dream of enthusiasts for decades. No more six year-olds entering first grade and 12 year-olds in sixth grade finishing elementary school. That has been the nirvana technology dreamers have imagined for decades becoming real.

Doubt what I say, then read the words of former New York City Chancellor Joel Klein, now CEO of a high-tech division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation:

As someone who led America’s largest school district for 8 years, serving over 1 million children, I believe technology can radically transform the way students learn by customizing instruction, and by helping teachers focus on each student’s areas of greatest need. But the key to capturing this potential lies as much inside our own hearts and minds as it does in any hardware and software we’ll deploy…. Technology’s greatest potential is as a vehicle for students to learn more deeply and individually, unleashing them from the limitations of learning in step with 25 or more peers with different needs and strengths. How much a student learns is defined by two things: the quality of the teaching curriculum and the amount of knowledge students absorb from it. Those are the critical things, and, fortunately technology has the potential to significantly improve both instruction and engagement. It can leverage world-class experts in teaching math, for example, exposing students around the country to the best teaching. It can engage students, by using analytics to direct them to particular lessons that relate to their specific needs. The possibilities are enormous if we apply true discipline to our tools and demand that they help students learn.

Champions of online learning and customized lessons see high-tech as a “disruptive innovation” that will eventually lead to the disappearance of traditional schooling–yes, the age-graded school–go well beyondJoel Klein. The New Schools Venture Fund (see here) has shifted from funding charter start-ups to more technology in schools. Liberated Learning and a host of other books, articles, and bloggers tout how online instruction and its toddler cousin–blended learning–will transform schools, end teacher unions, and bring an educational Nirvana to all Americans.

High-tech as the vehicle will upend the age-graded school. It will replace self-contained classrooms where teachers dole out chunks of curriculum in bite-sized pieces every day for 36 weeks with multi-age groups of students in ungraded schools where students learn individually and at their own pace from lessons tailored precisely to their intellectual needs.

Or 1:1 high-tech devices can simply have students learn at home. No more schools. No more teachers preparing lessons for 25 to 35 students. No more end-of-year high stakes test. No more kids failing a grade. No more social promotion. No more 8th and 9th graders taking algebra . No more age-graded school.

Joel Klein is one sharp fellow. Yet in his paean to the revolutionary potential of high-tech where he mentions the School of One in New York City and virtual Khan Academy, nowhere in that article does he take the logical step of saying that age-graded schools can be replaced with ungraded organizations where lessons can be customized to meet the needs of each and every child.

Like installing a jet engine in a Model T Ford, Klein’s “revolutionary” use of technology to customize teaching and learning keeps the age-graded school in place. Hardly a fundamental change when the lockstep of traditional schools continues to prevail in organizing how teachers teach and students learn.

So what’s up among reformers when it comes to new technologies that can, in their favorite word, “transform” the Model T Ford of schooling?

“What’s up” is that age-graded schools are here to stay. Why? In earlier posts, I identified the social beliefs of most Americans and the political importance of “real schools.” There is more, however. Every single policy touted by “no excuses” reformers from Common Core State Standards to NCLB to Teach for America to New Leaders for New Schools to School of One to charter schools to teacher pay-for-performance–each reform is married to the age-graded school.

That is why CEO Joel Klein, Wendy Kopp, U.S. Secretary Arne Duncan, and the nation’s governors and state education chiefs, vociferous in applauding technology,  are silent about ending the organizational structure of the age-graded school.

Deja Vu All Over Again*: Clickers

Recently, I saw a math lesson where the teacher used “clickers,” devices that permitted students to answer a teacher question without waving their arms in the air. Here is what I saw.

Students worked on a problem in pairs or individually. Then the teacher passed out “clickers” so students could answer a multiple choice question appearing on an Interactive White Board (IWB) by voting whether A, B, C, or D answer was correct.

Students pointed at the IWB and clicked.

The teacher then tapped a button and the results of the entire class were displayed in pie charts so that the teacher and students saw what percentage of the class got or missed the concept embedded in the multiple-choice question.

Then, the teacher moved on (although she could have re-taught the concept if too many students erred).

