1:1 - Why?

1:1 via edtechteacher.org

Every now and then I come across an article that, while on the surface level seems fairly innocuous, causes me incredible consternation, articles like this,

"Kids Who Have to Share iPads Learn Better Than Kids Who Have Their Own".

The article is not a new one, but like many articles of its ilk, it has a habit of resurfacing periodically, as it did this week, finally motivating me to put fingers to keys.

There are so many things wrong with the assumptions made by the writer of this article, that it’s hard to know where to start. So in the absence of any better course of action, I’ll start at the beginning.

Firstly can we all just assume that, of course, sharing is a good thing, and so by implication is learning to share; but the truth is that it's the sharing that is beneficial not the object of the sharing. I see kids sharing and collaborating regularly, even when using their own screens; the extent to which this happens is all to do with the classroom culture carefully crafted by a caring teacher and nothing to do with the nature of the particular item.

Secondly, there is a problem with the evidence basis for the the findings of the research, starting with the assumption that performance in “a standardized literacy test at the end of the year compared to the beginning” is a valid measure.  Not to mention that an improvement of 28% v 24% in a study of 352 students really is not statistically significant, despite what the study's author says, another reason why it's never a good idea to rely on one source for anything of any real substance. Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, the study extrapolated the results of a literacy test, to relate to their work with basic geometry?

I could accept basing the efficacy of a study on a standardised test if the focus of the study was specifically related to the test, eg working on improving spelling for example, but in this case, as in most of the cases of this kind, they make no effort whatsoever to relate the standardised test to the actual nature of the use of the devices. Which tells you a great deal about the study, that they didn't feel it worthwhile to actually describe what they are using the iPads for, which would seem to be glorified textbooks, which would explain why they felt standardised test would be a valid measure. All they are concerned about is to measure the extent to which students have absorbed specific surface content, without any consideration about deeper conceptual development or creativity and all those other soft skills that really do matter much more.

So, why 1:1?

Whenever I encounter someone who is under the impression that providing students with their own device is a little, well, excessive, I strongly suspect two things:

1. They don't have to share the digital device/s (more likely 2 or 3) they rely on, and they take the obvious benefits of this for granted.

2. They are making some profoundly dubious assumptions about the way we encourage students to use these devices.

You can be sure that any advocate for shared devices never shares their own device 50:50. Can you imagine how far you would get in your daily work if you had to share your laptop 50:50 with a colleague in the office? You can be sure that the same person so gleefully anticipating a social nirvana where all of these students happily share their devices is suffering from a profound case of media bias, or device disorder. I’m sure the same person would never countenance asking the same students to share a pencil, or a paintbrush. How about an exercise book? You start from the front, and I’ll start from the back... These devices are all tools, very few of which were purpose built for a classroom, but all of which can be very successfully repurposed for an educational context by skilled teachers. I find teachers that are blasé about the need for students to have their own devices tells me more about the lack of importance they associate with the device than it does about the use of it.

The way you use these devices has profound implications for the desirable ratio of devices to students; a classroom where all the iPads are used for is glorified textbooks, or for educational "games" and skill drill, then sharing one iPad between five, or ten or even twenty really is not a problem. But a classroom where the teacher expects kids to actually create artefacts that are meaningful over time, is a classroom that benefits from the lowest possible ratio of student to device.

Don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying that a 1:1 context is a prerequisite for successful learning, many teachers all over the world, do amazing things everyday with limited resources, but that doesn’t mean that this paucity of resources is something they find preferable. Anyone who thinks so, clearly has never attempted to use these devices themselves.

Allow me to illustrate with an analogy.

Cycling is good for you, it’s also much less harmful for the environment than an aeroplane. So next time you want to travel between, say London and Singapore, don’t fly, cycle. ...

This logic only makes sense if you never had to actually travel between London and Singapore yourself (and if you’re not in hurry). There is something to be said as well for determination, I have a good friend who shares his laptop with the 24 kids in his class, on a rota basis. Do they benefit? Yes. Is the sharing beneficial for them? Maybe. Is this his preferred arrangement? Of course not.

Back to the bicycle.

Would I ever countenance the idea of cycling from London to Singapore? No ... unless that was the only way I was ever going to visit Asia, (and I had plenty of time, and a very good bicycle). Consciousness of the desirability of the goal has a direct bearing on one's determination to persevere despite the obstacles that may be present. Would it be good for me? Yes. So am I going to do it? No. I am not. Well, maybe. For many years, teachers who are profoundly aware of the value of designing experiences for their students to enhance their learning with digital tools have persevered despite many obstacles to make this a reality for their students, but would they prefer 1:1? Of course they do. How do I know? I was one, more than once. UWCSEA is the first school I've ever had the pleasure to work at, that has such a phenomenal level of resourcing, resourcing that is 'normal' here would be considered extraordinary in many, if not most other schools in the world. In my previous schools, scavenging abandoned computers, salvaging parts, and spending hours beyond number to build a rudimentary ‘lab’ for my students was a frequent experience. Why? I knew it was a tool that would considerably benefit their learning, and my teaching. I was wrestling to enhance the learning of my students in the early days at the turn of the century when ‘TEL’ still was yet to become a ‘thing’.

1:1 works better - shall I count the ways?

When my school announced five years ago, that we were embarking on a tech enhanced learning (TEL) initiative, it was assumed then that the 1:1 ratio only applied for older students, middle school and up. While the ratio of devices in the Primary School was going to be significantly increased, from about 5:1 to more like 2:1, the intention was never to provide 1:1 in the primary school as well. So what changed that situation? I did.

Can we work with shared devices? Yes. Can we work better when we have our own device? Yes. Interestingly the main pressure to go 1:1 came from our teachers, even when we expanded to a 2:1 ratio, the more effective they became at utilising digital tech, the more ridiculous expecting the kids to share devices became.

The truth is that the benefits of 1:1 have really surprised me, I was kind of oblivious of how powerful that really is, just from a logistical standpoint. With shared devices it is all too common for students to accidentally delete each other's work which is quite soul destroying, and especially with video editing in the junior school attempting to work on a project over several weeks is impossible with a shared machine. This means that any creating on the device (the most important use) has to be confined to short simple activities that can be started and completed within one lesson, this really does diminish the power of those tools.

This means that the main reason for going 1:1 is not really about two kids needing to use the device at the same time, although that is a factor, it's about valuing and protecting the importance of the artefacts created by each individual child. The biggest advantage I found by going 1:1 is to do with the fact that the work on that device cannot be accidentally tampered or deleted by a well-meaning (or maybe not so well-meaning) friend. If all the kids use the device for is shallow tasks like skill and drill apps, taking tests, and passively consuming media, then clearly sharing them is less of an issue. However, I think this is actually highlights a bigger problem! If we are encouraging our kids to do meaningful creative work on these devices then they will have media saved on the device that they would be upset about if it was accidentally deleted by a classmate.

