I don’t usually jump at this stuff when it’s posted online, but this one I just couldn’t let pass by.
This morning a link to this article was posted on twitter. A district rolling out 25 000 ipads this fall to students and staff. I’m interested. Sounds like a major initiative. My first questions are about training, sustainability and the inevitable “what are you going to do 4 years from now when all of those machines are outdated,” but that’s not what really caught me. I’ve got questions.
The very first piece of the article (which is a set of questions and answers):
“Margo Pierce: Given the popular notion that technology is only for play, how and why did you decide to so thoroughly incorporate technology into the educational process?”
Since when is it a popular notion that technology is only for play? Why would an interviewer ask this? Does this interviewer not understand what technology makes possible? I’m troubled.
Unfortunately, I find the beginning of the answer to this question just as poor:
“Pat Karr Jr.: Students today are digital natives…….”
Really? Have we not moved past the digital natives argument? Is there not a better justification for spending the enormous number of budget dollars needed for 25 000 ipads?
The answer to this same first question continues:
“This is our business–our students are our product, similar to any other business.”
I thought we were past this as well….. “our students are our product” First of all, students aren’t a product. They are humans. They are not manufactured, standardized or produced. They are individuals who need a learning space that is customized and fit to their needs. Second, while all enterprises have some similarities, education is not like “any other business.” Our first concern is the people in our classrooms, their families and their lives. We are about people first and their relationship with, and knowledge of, the world around them. We are not about profit margins. We are already too often, too much about numbers. This kind of rhetoric needs to disappear.
The next one I run upon is more of a question, and it may come from inaccurate wording. The quote from the article is:
“Website filtering is performed through a Cisco AnyConnect client, so students are not allowed to visit unauthorized websites.”
I’m troubled by the last part of that. To me, it sounds like students will only be able to visit white listed websites. Is that true? Are they closing off the entire web except for certain places?
“Further, we enable blacklisting to ensure students and teachers do not install unauthorized applications that do not contribute to the educational process (for example, Angry Birds).”
I would love to see a definition of “unauthorized applications that do not contribute to the educational process.” People can learn something new from almost any material they access or experience they take part in. While certainly there are apps that we could probably agree on as being fairly close to useless, this is a slippery slope to be on. Who decides what gets approved? Can I get around that process as a teacher if there is something that the kids (or even one single kid) in my classroom would benefit from?
At this point, these machines and their connectivity are starting to sound pretty locked down to me.
Pierce: You have data showing that productivity has increased 300 percent during non-school hours. How are you measuring productivity?
Karr: We measure non-school-hours productivity by the amount of bandwidth being utilized by the device during those hours. We have seen bandwidth on our servers increase by 300 percent during non-school hours. We are absolutely seeing more productivity and engagement during school hours through bandwidth usage, as well.
How do productivity and engagement fit together here? Is the amount of bandwidth being used a measure of engagement? While certainly this might be one clue about what is going on, there needs to be a larger picture looked at. For example, if students are doing writing assignments now digitally and before they used to do them on paper, they are obviously using bandwidth which they didn’t in the past. But this isn’t a measure of increased productivity. It’s a simple change from a paper based activity to something that now needs bandwidth. Have the assignments changed to reflect the change in technology? Are kids now required to do different things than in the past? These are important questions.
The article closes with Mr. Karr making a statement about technology:
“Our children need access to resources that they feel most comfortable with so that they can excel. If we don’t create, implement, maintain, and sustain a functional, easy-to-use, and manageable environment, we will be depriving them of their greatest tools: creativity and resourcefulness.”
I absolutely agree with this. I’ve got a magazine article coming out this fall that pushes down this same path. Technology is great, lets make sure that our kids are using it to be creative and see all of the possibilities it can bring to learning. But I wonder how this fits in to the rest of this article. I’m not seeing a space that emphasizes “creativity and resourcefulness,” but instead one that focuses on the “manageable environment.” I don’t see anything in this article that emphasizes a vision for learning. There is nothing here about professional learning, possible assignments and projects, communities for teachers needing to learn how to best use these expensive tools in their classrooms. I hope that is part of the plan that is being put in place.