Clickers are also used in college classrooms. Northwestern University Professor Bill White who teaches undergraduates “Organizational Behavior” uses the device.  Reactions from students to these instant voting devices vary, of course, but those responding to a journalist’s questions were positive. As one said: “I actually kind of like it. [Having clickers to register your opinion] make[s] you read. It makes you pay attention. It reinforces what you’re supposed to be doing as a student.”

The company that sells “clickers” (cost: $30 to $70 each) shipped over a million in 2010, half to colleges and universities and half to pre-collegiate schools (December 4, 2010 post)

Now I segue to an experience I had decades ago and occurred again recently.

In the late 1960s Stanford University administrators secured federal funds to build a multi-million dollar facility called the Stanford Center for Research, Development, and Teaching (SCRDT). A fully furnished television studio with “state-of-the-art” cameras, videotape recorders, and monitors occupied the main floor with the star-in-the-crown of the new building located in the Large-Group Instruction room (LGI).

LGI

The amphitheater-shaped room with half-circular rows looked down on a small stage with a lectern, a massive pull-down screen, and 2 large monitors suspended from the ceiling. At most of the individual seats was a small punch-button pad called the “student responder.” The responder contained the numbers 1-10 and letters T and F.

student responder

At the very top of the amphitheater was a glass-enclosed technician’s station where an aide could assist the professor with amplification of sound, simultaneous interpretation of various languages, show slides or films, and put on monitors data that the professors wanted.  Administrators had designed the room for professors to enhance the delivery of lectures.

For lectures, the student responder came into play. Designers created the pad for students to punch in their choices to communicate instantaneously to the lecturer their answers to the professor’s questions, such as “If you agree, press 1, disagree, press 2.” “If statement is true, press T.”  As students pressed the keypad, the data went directly to a mainframe computer where the students’ responses were immediately assembled and displayed for the professor at a console on the lectern. The lecturer was then able to adjust the pace and content of the lecture to this advanced interactive technology, circa 1970, that linked students to teacher.

By 1972 when I came to Stanford as a graduate student, the LGI was being used as a large lecture hall for classes from other departments. The now-disconnected keypads were toys that bored students played with during lectures. The pull-down screen was used for overheads and occasional films. The fixed position cameras purchased in the late 1960s were already beyond repair and obsolete.

In 1981, when I returned to teach at Stanford, the SCRDT had been renamed the Center for Educational Research at Stanford (CERAS). In the LGI, none of the original equipment or technology (except the sound system and simultaneous translation) was used by either students or professors. The student responders, however, were still there.

In 2012, nearly a half-century after the SCRDT installed the LGI, the amphitheater room is still in use as a regular lecture hall. I was in that room three weeks ago to hear a colleague talk about his career in education and, you guessed it, as I listened, my fingers crept over to the “student responder” and I began to click the keys. “Student responders” and “clickers” merged in my mind.

And that is where the deja vu all over again comes in.

________

*Attributed to Yogi Berra, Yankee baseball team catcher in the 1950s.

Another Round of Predictions about High-tech in Schools in 2020

Image via CrunchBase

For the past quarter-century, I have written about teacher and student access to, and instructional use of, computers in schools. In those articles and books, I have been skeptical of vendors’ and promoters’ claims about how these ever-changing electronic devices will transform teaching and learning.

Amid that skepticism, however, I have noted often that many teachers adopted the latest devices and software not only for home use but also to become more efficient in planning lessons, using the Internet, grading students, communicating with parents and other educators, and dozens of other classroom and non-classroom tasks. Nor have my criticisms of policymakers’ decisions to purchase extensive hardware (far too often without teacher advice) prevented me from identifying (and celebrating) teachers leading classes in computer graphics, animation, and computer science as well as classroom teachers who have imaginatively and creatively integrated new devices and social media seamlessly into their daily lessons.

My allergy, however, to glowing scenarios of a future rich with technology (or dystopias that predict machines triumphing over humans) remains. I can only imagine how painful it must be for those hard-core advocates of more-technology-the-better who predicted the end of schooling years ago to see that public schools are still around. So what might 2020 look like?