Not to mention the issue of 'ownership', a child who is responsible for their own device, apart from the obvious personal social merits of having to take that responsibility, is also a child who feels like the work on there is work that is all theirs. This aspect became quickly apparent, kids really do benefit from their "ownership" of one device, including in ways we hadn’t anticipated, such as: customising it so that it operates the way they want it to; using a picture of their face for the wallpaper; being able to actually choose to share content on their iPads with their parents directly, this is the kind of thing that a one-to-one environment would make very straightforward but that they shared environment would be quite difficult. This even extends to the physical device itself—sharing ‘their’ device with their parents at parent teacher conference means there is something quite empowering about that kind of "ownership" even at such a young age. This aspect encourages a sense of responsibility that is powerful in terms of 'digital citizenship'; such as the fact that the teacher can expect the student for example to curate and manage their camera roll with their media responsibly; there is no way the student can evade responsibility by blaming other students who also use the iPad—a common issue with shared devices.

To summarise, 1:1 matters because:

• access to device whenever needed
• opportunity to do extended tasks
• simpler logistics, no more loan systems to manage
• organisation - curation and management of the device
• ownership - personalise the device to work they you like it
• responsibility - no abdication, your battery, your files, your work, your way
• security - the fruits of your labours, safe from prying eyes and fingers

So when I encounter people who are under the impression that 1:1 is excessive (the implication in the article) I know there is an assumption behind these ideas that the digital tools are used so infrequently and so ineffectively (ie skill drill, and games) that expecting kids to share them is no big deal, but in classrooms where these tools are effectively integrated and used to record, reflect and create, they are actually very difficult to share, not because of a lack of willingness to do so, but because both kids actually need to use the device at the same time, and really value the content they are curating and collecting on their own device.  You can be sure the journalist who wrote the article wasn’t using a machine she was sharing; why?

She uses it to create. 

Typing vs Writing

Image: jomurpheyblogspot.com

Have you ever sat in the proximity of someone writing who can touch-type? They sit nonchalantly in front of the screen, their fingers dancing over the keys; meanwhile I sit hunched over the keyboard like Gollum, forehead facing the screen instead of, well, my face. Hunting for keys and pecking at the keyboard, before eventually, and with great trepidation, looking up at the screen only to be presented with a mangled representation of the thoughts I so diligently delivered with my not so deft strokes—littered with the red lines demanding that I attempt again to wrestle the meaning from the scrambled melange of words, words that barely resemble the ideas I am attempting to represent, even now fading from my short term memory…

I worked with some colleagues to write an article on this very topic for the college magazine, Dunia, an exercise that required us to read a wide range of research on the topic, the outcome of which I have summed up at the bottom of this post if you're interested. All of this reading led me to the point I am now, namely a great deal more aware of the tensions, and especially the misconceptions that surround this issue...

This may come as a surprise to many, but typing faster is not the primary objective of learning to touch-type; rather it is a desired side effect. Once you are able to type with all ten fingers without needing to look down at the keyboard, your overall productivity when using a computer will improve dramatically. When typing with two fingers (hunt and peck), "the visual and frontal cortices of the brain are forced to focus on where individual keys are located. Keyboarding removes this burden, enabling students to work on things like sentence structure and grammar while they type." (Typing Club Handbook)

The danger with this issue is that it quickly devolves into an 'us vs them' argument, this is not a an argument we need to have, and not one I intend to get drawn into here, besides others far more eloquent than I have already done this far better than I could, such as this article from The New York Times.

I think it helps if we stop and consider what it is what we are really talking about, it's not about typing or writing, typing is writing, what do we mean when we talk about writing?

Writing Defined

In the interests of clarity it's important to establish from the outset that there are at least four different ways of coding meaning using the symbols we call 'letters' that equate to sounds that we in turn translate into words, in other words—writing. Some of these are easily confused, this confusion can easily led to 'much ado about nothing', for example no matter the enthusiasm for touch-typing, no one is considering abandoning the teaching of handwriting, cursive maybe, but handwriting? No.

Wikipedia to the rescue:

Touch-typing:

Touch typing (also called touch type or touch method or touch and type method) is typing without using the sense of sight to find the keys. Specifically, a touch typist will know their location on the keyboard through muscle memory.

Hunt and peck/two finger typing/keyboarding

"Hunt and peck (two-fingered typing) is a common form of typing, in which the typist presses each key individually. Instead of relying on the memorized position of keys, the typist must find each key by sight. Use of this method may also prevent the typist from being able to see what has been typed without glancing away from the keys. Although good accuracy may be achieved, any typing errors that are made may not be noticed immediately, if at all." (Wikipedia)

Handwriting 

Handwriting refers to a person's writing created with a writing utensil such as a pen or pencil. The term encompasses both printing and cursive styles and is separate from formal calligraphy or typeface. It is, in essence, a visible form of a person's voice, including pitch and tone.

Cursive

Cursive, also known as longhand, script, handwriting, joined-up writing et cetera, is any style of penmanship in which the symbols of the language are written in a conjoined and/or flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster. Formal cursive is generally joined, but casual cursive is a combination of joins and pen lifts.

Print-script or Block-letters

Print-script uses block letters, in which the letters of a word are unconnected rather than joined-up script. Block-letters (known as print-script, manuscript, or print writing) are a style of writing in which the letters are individual glyphs, with no joining. In English-speaking countries, children are often first taught to write in block-letters, and later may advance to cursive (joined-up writing).

Handwriting vs Touch-Typing: The Research 

There are a plethora of articles bouncing around the web, more or less like this one, purporting in tones of moral crisis that the worst thing we could possibly entertain is a world with a generation who can no longer write in looping flowing cursive... These articles usually attempt to bolster their argument by making appeals to supposed brain research that evidences a higher level of brain function when putting pen/pencil to paper as opposed to tapping keys...

The problem with these arguments, as is often the case with attempts to leverage research within a field that most 'lay people' have absolutely no grasp of, is it's easy to completely misinterpret the data, usually in favour of a particular argument. We should all be very wary of the claims and 'The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience'; over the past decade, neuroscience has become overprivileged as a method of examining the mind. That's not to say that it is meaningless, far from it, new research into how our brains work "offers educators an unparalleled opportunity for building a scientific foundation for educational practice which will allow us to make more informed decisions". It's just that we should be cautious when extravagant claims are founded on area of learning that is as best currently relatively nascent, "it is important to realize that neuroimaging is just one of many tools used in neuroscience. Equally important is the fact that neuroscience is widely viewed as rudimentary in its current state".

