Computers and Education
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The school of the future in Pennsylvania, Philidelphia to be exact is under construction, to be completed next year. Microsoft is contributing US$2 million to help find ways to integrate technology into the classroom.
This despite a number of studies that having computers in the classroom doesn't necessarily help kids learn better. (USA Today, Contrarian Finding, and more)
It's interesting how technology is being integrated into schools. My pre-K kid doesn't get any time, other than a bit at home, and my 6 year old isn't doing much except taking some reading tests on the computer in 1st grade. The testing is good in that it frees up the teacher to spend time with other kids while some are using a computer to test their knowledge of a book. There's a competitive aspect to it as the kids get points for passing tests, but there's not much "learning about the computer". One thing I can say is that it does at least get them used to a keyboard and mouse.
My seventh grader uses the computer slightly more, mostly for research and various papers he has to write. It's neat to see him incorporate images into text and build a report that is miles ahead of the horribly handwritten ones I used to do at that age. However he still hasn't gotten really integrated into computing.
More I think the teachers and parents are the biggest beneficiaries of technology in the schools. A few interesting things that I've seen as we've watched the Colorado schools use technology in various ways.
Attendence - Both in elementary and in middle school, attendence is computerized. For my 1st grader, if he's not in school by 9:30, we get a call from the school on an auomtated line. We can call a voice mail line and leave a message if he's sick, but it tracks kids that might be skipping as well as those that might have had some issue, like an accident or , hopefully not, something worse. For my middle schooler, the teachers (he has 7) take attendence in the classroom online. I can find out literally every hour if my kid is late or missing a class. The days of skipping school and brining in a forged note are gone.
Grading - While both kids take physical paper tests, their grades are only recorded online, not in any paper book. Good and bad in that the grades are there, but rarely a comment. For my middle schooler, he gets a running average that we can check everyday to see if he's turned in work and if he's having any problems in class. It allows us to find out if he's keeping up with work on a weekly basis instead of waiting for a report card. In fact, the report card is almost meaningless as we know what will be on it a week or so before it arrives in the mail.
Teacher Communication - When I was a kid, my parents rarely talked with teachers. Now with the dramatically lower cost of hardware, all of my kids' teachers have voicemail and email in the classroom. I can message with them in some form whenever I want. In fact the middle school rooms actually have telephones in them. I know because I received a call about tardiness one day and when I called back, the teacher answered as the kids were working on a project. Pretty amazing.
Lunch - My first grader chooses his lunch when he goes in every day using a magentic board and a marker with his name. He can choose from first choice (a hot lunch, varies by day), a mexican bean burrito, a turkey and cheese sub, a vegetable and yogurt meal, or a PBJ. Each kid moves his marker and the teacher tallies them up and enters a "lunch order" that is transmitted to the lunchroom, giving them the totals they need for preparation. More choices than I ever had.
Most of these things are available in my school system because of Apple's Powerschool, a web based attendence, messaging, grading, and who knows what else, system that the school system uses. The kids can even log in themselves and check what homework is available; something that's come in handy when my oldest forgets to note things.
While I'm not sure that the kids are more adept with technology than I am, I do think they view it more as a tool than a novelty. The one distrubing thing is that the kids are very used to "big brother" in the form of parents and teachers being in more contact and having more knowledge of what they are doing. I'm not sure like that for them in a cultural sense, and I certainly wouldn't want it for myself.
But maybe that's balanced by the additional freedoms that teenagers seem to have as they get older. When I voted last fall at the high school, I was amazed by the kids coming and going from school whenever they wanted, heading out to lunch, hanging out in classrooms, etc. A much less structured environment than I was used to.
And one that probably employs a few more DBAs to manage the information 🙂
Steve Jones
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Steve:
You only briefly touched on the more interesting point of whether computer help students learn better. What you bring up is mainly administrative. It certainly helps make the infrastructure more interesting, more flexible, etc. But what happens after the funding finishes .. when the monies run out from MS.
I haven't seen much of the situation in the US but the media has reported case after case of schools that manage to find funding then after 3-4 years with an aging machine population begin to have real problems. Teachers are forced to spend far too much time patching up problems. Many school districts are not that willing to support admin costs so the schools are forced to find the money somewhere else in the budget.
I can't immagine things are much different in the US than in Europe. Research shows that the single most critical factor for students is the presence of well-trained, motivated teachers (reasonable pay always helps for example) regardless of whether there are computers or not.
Well my contribution for the day ...
John Forrester
Senior Networking and Systems Engineer
Ancitel Spa
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I noticed that there was no mention of homework assignments.
Based on several years as a parent, with children in American schools in AR, I bemoan the lack of ability to check homework assignment and "closing dates".
The most common excuse I hear is that the child forgot to take the book home.
My 2cents; maybe nonsense; and occasionally common sense
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If you don't like your kids being monitored so much, you can move out where I live. Though I work in the city, I live in the country and the school that serves our area is not very advanced. They have some computers in the classroom but they are seriously aging. Getting the systems Steve described in the editorial is waaaay off for us!
