Is Technology Integration a Choice?

(Photo credit: Dominik Schwind via Flickr.com under the following Creative Commons licence)

I have often heard this question asked, especially in the Edu-Twito-Blogosphere, "Is it okay for a teacher to choose not to integrate technology in their classroom?" Sometimes it is worded differently but the affect is the same. Questions like these miss the point.

In my post yesterday I wrote about how new technologies allow us to have more choices and chief among those is the choice not to use the new technologies. Kevin Kelly says that it is precisely because of the existence of new technologies that minimalist cultures such as the Amish can exist. In essence, the Amish benefit from the existence of the same technologies they reject and as long as the government does not oppress them with forced adoption they are free to self-repress. This self-repression is a big part of their identity. However, even though the Amish choose not to use certain technologies it doesn't mean that their lives are somehow not effected by them. The Amish may choose not to use cars but they still have to deal with other people driving automobiles on the roads, they still have to deal with the environmental damage done by other people's exhaust fumes, they still have to live with the noise pollution the internal combustion engine creates, but they also benefit from the trade goods that come from far away and the use of smooth paved roads. The Amish may choose not to use electricity but they still have to deal with it's effects and affordances in the world around them and they often benefit from other people's use. Choosing not to use a technology does not prevent it from impacting your life.

The same is true in schools with new and emerging forms of information technology. One school will give laptops to all students, another will give all students iPads, another might allow BYOD, and others might reject these tools and prohibit their use. The same is true with Internet filtering. Some schools might have an incredibly open filter and others might have an incredibly closed filter. Either way, both schools have to deal with the existence of Facebook. If your school chooses to limit technology use, greatly restrict the Internet, and ban students from using devices in the classroom, or if a teacher in a school chooses not to integrate technology in the classroom this doesn't mean that they are not effected by it. It only means that they have slowed the adoption process. You may ban Facebook in your school but you will still have to deal with the social dynamic it creates among students who use it at home. You can ban personal devices in the classroom but you still have to deal with the access students have to these devices outside your walls.

The Internet, as well as many other technologies, profoundly change what it is we need to teach students. Just as the calculator made it less necessary for students to need to be able to do complex calculations by hand allowing them to focus more on math concepts rather than math calculations, so too the existence of the Internet change the nature of what students need to know. You don't have to use the Internet in your classroom to be effected by this. And, you don't have to use technology to respond to this shift in the technium. Its existence in the world outside your classroom is enough to force you to do things differently.

Technology is not a gadget or gadgets, it is the embodiment of ideas. One doesn't have to have the physical manifestation in their classroom to integrate the ideas. Technology integration includes at the most fundamental level a shift in the structure of the environment. That environment consists of far more than the things we use. It consists of how we interact with one another, it consists of the content of our discussions, and it consists of the the curriculum we employ. The greater shift is among these more fundamental elements of the technology of school. In this way it is entirely possible for me to be integrating technology in my school without ever having one device or allowing students access to online resources. I can repress those things while still doing a very good job of reacting and responding to their existence. Its not about the gadgets, it is about the technology.

That act of reacting and responding to changes in the technium is technology integration and it doesn't matter how many devices, gizmos, and gadgets I have at my disposal. This is what many schools who try 1:1 programs don't immediately understand. You can't just take the same old school, with the same old curriculum, with the same old bell schedule, with the same old assessment tools, and just add on technology. Technology integration is not an add-on. Technology integration is an ecological change and it will happen whether or not you choose to bury your head in the sand. You can choose to ban devices, ban websites, not use computers, repress the technology, but you can't escape it. If you choose not to use then you still have to make changes to remain relevant in light of the existence of these other technologies in the world. In this way all schools are 1:1.

All schools and all teachers integrate technology. What matters is which technologies we choose to use and which ones we choose not to use. Technology can be used to liberate or it can be used to oppress. We need to be aware of when we are using technology and when it is using us. We need to be aware of when we are integrating a technology that improves learning and when we are integrating a technology that simply makes schooling more efficient. If you have used technology to increase testing, maximize surveillance, and streamline the delivery of a scripted curriculum you are integrating technology but you have done so at the expense of student learning. Not all technology integration is equal. And when the use of any of these technologies is mandated, when the option to opt-out is prohibited, their forced adoption is oppressive and destructive. Conversely, if you use technology to foster creativity, to expand student access to information beyond someone else's curriculum, when you use technology to empower students to take control of their own personal learning, when you use technology to make visible the abstract and the complicated so students can focus on the core ideas, when you use technology to empower students to think critically about what they are learning and think critically about the world around them you have integrated technology in a way that is profoundly liberating. The question is not whether or it is okay for a teacher not to integrate technology, the question is what technologies are appropriate for a teacher to use.