This article being a case in point; the author leaps to the assumption that the data must mean that handwriting is superior to typing, when the issue is not actually the mode of codifying meaning, it's the processing. So people taking notes who can touch-type have a tendency to transcribe, just because they can, rather than processing the information, ie summarizing, summing up, rephrasing. Touch-typists who do the latter rather than the former will be engaged in the same kinds of cognitive function as those handwriting. So the answer is not to demonise those who can touch-type, but rather to educate them.

"The thing is, that transcription process doesn’t require any critical thinking." 

“transcrib[ing] lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning.”

Of course all of this makes the extremely dubious assumption that lecturing and the accompanying practice of expecting the attendant students to sit their and passively take notes is a medium of teaching that we need to desperately go to all sorts of lengths to support and enable. This couldn't be further from the truth, as acclaimed Harvard Professor, Eric Mazur realised years ago, when he discovered that the notion that the clear, polished lectures and demonstrations he was delivering to lecture halls populated mainly by premed and engineering students was successful “was a complete illusion, a house of cards.” Now his focus has moved away from the lectern and toward the physical and imaginative activity of each student in class. Now his focus on "interactive pedagogy turns passive, note-taking students into active, de facto teachers who explain their ideas to each other and contend for their points of view. Thousands of research studies on learning indicate that “active learning is really at a premium." It’s the most effective thing. Not note taking, and certainly not lecturing.

Yes, I realise that not all of us are as fortunate as the students of Professor Mazur, so what do we do if we are confronted with the reality that some teachers still cling to this inefficient, unsuccessful practice? Simple, don't transcribe, process and reframe (and get a better a teacher if you possibly can).

Note taking really has nothing to do with handwriting or touch-typing. The people I feel for when these debates erupt, are our students who, due to 'special needs' have to type because they don't have the fine motor skills to write, do we really want them to feel like the modes that they have to use are actually inferior?

Stop taking notes and listen!

Personally I like the best of both, but as a general practice, I avoid taking notes at all, and I'm not the only one... This way I can concentrate on the content being communicated, if there is the odd fascinating fact/finding/phenomenon that I absolutely have to record, I take notes by hand, mainly because I find using the temptations proffered by a digital device (know thyself!) quite distracting. After all, all note taking really is is yet another form of the rightly demonised 'multi-tasking' which just results in another 'lose-lose' scenario...  So I minimise note-taking, and later on dictate my core recollections into screen text, (I can't touch-type—yet) which usually involves still more of that all important processing. Also in this day and age, I think we should expect the presenter to provide notes online.

Having trawled the literature I can honestly say that the findings do many things, but criticise the need to learn the skill of touch-typing they do not. The arguments they do make are moot points, as their findings are at best tangential to the questions that surround the considerations that related to touch-typing:

• We learn how to form/recognise letters via handwriting (not cursive), fair enough, but this is an argument for learning block-letters, or print-script, in kindergarten, not an argument for learning cursive.
• There are possible benefits to writing cursive, but they still concede this is not an argument against learning touch-typing, more an argument against abandoning cursive, so not either/or but both.
• 'Hunt and peck' typing is faster and more efficient than cursive, in experienced adults, but slower and less efficient with young children. But ‘hunt and peck’ is still considerably inferior to touch typing in terms of its conduciveness for good writing..
• Research asserting that handwriting is better for note-taking is widely misinterpreted, it's the practice of transcription as opposed to processing that is the issue, not the medium—for our Learning Support students this is an especially important point. Touch-typing does not render them second class citizens in the arena of understanding.
• Regardless of the arguments for/against, there are profound cognitive benefits to students who can touch type compared to those relying on a 'hunt and peck ' strategy. 

There is also plenty of research that compares touch typing favourably to handwriting:

The computer vs. The pen: a comparative study of word processing... 

"students in the Computer group, on the whole, wrote better than those in a Pen group. According to the Jacobs et al. (1981) Composition Profile, all aspects of writing except Content and Organization showed highly significant differences, with the Computer group exhibiting superior performance".
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0958822950080106

The need for handwriting to aid letter recognition in the early years

The influence of writing practice on letter recognition in preschool children: A comparison between handwriting and typing. "The results showed that in the older children, the handwriting training gave rise to a better letter recognition than the typing training."
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691804001167

Teaching elementary age children touch-typing as an aid to Language Arts instruction

Typed writing has been shown to improve students reading, spelling, grammar, punctuation, and creative writing abilities.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20198297?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

The word processing approach to language experience

The word processor not only makes LEA easier for teacher and student, it enhances the value of the approach as well.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2019884

Looking at the keyboard or the monitor: relationship with text production processes

"In this paper we explored text production differences in an expository text production task between writers who looked mainly at the keyboard and writers who looked mainly at the monitor. Eye-tracking technology and keystroke-logging were combined to systematically describe and define these two groups in respect of the complex interplay between text production and the reading of one’s own emerging text. Findings showed that monitor gazers typed significantly faster and were more productive writers. They also read their own text more, and they frequently read in parallel with writing."
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11145-009-9189-3

Writing the natural way: on a computer

A model of computer writing skill is presented that consists of four stages of development‐‐(1) Writing Easier, (2) Writing More, (3) Writing Differently, (4) Writing Better‐‐representing the evolution of a natural computer‐based writing approach under favorable conditions. The relevant conditions comprise the starting state of the user and a range of constraints on computer use.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0958822960090205

Image: Bruce Almighty, via persephonemagazine.com

Efficiency

The speed of (legible) handwriting (with or without cursive) is much slower with touch-typing. Over to Wikipedia for the breakdown of relative speeds:

The average human being hand-writes at 31 words per minute (WPM) for memorised text and 22 words per minute while copying (Brown CM, 1988).

Whereas an average professional typist types usually in speeds of 50 to 80 wpm, some advanced typists work at speeds above 120 wpm. "Hunt and peck" typists, commonly reach sustained speeds of about 37 wpm for memorised text and 27 WPM when copying text.

Go on, try it yourself, I used typeracer, and scored 35 WPM, first try, then timed myself writing the same text (so a slight advantage) as fast as I could by hand, focusing on speed over beauty, but still maintaining legibility, and scored ... 17 WPM. Pathetic, I know.

