Who really benefits from putting high-tech gadgets in classrooms?
How much genuine value is there in fancy educational electronics? Don't let companies or politicians fool you.Something sounded familiar last week when I heard U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski make a huge pitch for infusing digital technology into America's classrooms.
Every schoolchild should have a laptop, they said. Because in the near future, textbooks will be a thing of the past.
Where had I heard that before? So I did a bit of research, and found it. The quote I recalled was, "Books will soon be obsolete in the schools.... Our school system will be completely changed in 10 years."
The revolutionary technology being heralded in that statement wasn't the Internet or the laptop, but the motion picture. The year was 1913, and the speaker, Thomas Edison, was referring to the prospect of replacing book learning with instruction via the moving image.
more . . . http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20120205,0,639053.column
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Technology is changing faster than ever, the change is exponential.
Ditto the amount of information, and what needs to be learned is a bit of a moving target.
Additionally, kids are CONNECTED (adults too), so teachers who have rules against smart phones in their classroom are asking for trouble.
I feel strongly that the successful classroom will embrace technology, encourage kids to use their devices to solve problems (as real working people do in the grown-up world).
And it turns out that an iPad for every student loaded with educational iBook titles is CHEAPER than all the textbooks that same student needs that year, including allowances for loss and theft.
A couple publishers, (Harcourt is one, I think) are jumping on the eBook wagon, wisely.
Anyone clutching to the past will find it increasingly challenging to connect to their students and to help them be successful citizens.
Which is NOT to say that books are dead, I love books, I keep tons of books available for the teachers and students and they gobble them up, but they aren't textbooks.
And I'm PC and Mac proficient, we have to run some PCs for our CAD/CAM stuff, so I now what "management" of software and OS means on the PC side.
It just isn't an issue with Macs, and when there are problems they take care of it, it is amazing.
As for loss/theft/damage, there haven't been enough incidents with our 1,500 students and teachers that we've had to create any special policies to cover it.
Our iPads have to be checked in and out but most users keep them checked out for long periods.
We're moving away from macbooks and to almost exclusive use of iPads.
It looks like many of the titles of eTextbooks will offer ongoing support, updates, something textbooks can't do.
But for profit content providers will have to compete with the exponentially growing competitors that provide quality content free or at cost.
It's already happening, there's no going back...
However, plenty of schools and districts will be stupid enough to make your prophecy partly true.
The model is drastically shifting. Teachers trade a chapter for an hour of PD.
Fascinating, really.
Partly inspired by the Khan Academy model, we are flipping the traditional lecture/homework model thusly:
Traditional: Teacher lectures at school, students practice concepts through homework alone at home without help.
Flipped: Lectures are attended by students at home on YouTube or other, with time to pause, replay, etc., and then come to school to apply concepts in the company of peers and with teacher's assistance as needed.
So obvious it makes me dizzy, but not possible until recently.
Critics point out that some kids don't have internet. True, we have open labs after schools and all day Fridays and kids can check out internet tools.
Flipped:
And yet people will still have collections.
Win Win.
PS: In my collection in hardcopy, but available to all electronically (sans illustration plates): Grimm Brothers Fairy Tales
http://www.literaturepage.com/read/grimms-fairy-tales.html
I think they might also offer illustrated online copies of this.
Circa 1812
He was part of the first class to try math via computer. The answers to the problems were just a few screens ahead of the problem page.
So his point was, students weak in math, easily got the right answer, just by looking at those. 'pages'.
Some text books in math probably had an answer page at the back, I don't know.
But his experience was it was just too easy to get the right answer.... 