Where have I been? And other things. Part 2: What I've Been Doing

So, earlier this week I finally got off my chest the big dilemma that has been bothering me and keeping me from writing for nearly two months. In that post I more or less explained the conditions that have been surrounding my career lately and how they relate to bigger political issues regarding equity, school choice, revenue, segregation, and cultural identity. What I'd like to write about today is what I have been doing.



So, I was hired this summer by the Community School of Excellence (CSE) in St. Paul, MN, a Hmong Immersion charter school, as their technology coordinator. In that role I oversee and advise on major technology decisions for the school and help our network technician prioritize his work. I also teach middle school technology for part of the day. Since my role is administrative my job started earlier than the teachers. I had about a month before they arrived to get a feel for the place, get to know the support staff, and plan for the school year.

When I was first hired our director told me that she wanted CSE to become known as one of the more progressive schools in the region with regard to technology. She then told me that her goal is for CSE to be a 1:1 laptop school for grades 3-8 within the next few years and that she was thinking of starting this year with 8th grade. I was asked to research our options for computers, draft a policy for student use, and do an assessment of our network infrastructure so we can adjust to the increased Internet use 1:1 would demand.

So, I got right to work. My first priority was to get the policy done. I know the research on 1:1 laptop programs is inconclusive at best with regard to whether they boost achievement. The research that is out there seems to suggest that students in 1:1 laptop schools that were allowed to take their computers home at night did slightly better than those in schools where the laptops were locked up overnight. It is unclear whether the increase we seen in test scores among those who bring laptops home has anything to do with greater unstructured access to the computer or whether it is because those schools with policies letting students take their computers home tended to be in more affluent communities to begin with.

I figured we could test this theory pretty easy. CSE has a 90% free and reduced lunch rate and to my knowledge I have not heard of any other urban 1:1 laptop school with that high of a poverty rate that let students bring the devices home. At the very least, we have the opportunity to close the digital divide for the one remaining demographic still without access. For years the digital divide has been defined as a divide in access to computers and the Internet but as S. Craig Watkins has shown, today that digital divide has nearly vanished and has been replaced by a production gap. Computing devices, whether they be computers, iPods, or cell phones, are nearly ubiquitous in this country with all demographic groups except recent immigrants. That is the majority of my clientele at CSE. Most of these students and their families have immigrated to the USA within the last 5-10 years. Most are not yet fluent in English and only about 1/4 of them have a computer at home. Our goal with this 1:1 Laptop Policy is to close both gaps. The policy will allow students access to a computer at home and our approach to how we have students use the laptops in the school will address the production gap.

So, our policy document, much like most policy work out there, has been derived from existing policy out there. In fact, I have to say that I owe a huge thank you to the Van Meter Schools because our laptop use agreement is most closely derived from their policy but tweeked to meet our needs. Thank you Van Meter! (click here to see the policy translated into Hmong).

So, next thing was to find a laptop. I wanted something small and durable yet more powerful than a netbook. I definitely didn't want to go the iPad route, especially with closing the Production Gap as one of our goals. Last year at Harambee and Crosswinds we purchased labs of Classmate PCs. These are small computers built specifically for education. They are pretty powerful with 2 gb ram and 160gb hard drives. They have a touch screen but also use a stylus and the screen rotates 180 degrees and flips over to convert the Classmate into a tablet. The other cool thing the Classmate PC has is a built-in webcam that swivels. I fell in love with this device last year and knew this was what I wanted my students at CSE to have in their hands. I called Equus, the company which distributes these machines, and got them to give us a 20% discount for volume pricing bringing the price for these computers down to $440 each.

In the meantime, my network technician and I did some research on how better to configure the network to handle the greater load. Our school building is actually two old three-story Catholic school buildings attached by a hallway. All the walls, floors, and ceilings are made of thick concrete making Wifi work in the space a real challenge. A school I worked at two years ago, Goodhue Public Schools, has a similar setup so we took a field trip down there to meet with my colleagues there and pick their brains about how we could improve our system.

So, we made the modifications expecting an additional 80 laptops to be accessing the network every day. Then, our director decided to drop a bomb on us, "Great News! I've decided to give all middle school kids grades 6-8 a laptop. Isn't this wonderful?" It is wonderful and exciting but this meant that we couldn't guarantee that the work we did on the network would be able to manage an additional 160 machines. So, I ordered 220 Classmate PCs and moved on to phase 2 of the getting-ready process.

We have the added benefit/curse of having an almost entirely new middle school staff this year. Almost all of the teachers from last year left and moved on to other jobs or moved down to work in the elementary school. This presents hefty challenges but it also presents new opportunities. I am sure this is one of the main reasons why our school director decided to give all middle school kids laptops all at once. This also means that for this group of teachers any policy change will not seem like a change at all so now is the time to make changes. One change we felt necessary to make more effective use of a 1:1 program but also free my colleague of managing an Exchange server was to transition the organization to Google Apps for Education. This way we could give students email accounts and for those under 13 we could restrict them. This move also fixed some delivery problems we were having with our old Exchange server.