So to summarise: that's handwriting at 22 WPM, hunt & peck at 27 WPM (about the same) and between 50-120 WPM for touch-typists. So, if we don't teach our students how to touch-type they are in theory, after ten years of 'hunt and pecking' at least no worse off than they would have been if we'd asked them to write it all by hand. Although research on cognition in relation to writing gives us some pause for thought when they politely highlight the fact that the 'hunting and pecking' process effectively makes the cognitive process of writing far less efficient, as the resources which should be dedicated to composition are instead being dedicated to hunting for letters to peck... 

In other words, when you can touch-type, the cognitive load of writing and thinking at the same time are lessened and free up working memory for thinking—a bit like cycling a bicycle—once the effort required for remaining balanced, and changing gears et cetera are automatic, you can spend more time noticing/enjoying where you are going.  The same idea applies to things like decoding in reading via ‘sight words’, this frees thinking space for understanding instead of decoding.  The absence of effort in one frees cognitive space for the other…

So, the gains with touch-typing frees up cognitive space, and increases speed, with typing hovering in the range of double to triple the speed of handwriting. And of course none of this even considers arguably the most important element; digital text is capable of so much more than handwritten text.

Distinctive features of word processing that support creativity 

"We think that there are distinctive features of ICT that can support creativity and they can be described as follows: 'provisionality', 'interactivity', 'capacity', 'range', 'speed', 'accuracy', 'quality', 'automation', 'multi-modality', 'neutrality' and 'social credibility'."

Loveless A (2002) Literature Review in Creativity, New Technologies and Learning


"The provisionality of ICT enables users to make changes, try out alternatives and keep a 'trace' of the development of ideas. Interactivity engages users at a number of levels, through immediate and dynamic feedback. ICT demonstrates capacity and range in the ways in which it affords access to vast amounts of information locally and globally in different time zones and geographical places. The speed and automation ICT allows tasks of storing, transforming and displaying information to be carried out by the technologies, enabling users to read, observe, interrogate, interpret, analyse and synthesise information at higher levels. Quality can be recognised in the potential to present and publish work to a high standard of appearance and reproduction. Multimodality is reflected in the interaction between modes of text, image, sound, hyper textuality and non-familiarity..." p 94

Loveless, A., & Wegerif, R. (2004). Unlocking creativity with ICT. Unlocking Creativity: A Teacher's Guide to Creativity Across the Curriculum, 92.

Typing is Writing

Confession. I have believed for years that touch-typing is clearly useful, but not essential, why?

• a stubborn reluctance to commit to the discipline that learning this skill requires

• a possibly naïve expectation that keyboards will be go the way of the Walkman soon,

• the recent exponential improvement in the accessibility, reliability and accuracy of speech recognition tools like Apple Dictation.

However, I now realise...

• there are few, if any, life skills that can be learned in less than 3 months based on a commitment of 10-15 minutes a day that would literally reap benefits almost every day, for the rest of our lives, furthermore, with the plethora of online touch-typing tutorial tools it’s never been easier.

• keyboards (or similar) aren’t becoming obsolete any day soon, aside from the profound difficulties people face when thinking and speaking, as opposed thinking and typing, short of wearing a menacing helmet with sensors that allow the computer to recognise my thoughts (and who would really want that?), we are always going to require some sort of physical interface that we can interact with to be able to transmit our ideas into words.

• voice recognition tools lose their efficacy in a shared space, which as a teacher, and certainly for our students, is more than the case than not.

This is not an argument against handwriting, typing is also writing. Our choice, much like the difference between handwriting using print script or flowing cursive, is whether to become adept at typing or to resign ourselves to the mind numbing frustration of ‘hunting and pecking’. The keyboard is here to stay; our choice is to either master it, or to spend the rest of our lives wrestling with it.

Making the most of Kahoot online quizzes

Kahoot is a ridiculously popular online quiz tool with students that you have probably heard about. Here is a couple of quick hints to maximise its potential benefits, and some alternatives to explore as well. See our full guide on the Tech Hub here. 

What is Kahoot? 

It is a games based quiz tool which is similar but different to Socrative where students get points when they get an answer correct and additional bonus points based on their speed in responding. As a teacher you see a bar-chart visual once students have completed each question to help unpack misconceptions during the quiz with students. 

Quick Hints:

Use the public banks of quizzes: There is a vast and growing public gallery of Kahoot quizzes, which you can duplicate and adapt and share with your students and colleagues. The tool is currently free, but students need to be in your classroom to participate and access the code.

Download summary of student responses and scores: A slightly hidden feature is the ability to download the full lists of responses as a spreadsheet once students have completed the activity. This provides you with a full breakdown by question and by student and even tells you how long it took the student to answer a question. More information than you will ever need to help guide and inform your classroom practice. 

Alternatives quiz / revision tools

A spoke to a student how had used Kahoot 3 times in one day, so as always variety is important.

• Socrative - similar online quizzes, either teacher or self paced but without the competitive scoring. Easy to share between colleagues with the code and to download full summary or results as PDF.
• Quizlet - online flashcards and games for revision. Similar competitive scoring in Scatter Mode, and excellent for terminology revision.
• Zaption presenter mode; where the video plays on the teacher screen and students answer preset questions on their laptops.
• Quizzes in Teamie - provides greater range of questions types and connected to units and your classes.
• Polls in your Teamie class - quick tool for checking for misconceptions or developing hinge questions.

Dealing with Distraction

Illustration by Alicia Toldi via thecollegevoice.org

Parents understandably commonly complain that one of the particular challenges faced as parent in the 21st century is that of supporting homework in an age where increasingly and understandably more and more [home]work requires a screen, usually a laptop. In the 'good old days' of exercise and text books, a parent could at least be fairly confident that when their child was gazing intently at the relevant page, it was their work they were doing, and not perusing a peer comment on a social platform, or a YouTube video, or playing a game, or, well you get the idea. As a parent of two middle school kids, and as an assistant parent in one of our our boarding houses with students from G7 to G12 I have plenty of personal experience of this!

Before you get all nostalgic on me, it is worth noting why it makes sense to do homework on a laptop as well as at school, the main one being that this allows homework, to be, well, just work, ie, a continuation of the task they are already engaged in at school, as opposed to an isolated activity that is related to their work in school. Often now, the work you see your child engaged in at home is their work at school, continued.

Now if your work life as an adult involves screens this should sound familiar. If we're honest, even as adults, what will also feel familiar is the temptation for distraction, in this regard at least, this is a temptation you should be able to relate to, in fact many of the tips below, may actually be useful to you in your work as well... ;o)

Now I'm conscious that our teachers are possibly more au fait with strategies for ensuring that students in their classrooms are using their screens for the task at hand, and not for expanding their social capital, but parents are often not quite as aware, a fact that many kids are quick to exploit...