[font="Tahoma"]Bryant E. Byrd, BSSE MCDBA MCAD[/font]
Business Intelligence Administrator
MSBI Administration Blog -
I am one of the DBA's thats gained a job from the continual importance of college data storage. Its quite an exciting field to work in and there is a lot of room for improvement and innovation.
The business side of a college (in england) is becoming more and more important and if this side of the college is not well managed through accurate Management Iformation Services, key decisions will be wrong. These administrative process are very useful to staff and teachers at the college but and will never replace a good teacher, but overall management, consistant accurate funding and reliable delivery of information are increasingly becoming core.
Only problem is tight-fisted government funding leaves me stuck as DBA for MySQL, SQL Server and Oracle platforms!! a bit of a stretch.
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My daughter is 3 years old(will be turning 4 in a few months), and my son is 2 years old. They both enjoy playing on the computer. My daughter can start the computer and go to disneyhouse.com. In fact she can not even spell her first name yet.
I have 2 computers at home and both are always taken up by my children. If I want to do anything on computer, I have to wait untill they go to sleep.
They enjoy Blue's Clue, Clifford and other pre-school CD material that we bought for them as well as playing their favorite pooh movies.
On the weekends they would spend more then 5 hrs playing on computer each day.
I just hope technology would help them learn to be a smart, bright and loving children.
mom
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I think one reason computers are not making a bigger impact on education is the school systems and teachers do not get the training they need to use the computers. Most teachers are not computer gurus and their time is spent teaching, dealing with parents, administrators, etc. They don't have the tima and/or resources to make the computers more meaningful.
Also computers are a tool in the classroom, just like the chalkboard. The computers (as much as us geeks love them) are not an end to a means, they are just a tool in the classroom.
Hopefully someone (Microsoft, government, etc) will spend time to develop ways to help the teachers and staff fully integrate the computers into the classroom so they are not just nice things to have.
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My little ones have had their own computers since they were three. No, I am not loaded
I either pass down the parts from my computer when I upgrade or buy them older machines that will still play the games they have. They don't get the latest & greatest software so they don't need expensive hardware. One of my favorite places to shop for older stuff is http://www.geeks.com. I got my son the computer he uses now, a 400 Mhz IBM desktop, for US$126. It did not include a monitor or anything but I had spares. They don't have anything that cheap in stock today but it is usually a good place to pick up stuff for younger kids... and older ones like me [font="Tahoma"]Bryant E. Byrd, BSSE MCDBA MCAD[/font]
Business Intelligence Administrator
MSBI Administration Blog -
mom: "I just hope technology would help them learn to be a smart, bright and loving children."?? Nope, that's your task. Oh, and mine, and Steve's, and Celko's (bless his heart). Tech might help us to help them learn, but like Mr. Schutz says, it is just a tool in the classroom. I think the most important benefit of computers in schools is that it can assist teachers with administrivia and communication. I regularly email one of my kindergarteners teachers, but the other one never uses hers (tenure, I guess).
Steve: Powerschool was founded up the road here from me. A friend of mine worked for the original company. He designed their original web site and did the usual dotcom heroics to get them up and running. Then they were bought out by Apple, which cancelled all the stock option agreements except for a handful of executives. He was laid off soon after. But I'm sure they have a good product.
There is no "i" in team, but idiot has two. -
Talk about potentially a hot button topic! I'm not a fan of over-emphasis of computers in education and I think that's where we are heading as a society. It can be a very useful tool, but too much can become a bad thing.
I'd highly recommend two books that discuss this subject (among others) by Clifford Stoll, Silicon Snakeoil and High Tech Heretic, available on half.com for amazingly low prices.
Conveniently I'm contracting with the Arizona Department of Education developing a data extract thingie. Arizona's take on computer education is interesting and you can read about it at http://www.ade.az.gov/standards/technology/
Take a look at Standard 1 (PDF).
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font] -
"A data extract thingie"?? Is that how the statement of work was worded? That's how the State of California does theirs.
There is no "i" in team, but idiot has two. -
Well, the original spec was "file writer doohickey", but it sounded so unprofessional.
It is a very unpleasant thing where I'm accumulating data from various departments that use the same data in different ways, suck it into SQL (some is in other SQL databases, some is Excel or Access), do two levels of subtotaling, then spit it out in a CSV. And I get to do this for 170 different tables!
Fortunately it isn't a transaction/end-user system. It has some intentional slop in it that technically violates some of the guidelines for good database design, but if it were properly and fully normalized it would be unusable. For example, I'm storing filler fields in my table designs because the output spec requires them, and it's a lot easier just to have a bunch of these fields with varchar pointers so that when you spit it out, the CSV format takes care of plugging in the appropriate comma.
Yuck is the overriding descriptor here. 🙂
WHEEE!
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
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