Google recommends a 6 week migration period when moving an organization to Google Apps. We did our in 2 weeks and yes it was a little bit more work than I thought it would be. And yes, things are working out pretty good now.


The laptops came the second week of school. Before passing them out to students I wanted to make sure we set them up with a nice selection of open source software and freeware that the students could both use for school and that they could discover on their own. Setting up 220 laptops took some time but we had them ready to deploy by our deadline of September 18th.

It's been a few weeks now since we first launched our 1:1 program. I wish I had more time to work with staff but we have been fairly successfully taking a Michael Fullan approach and establishing a culture of sharing, training each other how to do things when they need to be done and pushing forward knowing there will be obstacles and working together as a team to overcome them. Also, we have not had one laptop stolen or broken while in student-possession at home (we've had a few break at school though). This makes me seriously question the logic of other 1:1 districts with high poverty rates that make the students leave the computer at school. At home they are better taken care of. Also, as luck had it, Comcast announced shortly before we planned our deployment that they were going to offer a discount on high-speed internet for low-income families. Many of our student's families have taken advantage of this.

I'll write more about my curriculum in a later post and how I hope to address the production gap with it.

Papert vs. Shaw on cost of putting computers in schools #edtech

Perhaps one of the most heated parts of the 1995 Congressional Hearing on Technology in Education was this clip where David Shaw interupts Seymour Papert insisting that 1:1 computing in schools is not a good idea economically because "80-90% of the cost of a computer is not a capital expenditure but rather maintenance," and that the functional life expectancy of computers is, "2-3 years." Papert nearly pulls his hair out insisting that, "kids could learn to maintain (or even build) the computers." He also points out that Shaw is, "trying to cram new ideas into an old framework."

What is most interesting to me, 15 years later, is that Papert testifies that it would only increase school budgets 2-3% to place a computer in each kids hands at a time when computers cost $1,000. Adjust for inflation and take today's price tag of $400 or less for a quality netbook (that does exponentially more than the Mac or PC of 1995) and that figure must be more like .5-1.5%



On this issue, who was right? Papert or Shaw?

Cellphones the new Computer?

[cross-post from iTeach Mobile]

On Friday, the Washington Post ran an article about cellphones in schools titled, "Teachers begin using cell phones for class lessons." This article nicely sums up the issue/debate regarding cellphones in the classroom. Here are a couple excerpts:

"At Husfelt's district, seven students were recently arrested after they got into a fight on campus that he says was instigated through text messages....In other parts of the country, teens have been arrested for "sexting" - sending indecent photographs taken and sent through their cell phones. Students also use the devices to cheat: In one poll, more than 35 percent of teens admitted cheating with a cell phone."

"Teachers who have incorporated cell phones into their classes say that most students abide by the rules. They note that cheating and bullying exist with or without the phones, and that once they are allowed, the inclination to use them for bad behavior dissipates."

Additionally, on Wednesday, Will Richardson posted a thought provoking entry on his blog Weblog-ed titled, "I Don’t Need Your Network (or Your Computer, or Your Tech Plan, or Your…)" that addresses this issue. He also, much more eloquently, poses the same question I posted in this forum a couple weeks ago. Will's response to the issues raised in the Washington Post article is basically that we need to start looking at cellphones as the next generation of personal computers. In fact, there are companies right now that are developing laptop-like devices that turn your iPod Touch, iPhone, or Blackberry into a laptop with full-size screen and keyboard. The issue of cellphones in classrooms then, is more an issue of how we deliver instruction in a 1:1 computing environment. Our focus, he argues, needs to be more on curriculum than technology. Here are some excerpts from Will's post:

"We’ll soon be seeing what Steve Rubel is calling a “dumb shell” that takes the book idea in that video and creates a netbook sized (at least) keyboard and screen that your phone simply plugs into." "At what point do we get out of the business of troubleshooting and fixing technology? Isn’t “fixing your own stuff” a 21st Century skill?" "95% of the curriculum currently being delivered in those classrooms would waste 95% of the potential in the room that we could glean from that access."


"All too often we get hung up on the technology question, not the curriculum question. Here in New Jersey, every district has to submit a three year “Technology Plan” and as you can guess, most of them are about how many Smart Boards to install or how wireless access will be expanded. Very, very little of it is about how curriculum changes when we have anytime, anywhere learning with anyone in the world. Why aren’t we planning for that?"