Hence this post.

Our Head of Campus, Frazer Cairns, has written a newsletter dealing with this topic, well worth a read if you haven't already, and this blog post in many ways serves as an addendum to that; some simple tips to help you to help your child to deal with distraction more effectively. More to the point, these tips are designed to empower you to feel more capable of telling when they are, and more importantly are NOT 'on task'.

You can find many of these tips included in the TutorTech Slide Deck that I manage and update regularly that we use with Middle School Tutor Groups, a slide deck that your child should be familiar with already, if not, they will be very soon...

So here for your delight and delectation are some simple strategies and deft devices for helping you, to help your child stay on task:

Don't Just Close it, Quit it

Students need to get out of the habit of leaving applications running in the background, as these have a habit of bouncing up and down like a jackrabbit on coke*—very distracting. Clicking the red icon just closes or hides the application, it’s actually still running in the background, to kill it you need to QUIT it. 

Deal with the Dock

Command Q or right click on the dock. If you can see a little black dot, that app is still running. 

Be on the lookout for Apps running in the dock that most likely have nothing to do with school work, or the assignment they are currently working on, Apps like Skype, Steam, Minecraft, et cetera:

Do Not Disturb

Click those lines at the top right corner of the screen on the Mac (the notification centre) and pull down, this activates a very handy but under utilised function built into every Mac.

Check Notifications Settings

Maybe people have no idea these even exist, but they do, and check them you should. You can even automatically activate 'Do not Disturb' automatically during certain hours.

Kill Chrome Notifications as well...

We advise our students to use the Chrome browser for work, and Safari (or another browser) for play/socialising, then quit that social browser while working, as mentioned above. With that in mind they should turn off the notifications Chrome generates from sites like Facebook et al, unfortunately it is a little buried... the following should help you dig it out though, click to enlarge the images:

Click to enlarge

Fill the Screen

Make the most of the limited screen space, hit that green button and use the whole screen whenever you can. (Esc key to exit). This encourages 'single-tasking', ie one thing at a time, rather than the notoriously inefficient 'multi-tasking'. If they need to use more than one app, eg browser and a word processor, with both fullscreen they can swipe between them using the 'Four finger swipe' (see below), if they're running Sierra or later they could even utilise the split view feature, so they can focus on just two related things on one screen.

F3 'The All Seeing Key' & The 4 Finger Swipe

This is extremely useful, and also extremely devious, depending on the way this is used! This is one of the powerful features built into track pads on the Mac, that makes switching between full screen apps very easy; great if you're working between apps, not if you're child is using it to hide what they're really doing... 

F3: The all seeing key via jandpbiz

Fortunately these swiping gestures are easy to spot (see below). An easy way to check to see if their swiping is justified is to press the F3 key (Mission Control) on the Mac, this displays all open windows/spaces at once, allowing you to see at a glance what's going on. If there's a lot of apps on display, they probably need to quit the ones they don't need, see my point above!

Be Aware of Behaviour

There are many uses for screens, but the ones that are the least likely to be associated with, shall we say 'modes of reflection/writing/response' typical of [home]work are very different to those you would expect when interacting in real time with peers, or/and playing games. So, if your child is giggling away to him/herself, or intensely hammering the keys/frantically twitching the trackpad, chances are they are not working... 

If in doubt—hit the all seeing F3 key—Mission Control.

Use the Room

Many teachers have find this to be a particularly useful strategy in the classroom; make sure your child is positioned in such a way that their back is facing you, then you can easily see their screen, whether this is in central space in the home, or the position of their desk in their bedroom, this is a simple but effective monitoring strategy.

See how happy he is that you can see what he's doing? ;o)

Keep the Goal in Mind

Last but certainly not least, as amply illustrated by the amazing Bill Watson below, the real secret to success in terms of maintaining focus on homework, as with any work, is a determination to succeed; no amount of distraction or procrastination will enable your child to actually get their homework completed. While a minority of students may have a barrage of strategies for concealing their futile attempts at multi-tasking, they will still need to actually produce the completed assignment.

What you get out of your computer depends on what you put into it... (Calvin & Hobbes)

* Coca cola of course—what were you thinking?

Dealing with Digital Distractions in the classroom

The following is an outline of a presentation I gave to our High School staff, unpacking the issue of digital distraction in the classroom. The aim of the session was to again reflect what we can do as teachers to mitigate some of the issues and reduce scope for temptation. An eloquent blog post from our Head of Campus, Frazer Cairns also delves into the issue from a parent perspective.



 
The evidence from the presentation comes from a student focus group I ran with 16 Grade 11 students, to uncover some of the issues. Students are always surprisingly frank when you ask them to reflect about the issue of distractions and what teachers do to in lessons to either lessen or increase the temptation of checking social media updates and notifications. The following are notes from the class focus group (full transcript available here)

What are the main distractions at school?

Facebook, 9GAG, Instagram, Music, Email, my phone buzzing, Snapchat, Random articles, Facebook messenger, Social media, Seeing others being distracted, Tetris, Facebook messenger, Tumblr

When teachers did these things or activities I am more tempted and distracted by technology...

• Researching something online, 
• Long lectures, long presentations, 
• Allowing students to use earphones, 
• When a teacher talks for a long time without interaction or activities, 
• Independent work on essays, 
• When the subject isn’t engaging for me, I tend to be more distracted, 
• When set individual work in class, that can be completed for homework.

When teachers did these things or activities I am less tempted and distracted by technology...

• Any activities and group work which forces use to be engaged as a whole class, 
• Uses online quizzes (Kahoot, Socrative); 
• Teachers telling us to close computer lids, 
• asking us to take notes by hand, 
• when the topic is very complicated or interesting, 
• interactive classroom activities, 
• Teacher uses a range of questioning strategies (mini-whiteboards, exit cards, name cards) 
• Is engaging, humorous and interesting, 
• Is efficient, informative and carries the class at a good pace. 
• Give a deadline for the end of class, 
• Don’t allow computers unless for specific reason, 
• Teacher moves around the classroom and circulates to check on screens.

My main take away point is that we need to be considerate and intentional in our planning to hopefully mitigate some of the potential distractions. When using two common pedagogies, the whole class lecture approach and setting independent work when could explore using any of the following ideas. 

References:

iLearn Student Survey - 2015

Grant Wiggins - The Lecture
https://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2014/02/03/the-lecture/
https://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/lectures-part-2/  

Push Notifications Are as Distracting as Phone Calls
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/push-notifications-versus-phone-calls/398081/ 

7 Ways to Deal With Digital Distractions in Class
http://www.edudemic.com/7-ways-deal-digital-distractions/ 

Transforming Maths Practice & Practise

Why Use Digital Tools in Mathematics?