For the past two years, I offered predictions (see December 26, 2009 and December 30, 2010 posts) of what I saw around the corner for high-tech in schools.

Predictions about future use of computers are often made by projecting existing trends into the next decade. This tactic embraces a conservative view of the future since it is rooted in the here-and-now. That is what I do.

Others have predicted the disappearance of schools and classrooms–a highly unlikely outcome. Such extreme scenarios leapfrog the present and stretch unreasonably the potential of the new technologies, thereby painting utopian (or dystopian) pictures. So given my allergy to rosy (or grim) scenarios that depend upon huge leaps of imagination, I will stick with current trends–the evidence at hand–acknowledging that they, too, may end up in a pile of debris should major unplanned events occur.

Clear trend lines for U.S. classrooms in the next decade are the continued growth of digital textbooks downloaded on hand-held devices and tablets (smartphones, iPads, eBook variations) and expanded online learning. But not the disappearance of public schools.

DIGITAL TEXTS

Small and powerful devices in the hands of students will permit the digitizing of texts. Student backpacks will lighten considerably as $100 hardbound books become as obsolete as the rotary dial phone. Homework, text reviews for tests, and all of the teacher-assigned tasks associated with hardbound books will be formatted for small screens. Instead of students’ excuses about leaving texts in lockers, teachers will hear requests to recharge their devices. Note that Korea has already committed itself to digitize all texts.

ONLINE COURSES

Proponents talk about how this form of teaching and learning as a powerful innovation that will liberate learning from the confines of brick-and-mortar buildings. Estimates (and predictions) of online learning becoming the dominant form of teaching turn up repeatedly yet somehow, fade. Surely, there will always be students and adults drawn from rural, home schooled, and adult populations that will provide a steady stream of clients for online courses. And even more evident is that many schools, particularly those catering to low-income students, will have blended programs of classrooms with teachers and computer labs with aides where online instruction is tailored to individual students. Much less of blended learning, however, in affluent districts.

Even with this expansion, by 2020, well over 90 percent of public school students will be in places called schools going at least 180 days a year to self-contained classrooms where a teacher will be in charge.

The error that online champions make decade after decade (recall that distance learning goes back to the 1960s) is that they forget that schools have multiple responsibilities beyond literacy. Both parents and voters want schools to socialize students into community values, prepare them for civic responsibilities, and yes, get them ready for college and career. Online courses from for-profit companies and non-profit agencies, while creating imaginative short-cuts to achieve these ends online, overall cannot hack those duties and responsibilities.

So by 2020, uses of technologies will change some aspects of teaching and learning but schools and classrooms will be clearly recognizable to students’ parents and grandparents. Digital textbooks will surprise the older generation but turning in homework, taking quizzes, asking teachers questions will remain familiar.  Even with exposes of for-profit cyber-schools, online instruction will continue to expand incrementally, particularly for certain kinds of students but, overall, will still be peripheral to regular K-16 schooling.

Views on Technology in U.S. and UK: Larry Cuban

I met Bob Harrison through my blog. He is a former  teacher in the UK and is now a technology consultant. He visited me a few months ago and I agreed to be interviewed. The complete interview transcript appeared on his website. Note that some of the words use UK spelling.

It is ten years since you published [Oversold and Underused]. Have your views about the use of technology for teaching and learning changed?

LC: Over the past decade, I have met with teachers, administrators, state policymakers, and district board members across the nation, all of whom were eager to talk about their experiences in using computers for instruction. Many had read Oversold and Underused; others had heard about the book and the research that I had reported. Many wanted me to answer their questions, tell me where I had erred, and raise issues that I had neglected to cover in the book.

In responding to the questions, I made clear that my views about the centrality of the teacher – the gatekeeper to the classroom – had not changed a bit. However, my views about the degree to which teachers would adopt and use hardware and software as part of daily lessons had. What I reported in Oversold and Underused was minimal teacher and professor use of technology in classrooms. Since then, with new machines appearing on the market and in schools annually, particularly, hand-held devices, I have seen in my research in schools a clear trend line of increasing teacher and student use of new technologies in classrooms. The growth of online schooling and rise of blended learning options have contributed greatly to that trend as well.

