Technology in Schools Faces Questions on Value - NYTimes.com - 70 views
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technology schools change critique measurement effectiveness integration
shared by anonymous on 04 Sep 11
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When it comes to showing results, he said, “We better put up or shut up.”
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Critics counter that, absent clear proof, schools are being motivated by a blind faith in technology and an overemphasis on digital skills — like using PowerPoint and multimedia tools — at the expense of math, reading and writing fundamentals. They say the technology advocates have it backward when they press to upgrade first and ask questions later.
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there is no good way to quantify those achievements — putting them in a tough spot with voters deciding whether to bankroll this approach again
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“We’ve jumped on bandwagons for different eras without knowing fully what we’re doing. This might just be the new bandwagon,” he said. “I hope not.”
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$46.3 million for laptops, classroom projectors, networking gear and other technology for teachers and administrators.
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The high-level analyses that sum up these various studies, not surprisingly, give researchers pause about whether big investments in technology make sense.
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Good teachers, he said, can make good use of computers, while bad teachers won’t, and they and their students could wind up becoming distracted by the technology.
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“Test scores are the same, but look at all the other things students are doing: learning to use the Internet to research, learning to organize their work, learning to use professional writing tools, learning to collaborate with others.”
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The 30 students in the classroom held wireless clickers into which they punched their answers. Seconds later, a pie chart appeared on the screen: 23 percent answered “True,” 70 percent “False,” and 6 percent didn’t know.
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rofessor Cuban at Stanford argues that keeping children engaged requires an environment of constant novelty, which cannot be sustained.
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creating an impetus to rethink education entirely
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But she loves the fact that her two children, a fourth-grader and first-grader, are learning technology, including PowerPoint
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“There is a connection between the physical hand on the paper and the words on the page,” she said. “It’s intimate.”
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Mr. Share bases his buying decisions on two main factors: what his teachers tell him they need, and his experience. For instance, he said he resisted getting the interactive whiteboards sold as Smart Boards until, one day in 2008, he saw a teacher trying to mimic the product with a jury-rigged projector setup. “It was an ‘Aha!’ moment,” he said, leading him to buy Smart Boards, made by a company called Smart Technologies.
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“Do we really need technology to learn?” she said. “It’s a very valid time to ask the question, right before this goes on the ballot.”