• Immediate feedback
• Infinite patience
• Personal (individual//automated) differentiation
• Less marking, more monitoring (dashboards)
• Dynamic interactive models (what if)

SAMMS
Situated: work anywhere, any place any time. No carting around text or exercise books, all you need is scrap paper and a pen or pencil. Students can work out the own pace in their own space without having to do work pitched at a group of students in order to make the management of the task practically feasible for the teacher. No more having to set 'homework', now the homework is the classwork continued, and vice versa. As the results feed into one dashboard, you can see the results of an entire class/classes in one view, updated in real time.

Access: videos and tutorials from some of the greatest Maths teachers on the planet is only a click away. Not to mention access to a wider range of strategies, and ways of explaining. Leverage the computer processing power of automated marking; faster, and more efficient than a human, freeing teachers to focus on marking the stuff computers cannot, and freeing time for teaching/planning. No longer do students have to wait several days to find out whether the work they did is correct or incorrect, they know as soon as they submit an answer and are able to work on each problem until they get it right without the need for teacher intervention.

Multimodality and Mutability: beyond text and static images to illustrate, they can use video to explain, and animations (animated gifs) to demonstrate visually/aurally, in ways that allow rewind, repeat, retry, as often as is needed. Interactive dynamic models allow students to really explore mathematical models, with 'what if' experimentation. Got it wrong? Try again. No limits, no stress, no strife. Undo, try again, repeat.

Socially Networked: via an online space, students can share their questions, clarification, celebration. Teachers and students alike can can help one, help many. The fact that students can receive so much of the mathematical support via digital resources and via each other means the teachers actual face-to-face time can be used far more efficiently to work with smaller groups that would benefit more from the personal touch that computers cannot replicate.

Who Says?

Well, there’s lots of research, but let's just focus on a few for the sake of brevity. I reckon the points they made (some time ago, I might add) will convince anyone who has any passion for the teaching of Mathematics that their argument make sense.

In Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM 2000), the Technology Principle asserts: “Technology is essential in teaching and learning mathematics; it influences the mathematics that is taught and enhances students' learning” (p 24). More specifically, a technology-rich environment for mathematical learning influences five critical features of the classroom (Hiebert et al 1997): the nature of classroom tasks, the mathematical tool as learning support, the role of the teacher, the social culture of the classroom, and equity and accessibility. An essential question when working in a technology-rich mathematics environment is how technology can be used (appropriately) to enhance the teaching and learning of mathematics.

An effective way to optimize the mathematical thinking opportunities presented by technology is to plan the mathematics task focused on the five Process Standards (NCTM 2000): Problem Solving, Reasoning and Proof, Communication, Connections, and Representation.

...

Learning environments that take advantage of virtual manipulatives offer a number of ways for students to develop their mathematical understanding. The authors identify the following as five primary benefits:

1. Linked representations provide connections and visualization between numeric and visual representations. 
2. Immediate feedback allows students to check their understanding throughout the learning process, which prevents misconceptions. 
3. Interactive and dynamic objects move a noun (mathematics) to a verb (mathematize). 
4. Virtual manipulatives and applets offer opportunities to teach and represent mathematical ideas in nontraditional ways. 
5. Meeting diverse learners' needs is easier than with traditional methods. 

Enhancing Mathematical Learning in a Technology-Rich Environment
Teaching Children Mathematics / November 2008


Then there’s this from the Centre for Research in IT in Education (CRITE) Bray & Tangney (2013):

An examination of the extent to a which recent technological interventions in mathematics education make use of the educational opportunities offered by the technology and the appropriate pedagogical approaches to facilitate learning, focused on digital tools classified as follows:

• Outsourcing of Processing power 
• Dynamic Graphical Environments (DGE) 
• Purposefully Collaborative 
• Simulations/Programming 

These are the guiding principles that have the potential to form the basis of a 21st Century model for the integration of technology into mathematics education. An appropriate and innovative technology intervention in mathematics education should:

1. Be collaborative and team-based in accordance with a socially constructivist approach to learning. 
2. Exploit the transformative as well as the computational capabilities of the technology. 
3. Involve problem solving, investigation and sense-making, moving from concrete to abstract concepts. 
4. Make the learning experience interesting and immersive/real wherever possible, adapting the environment and class routine as appropriate. 
5. Use a variety of technologies (digital and traditional) suited to the task, in particular, non-specialist technology that students have to hand such as mobile phones and digital cameras. 
6. Utilise the formative and/or summative assessment potential of the technology intervention. 

Students often wait days or weeks after handing in classroom work before receiving feedback. In contrast, research suggests that learning proceeds most rapidly when learners have frequent opportunities to apply the ideas they are learning and when feedback on the success or failure of an idea comes almost immediately (Anderson, 1996).

The sheer autonomy that online tools like Khan Academy provide for students, is radical in and of itself, a radical departure from the traditional textbook centred, non adaptive model that anyone older than 40 would have experienced at school. As Jo Boaler explains, these tools allow students to 'become self-regulatory learners, so that they are not dependent upon following somebody else's plans':

Assessment for Learning
A4L is based upon the principle that students should have a full and clear sense of what they are learning, of where they are in the path towards mastery, and what they have to do to become successful. Students are given the knowledge and tools to become self-regulatory learners, so that they are not dependent upon following somebody else's plans, with little awareness of where they are going, or what they might be doing wrong. (My emphasis)

Boaler J (2009)

References

Aibhin Bray, Brendan Tangney Centre for Research in IT in Education (CRITE), School of Education and School of Computer Science & Statistics, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

Anderson JR, 1996. The architecture of cognition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, 1996.

Boaler J (2009). The elephant in the classroom: Helping children learn and love maths. Souvenir Press)

Bray, A., & Tangney, B. (2013, May). Mathematics, Technology Interventions and Pedagogy-Seeing the Wood from the Trees. In CSEDU (pp. 57-63).

Hiebert, James, Thomas P. Carpenter, Elizabeth Fennema, Karen C. Fuson, Diana Wearne, Hanlie Murray. Making Sense: Teaching and Learning Mathematics with Understanding. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1997.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). Principles and Standards for School Mathematics. Reston, VA: NCTM, 2000.

Oversold & Underused?

Or: It's not enough to change the tools, you have to change mindsets

(And if you don't change mindsets, nothing changes)

Oversold and Underused by Larry Cuban (2001)

I was inspired to write this post, by nothing more than a sense of bewilderment at how many of the teachers involved in the ongoing of working to see real reformation and revolution in terms of the potential of digital tools to transform learning are completely and utterly oblivious of this book, written ages ago (in computer terms anyway) and it's words of wisdom for anyone who wants to learn from the mistakes of the past...