I get it. I really do. This is a huge rollout. A massive investment. It is important to do it well and correctly. But to me this seems to be either an article does this project injustice or is a planned rollout that is thinking about how we did things five years ago when you really need to be planning for five years from now.
How creative and resourceful will the students be when they are using locked down tech? The only thing worse than an interviewee that says crap is an interviewer that isn’t well informed enough to try to wipe it off…
Mr. Chamberlain,
under the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), school districts and libraries that apply for federal funding must provide filtering against improper websites. The Act focuses primarily on porn sites and similar type sites.
I’m a firm believer in providing as much access as possible while blocking improper sites that contain porn.
As far as apps and devices that are locked down there is a process for that. The apps are not simply blocked and locked out by me. The apps are vetted through the instructional arm of our school district. At present students are able to install any app they choose to but a report can be created and sent to the content managers for that area.
Mr. Karr, I apologize but it has been a long time since I read this article and blog post. Everything you write in your reply to me is great, I just wish it would have been stated that way in the original article.
It would have been awesome to have discussed the questions you have posed and comments made by you prior to you placing this out for all to see. Seems that we are quicker to judge than to take the time to investigate why things are stated and in which context they were being stated. The original scope of the article was to discuss mobile device management and the affects of mobile devices in the network infrastructure (which is my area of responsibility).
We could have discussed the infrastructure portion of this initiative, which I’m responsible for, in greater detail. The financial trials of procurement, maintaining, and sustaining an infrastructure, changing user culture, changing staff culture, and so forth. Furthermore, we could have discussed the instructional portion of the endeavor in the realm of professional development for teachers, which is managed by another team.
I would encourage an opportunity to chat with you on this topic. Our successes and our failures as seen from different aspects of the organization – networking, wireless, switching, routing, professional development, course content, parental involvement, financing, manufacturer/partner involvement, student involvement, and more.
I can be reached at (956) 632-3238 McAllen ISD Department of Technology.
Pat
Thanks Mr. Karr for dropping by and leaving your thoughts behind on this post. In regards to your comment about “placing this out for all to see,” I would argue that openness and transparency are part of how we need to be working at this point in our history. We examine things and hold them up, asking the questions we feel will drive forward progress in education. I expect the same thing of my own practice, long documenting the successes and failures in my own practice and my own classroom.
From your comment, it sounds as if your district took into account the things that I questioned in this post. As I stated in my blog post “… this seems to be either an article does this project injustice…” As the mayor of my home community, I understand the difficulty of dealing with the press over issues, making certain that your side of the story is fully, openly and completely told. I would ultimately encourage you to make sure that you are telling the entire story of this rollout yourself, sharing it with the world so that other districts and classrooms can benefit from your experience.
Thank you Mr. Fisher. I appreciate the fact that you responded to my comments. Unfortunately, the only way that I was aware of your questions/comments was by “Googling” myself and mcallen isd.
I realize that we are in an open society and that we are interconnected more than ever. This reason I made the comment of “placing this out for all to see”. I prefer to discuss comments or issues directly and then creating content based on a collaborative effort instead of having to defend what I’ve stated and being on the offensive. If at the end of the collaborative process we find that we are still at odds then the positions shared are mutual and civil instead of a “he said, she said” type of ending.
As far as showing our story, we do allow visits to our district to evaluate progress of what we are doing. We have followed a model created by Mooresville, North Carolina. We show everything that we have done. We show our successes and our failures. We show our financials. We explain our processes. We encourage others to review what we have done and make it better. We don’t have all of the answers but at least we are creating questions that will aid in the transformation to digital education to move forward from the aspects of financials, content, community interaction, state/national changes, professional development, and so forth.
I would encourage you to visit our website and review the TLC3 content. http://www.mcallenisd.org/tlc3. It would be great for you to visit our district and provide feedback on what you see in your community and ours in regards to transformational learning.
once again, thank you for your time and comments.
best regards,
Pat