While the trend is toward greater integration of technology into lessons, the overall portion of daily use falls well below half of teacher time spent in instruction, even in those schools with 1:1 computing. I also note that the uses of the new technologies tend to be familiar (i.e., internet searches, direct instruction via interactive whiteboards, PowerPoint presentations, word processing, etc.) and fall within the usual sequence of lessons (e.g., going over homework, use of textbook, teacher questioning, worksheets – often on screens now, etc) rather than the imaginative uses that champions of the new hardware/software envisioned.

A common and recurrent theme through your research and writings is the importance of the role of the teacher in using technology. Do you feel this is still the case?

LC: Of course, teachers’ expertise, beliefs, and thinking are central to student learning in schools. It is not the only influence on students, of course, but it is pivotal, especially when it comes to the use of hardware and software in classroom lessons. As a gatekeeper to the classroom and policy broker, that is, the teacher determines what comes into the classroom and what stays insofar as lessons are concerned. Teachers are crucial in figuring out how to integrate laptops, tablets, and hand-held devices. For blended schools where online learning is customized for individual students for part of the school day, teachers still work with students in classes and small groups. I, for one, do not foresee online learning where teaching occurs at a distance replacing regular schools, so teachers will remain central to formal schooling.

The debate seems to become very polarised between “Techno-zealots” and “Techno-sceptics”. The emergence of “blended” learning suggests that it is not either-or? What is your view?

LC: I do not think the debate is as fractious as it once was, especially when it is removed from the media spotlight and the over-heated rhetoric of bloggers and headline chasers. I have found that discussions among serious folks interested in the issues and personal conversations about computers in schools have become less testy, less polarising, and more engaging in their policy implications than exchanges I had a decade ago.

Name-calling, at least public scorn for anyone who would question the prevailing belief in the magical efficacy of computers in schools, is unfashionable. I found educators and non-educators who deeply believed in classroom computers as engines of learning, willing to listen to critics when concerns were raised about the many goals of schooling in a democracy, the small part technology plays in overall classroom instruction, and insufficient technical support.

In the past, promoters of new technologies, be they vendors, practitioners or policymakers, would curtly dismiss these concerns by calling sceptics “Luddites” (note the labels may have to be updated now). No more. At least in public.

As investments in new technologies continue to mount, as the all-important concept of total-cost-of-operations has sunk into the skulls of policymakers, and as fiscal retrenchment has reduced school budgets, there is far more willingness on the part of ardent promoters to pause and consider answers to tough questions:

What keeps teachers from integrating new technologies into their daily instruction?

How much of the technology budget is devoted to on-site professional development and technical support of teachers?

What kind of research designs have to be pursued to show that teacher use of classroom technologies has caused gains in academic achievement?

How can online learning be blended into the regular school day to help students learn more and better?

That these questions could be asked and thoughtfully considered is encouraging.

I know you were a frequent user of the British Educational Communication Agency (BECTA) website and research database. Is there a need for a national strategy or agency to ensure systemic change?

LC: Yes, I believe that such a clearinghouse of research information and promoter of a national database is necessary in both UK and the US. That it has disappeared in the UK and is thoroughly fragmented in the US is disappointing and unhelpful to those of us that need data to spot trends.

In your view what are the key opportunities offered by technology in supporting and extending learning?

LC: In the hands of smart, skilled teachers who see how new technologies can become useful additions to their repertoire of teaching approaches, access to new devices, support from others who have used devices to integrate their lessons, and on-site technical assistance, expand the classroom learning opportunities exponentially. However, when policymakers and administrators purchase and deploy new technologies without involving teachers, those opportunities shrivel and disappear.

And what are the challenges to overcome?

LC: Policymakers and administrators who suffer from memory loss when it comes to earlier attempts to use technologies to improve teaching. The supreme over-confidence of policymakers who believe that schooling can be transformed through technology and willfully ignore the many purposes of tax-supported public schooling beyond transmission of knowledge.