"“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it” George Santanya

Alongside Fullan's Stratosphere, Cuban's seminal text on the challenges of tech integration is one of the most important, and insightful books on the subject of tech integration in schools I ever read. What is more astounding still is that Cuban's predictions back in 2001 continue to remain as true today as they ever were.

Of course if anything at all here resonates with you in the slightest you really should read the book. But, I realise that most teachers have better things to do than read books about tech integration, so with that in mind, I have condensed the entire book into my own version of 'Cliff's Notes', some 'Sean's notes', in a Google doc. Below, for the sake of brevity I present the sections that I believe are absolutely essential. Everything that follows are Cuban's words, anything I have to interject is included in [brackets], in addition most instances of emphasis, and headings to structure content are also mine.

Levels of Integration

p53
The Initial level is entry (first months of using computers). Then adoption (teachers generally use text, lecture, and conventional approaches but introduce lessons to teach students how to use keyboard, mouse, and elementary applications). After adoption, the next level of integration is adaptation, when most of the classroom time is still spent in conventional ways of teaching, but  students spend about one fourth or more of their time using computers for homework and daily work in class. The next level is appropriation, where the teacher is fully confident in the use of computers and integrates the technology regularly into daily routines. The highest level is invention, where teachers experiment with new ways of networking students and colleagues and use project-based instruction and interdisciplinary approaches.

These levels of integration with curriculum and instruction are drawn from Judith Sandholtz, Cathy Ringstaff, and David Dwyer, Teaching with Technology (1997).

...

Teacher's Attitudes toward Technology

p58
To fervent advocates of using technology in schools, no revolution had occurred in how the teachers organize or teach in these classrooms. Nor had there been dramatic or substantial changes in how teachers teach, or children learn. If anything, the addition of a computer center to the array of centers already in common use in these classrooms means that teachers had adapted an innovation to existing ways of teaching and learning that have dominated early childhood education for decades. Studies of computer use in other preschools and kindergartens across the country supported this observation.

p65
Despite the claims of technology promoters that computers can transform teaching and learning, the teachers we studied adapted computers to sustain, rather than transform, their philosophy that the whole child develops best when both work and play are cultivated and “developmentally appropriate” tasks and activities are offered.

p94
In interviews with the 21 teachers, 13 (just over 60 percent) said that their teaching had indeed changed because of their use of information technologies. [...] Of the 13 teachers who said that their teaching had changed, most referred to how they changed their preparation for teaching and how they used computers as another tool to teach. Only four said that they now organized their classes differently, lectured less, relied more on securing information from sources other than the textbook, gave students more independence, and acted more like a coach than a performer on stage. In short, they said that in using technology they had become more student-centered in their teaching; they had made fundamental changes in their pedagogy.

p97-98
Neither the age, experience, nor gender of teachers was a significant factor in our data. We found little difference in computer use between veteran and novice teachers, between those with and those without previous technological experience, or between men and women. Furthermore, we did not find technophobia to be a roadblock. Teachers at both schools called for more and better technology, were avid home users, and believed in the future ubiquity of computers in society.

p134
Teachers continually change their classroom practices. For example, some teachers quickly adopted computers for their classes, though most did not. Yet the teachers who decided to wait or choose to ignore the new technologies still engaged in changing other aspects of their teaching. Some may have decided to use a new textbook; others may have discovered a new way to do small-group work; and even others may have borrowed a technique from a colleague down the hall to press students to write more than a paragraph. These small changes are incremental and occur frequently among teachers. But these small adjustments are not what the promoters of computers had in mind. They wanted to transform teaching from the familiar teacher-centered approach to one that required the teacher to play a considerably different role. Using technology, the teacher would organize the classroom differently, giving students far more control over their learning (for example, working in teams on projects). Such changes would entail fundamental shifts in the teacher’s and students’ roles, the social organization of the classroom and power relationships between teacher and students.

The point, then, is that teachers change all the time. It is the kind of change that needs to be specified. Champions of technology wanted fundamental change in classroom practice. The teachers that we interviewed and observed, however, engaged mostly in incremental changes.

p137-138
In a previous study, I investigated teachers’ responses to the introduction of the technological innovations of film (1910’s-1940’s), radio (1920’-1940’s), and instructional television (1950’s -1980’s). Each of these highly touted electronic marvels went through a cycle of high expectations for reforming schools, rich promotional rhetoric, and new policies that encouraged broad availability of the machines, yet resulted in limited classroom use. [...] But logistics gave teachers a headache. Securing a film from the district’s audio-visual centre at just the right time for a particular lesson of having the radio or television broadcast available at only one time and not other times caused problems. Incompatibility between the existing curriculum and the offerings of films, radio, and television further reduced use.

p163
Since the nineteenth century, chalk and blackboard, pens, pencils, and textbooks have proven themselves over and over again to be reliable and useful classroom technologies. Teachers added other innovations such as the overhead projector, the ditto machine (later the copying machine), and film projector (later the VCR) because they too proved reliable and useful. But most teachers continue to see the computer as an add-on rather than as a technology integral to their classroom content and instruction.

p167 - 170
In the case of information technologies, teachers make choices by asking practical questions that computer programmers, corporate executives, or educational policymakers seldom ask. And the reason is straightforward enough: schools serve many and conflicting purposes in a democratic society. Teachers at all levels have to manage groups in a classroom while creating individual personal relationships; they have to cover academic content while cultivating depth of understanding in each student; they have to socialize students to abide by certain community values, while nurturing creative and independent thought. These complex classroom tasks, unlike anything software developers, policymakers and administrators have to face, require careful expenditure of a teacher’s time and energy. So in trying to reconcile conflicting goals within an age-graded high school or a bottom-heavy, research-driven university, teachers ask themselves down-to-earth questions in order to decide which electronic tools they will take to hand. Here are some of the questions teachers ask:

• Is the machine or software program simple enough for me to learn quickly?

• Is it versatile, that is, can it be used in more than one situation?

• Will the program motivate my students?

• Does the program contain skills that are connected to what I am expected to teach?

• Are the machine and software reliable?

• If the system breaks down, is there someone else who will fix it?

• Will the amount of time I have to invest in learning to use the system yield a comparable return in student learning?

• Will student use of computers weaken my classroom authority?


