Teach42

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CNN has an article covering the findings of the Department of Education regarding school technology. While I think at times they’re either stating the obvious or delussional in their conclusions, they do bring up some interesting points.

“Education is the only business still debating the usefulness of technology,” Paige said in the National Education Technology Plan, scheduled for release Friday. “Schools remain unchanged for the most part despite numerous reforms and increased investments in computers.”

Nine in 10 children between age 5 and 17 use computers, and even higher numbers of online teenagers use the Internet for school-related work, according to the report sent to Congress. The largest group of new users of the Internet from 2000 to 2002 were kids age 2 to 5.

The biggest increase was ages 2-5. Yes, two year olds to five year olds. And it does not surprise me in the least. About five years ago, I remember babysitting for a family. While I was playing a board game with the older children, their 2 1/2 year old walked into the living room, powered up the Macintosh, double clicked on the Snoopy Art game, and started drawing. We’re talking about a child of about 30 months. Now picture that same child in 3rd grade. Kid Pix is simply not going to be enough to challenge him or her. iMovie will be a piece of cake for such a child.

We need to face facts. We, as educators, are trying to figure out how technology will affect education in the future. Our students aren’t stopping to do the same study. They’re teaching themselves what they need to know. While we figure out how we can integrate Flash into a classroom setting and whether we should do so, they’re making music videos for their favorite songs. While we discuss whether we should allow IM in the school, they’re using IM for the majority of their communication on both computers and cellphones. Even as we debate whether we should allow student work to be seen on the internet, they’re posting up their own weblogs, podcasts, fiction, games and more. In this, I definitely agree with the Department of Ed. Schools are way behind. Mind you, I think schools are terrified of parental complaints and law suits, but we still have an obligation to do what’s best for students.

One other point:

Schools often say they lack the money for such technology or training, but the government report essentially rejects that idea. Money for technology can come from reallocating existing budgets and basing all spending decisions on whether they support learning, the report said.

Ok, now we get into sticky situations. You can’t purchase technology without funding. Where does it come from? I don’t really want to get into that one, but what I will point out is that once you have some of the basic hardware, there are a ton of resources available that are free. The Open Source community should be a school’s best friend. There’s a school nearby me that has decided to go entirely Linux. They no longer pay Microsoft off anymore. They use Fedora for their OS, Open Office for their productivity suite, and they use various other free or nearly free applications to cover the rest of their software. They use quite a bit of web based solutions as well. There’s a ton of material out there that doesn’t cost a penny. While there’s no question that it costs quite a bit to get going, I do think schools waste thousands upon thousands of dollars needlessly. Often, its simply because they don’t even know what tools are out there for them to be taking advantage of. That’s one reason that I’m blogging and podcasting. I want to let educators know about what’s out there that they can be using without investing a huge amount of time or money.