The maverick computer-using teachers I have identified sought to substantially change their instructional practices. They welcomed computers with open arms, took courses on their own, incessantly asked questions of experts, and acquired the earliest computers available at their school or for home use. They did so because they sensed that these machines fit their pedagogical beliefs about student learning and would add to the psychic rewards of teaching. Most of the innovators used computers to support existing ways of teaching. Others not only embraced the new technology, but also saw the machines as tools for advancing their student-centered agenda in transforming their classrooms into places where students could actively learn.

Thus, even within the constrained contexts in which teachers found themselves, teachers—as gatekeepers to their classrooms—acted on their beliefs in choosing what innovations to endorse, reflect, and modify.

p170

The introduction of computers into classrooms in Silicon Valley schools had a number of unexpected consequences. They are:

• Abundant availability of a “hard” infrastructure (wiring, machines, software) and a growing “soft” infrastructure (technical support, professional development) in schools in the late 1990’s has not led, as expected, to frequent or extensive teacher use of technologies for tradition-altering classroom instruction.

• Students and teachers use computers and other technologies more at home than at school.

• When a small percentage of computer-using teachers do become serious or occasional users, the—contrary to expectations—largely maintain existing classroom practices.

Slow Revolution

p171
Simply put, more and more teachers will become serious users of computers in their classrooms as the “hard” and “soft” infrastructures mature in schools. This explanation also suggests that uses of technology to preserve existing practices will continue among most teachers but give way slowly to larger numbers, especially as high schools and universities shift to more student-orientated teaching practices.

For the tiny band of teacher-users who have already transformed their classrooms into student-centered, active learning places, the slow-revolution explanation places them in the vanguard of a movement that will eventually convert all classrooms into technology-rich sites. Embedded in the explanation is a supreme confidence that with further work to secure better equipment, more training, and adequate technical support, as the years pass a critical mass of users will accrue, and the gravitational force of this group will draw most of the remaining teacher into technology’s orbit.

Depressing (but accurate) Predictions...

p175
I believe that core teaching and learning practices—shaped by internal and external contexts—would remain very familiar to those who would visit mid-twenty-first-century schools.

p177
Success in making new technologies available obscures, however, the divergent goals spurring the loosely tied coalition. Some promoters sought more productivity through better teaching and learning. Others wanted to transform teaching and learning from traditional textbook lessons to more learner-friendly, student-centered approaches. And some wanted students to become sufficiently computer literate to compete in a workplace that demanded high-level technological skills. Have these varied purposes been achieved in schools?

Beginning with computer or digital literacy, more and more students now take required keyboarding classes and courses in computers that concentrate on learning commonly used software. No consensus, however, exists on exactly what computer literacy is. Among computer advocates, definitions diverge considerably. Is it knowledge of and skill in programming? Is it being able to trouble-shoot computer lapses or software glitches? Is computer literacy knowing how to run popular software applications such as word processing programs and spreadsheets? Or is it simply completing a required course in computers? When we remember the many shifts in the meaning of computer literacy since the 1980's (recall how many experts once urged everyone to learn BASIC programming), any hope of securing agreement on a common definition appears slim. On such an elementary but crucial point, promoters offer little direction to computer-using teachers.

Some researchers have claimed that computer literacy, however defined, pays off in higher wages, further strengthening the educational rationale for using computers in schools. Yet schools can hardly claim full credit for students' growing technological literacy, when many also pick up computer knowledge and skills at home and in part-time jobs. The contribution that school courses and experiences have made to computer literacy and competitiveness in the workplace remains, at best, murky.

p178
Nor has a technological revolution in teaching and learning occurred in the vast majority of American classrooms. Teachers have been infrequent and limited users of the new technologies for classroom instruction. If anything, in the midst of the swift spread of computers and the Internet to all facets of American life, "e-learning" in public schools has turned out to be word processing and Internet searches. As important supplements as these have become to many teachers' repertoires, they are far from the project-based teaching and learning that some techno-promoters have sought. Teachers at all levels of schooling have used the new technology basically to continue what they have always done: communicate with parents and administrators, prepare syllabi and lectures, record grades, assign research papers. These unintended effects must be disappointing to those who advocate more computers in schools.

Securing broad access and equipping students with minimal computer knowledge and skills may be counted as successes. Whether such intended effects lead to high-wage jobs is unclear because the outcomes may be due more to graduates' skills picked up outside of school or to their paper credentials. When it comes to higher teacher and student productivity and a transformation in teaching and learning, however, there is little ambiguity. Both must be tagged as failures. Computers have been oversold and underused, at least for now.

p194
Yet technology will not go away, and educators have to come to terms with it as an educational tool. Understanding technology and the social practices that accompany it as a potent force in society is incumbent on both students and adults. From the telephone to the automobile to the computer, technologies carry with them the baggage of complex social practices and values that need to be explicitly examined.

How early childhood classrooms, high schools, and universities in Silicon Valley and across the nation responded to the last two decades of technological innovations is a case study in both stability and change. No one who attended schools in the 1950's and then visited schools in 2000 could fail to note many important differences in classroom practice. It is untrue that schools or teachers cannot change. Those visitors, however, would also note strong, abiding similarities between classrooms and teaching practices a half-century apart. Those similarities are due to the historical legacies and contexts. Ad hoc incremental changes have occurred often; fundamental changes have occurred seldom.

Although promoters of new technologies often spout the rhetoric of fundamental change, few have pursued deep and comprehensive changes in the existing system of schooling. The introduction of information technologies into schools over the past two decades has achieved neither the transformation of teaching and learning nor the productivity gains that a reform coalition of corporate executives, public officials, parents, academics, and educators have sought. For such fundamental changes in teaching and learning to occur there would have to have been widespread and deep reform in schools' organisational, political, social, and technological contexts.

I predict that the slow revolution in technology access, fuelled by popular support and continuing as long as there is economic prosperity, will eventually yield exactly what promoters have sought: every student, like every worker, will eventually have a personal computer. But no fundamental change in teaching practices will occur. I can imagine a time, for example, when all students use portable computer this way they use notebooks today. The teacher would post math assignments from the text and appropriate links on their Website, which students would access from home. Such access, however, will only marginally reshape the deeply anchored structures of the self-contained classroom, parental expectations of what teachers should be doing, time schedules, and teachers' disciplinary training that help account for the dominant teaching practices. The teacher in my example would use the laptops to sustain existing practices, including homework. In short, historical legacies in school structures and parents' and taxpayers' social beliefs about what schools should be doing, I believe, will trump the slow revolution in teaching practices. Those fervent advocates who seek to transform teaching and learning into more efficient, proactive work through active, student-centered classrooms will find wholesale access to computers ultimately disappointing.

Cuban L (2001). Oversold and underused: computers in the classroom. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

http://goo.gl/GtHxYK