I know that these are new and revolutionary ideas but I think we need to wrap our minds around them real soon. What are your thoughts? Is this truly the way we are headed? With 71% of our students owning cellphones and given the short life-span of these devices, how long before all of these are smartphones? What changes will we have to make in curriculum, policy, and teaching methods? What are the consequences of not doing something?

Education Stimulus Package

In a recent New York Times op-ed Paul Krugman calls for a new stimulus package aimed at our nation's schools. "If you had to explain America’s economic success with one word, that word would be 'education.'" The problem is, if the federal government just gives this money to the states they will use it to fill cracks just like the last round. I have another idea that I thought I would air out here to see if it holds water.

Many many schools, dare I say most schools, would like to have 1:1 laptop programs if money were not a critical factor. The biggest problem with 1:1 initiatives so far has been the total cost of ownership for school districts. Of which most schools report maintenance as the biggest problem. Some 1:1 schools have even been seriously considering abandoning these initiatives because of the financial stress they put on the school budget. Connect With Stillwater Public Schools recently ran this post that poses the question of whether or not a 1:1 program can be accomplished with student-owned computers:

Student-owned technology: Is there a place for it in our schools?

If the government wants to do another federal stimulus that would greatly benefit education perhaps it would be more wise to do it as a federal tax credit for families with students in k-12 or post-secondary to purchase laptops. Schools could publish their minimum requirements and suggested models and families could either use the money to buy laptops for students that meet or exceed that requirement. A small amount of federal aid could then be awarded to schools that are not yet wireless to install necessary infrastructure to make the student-owned laptops useful. The only thing a school would have to do to become a 1:1 laptop school is adjust their policy.

Since this would be done through a tax credit, states would not be able to divert the money to other budget issues. And, since the computers would be student owned, schools would not be responsible for maintenance and repair. Schools could then apply technology dollars to teacher professional development, curriculum development, or other necessary uses instead of maintaining student use computers and outfitting labs. Additionally, this would be an economic stimulus because the money spent would go back into the economy to help boost the tech sector.

Mandating Participation - What Exactly Are We Trying To Achieve

I overheard a conversation the other day that I just can't get out of my head. The conversation revolved around how we might get more students to participate in extra curricular activities at school. One solution that was tossed around was to extend the lunch hour and require students to participate in something at that time. This really bothered me at first but I did not know why at the time. It took some reflection for me to come to this conclusion. The problem is not that this would get more students participating in extra curricular activities or that there would be some benefit in their participation but rather that this solution would negate the fundamental positive benefits extra curricular activities provide. This issue gets at the heart of motivation and encompasses a whole host of other external factors that schools don't have control over.

The argument is that studies have shown a positive correlation between participation in extra curricular activities and academic performance. Therefore, if we require all students to participate in at least one activity we will see increases in their academic performance. To me this is logic follows the same lines as is described in this clip from South Park:



What we need to ask is WHY is there a positive correlation? I suspect the active variable here is not participation but rather what leads a student to become involved in extra curricular activities. I see two main factors involved here:

1. Intrinsic Motivation
2. Involved Parental Structure

Many students participate in these activities because they want to. These students do so out of enjoyment of the activities the extra curricular clubs and teams provide. Mandating their participation will turn the motivation extrinsic because there will be consequences for non participation. Of course, many students will still find these activities intrinsically motivating but the presence of those who are there for purely extrinsic reasons will diminish the quality of the experience for everyone and for them their participation will not likely lead to further academic success.

There are a fair number of students who participate in extra curricular activities for extrinsic reasons already. Usually these reasons involve pressure from others. In this case this pressure is positive. Often parents will require students to participate in something. My parents made me take band, participate in at least one school sport, and participate in at least one school club. I dreaded some of these activities as a high school student but I willfully participated in others for pure intrinsic reasons. The benefit here for the student motivated extrinsically is the strong parental structure and the involvement of parents in a student's life. If it is not a parent providing this extrinsic motivation it might be peer pressure that when applied in this way has a positive effect. The resultant academic success tied to extra curricular involvement for these students is not the result of involvement in the activity but rather the support structure that student has.

If we want to increase student achievement by looking at how those students who participate in extra curricular activities have excelled we need to dig deeper. We need to find ways to support students who find intrinsic reasons to be involved in positive activities. We also need to find ways of strengthening a student's support structure. I believe the key here is community building, not mandating participation. Just because one person got profits after collecting underpants doesn't mean that collecting underpants led to profits.

I think this same analogy applies to 1:1 laptop initiatives. This one has been even more difficult for me to conclude given my obvious bias for technology enhanced learning environments. I love my laptop, I love the internet, and I love what I can do with technology. When I was a classroom art teacher I loved seeing what my students could do with technology and I loved the positive results I saw because of it.

Many school districts are jumping into the 1:1 initiative. There have been studies done that show the positive result of implementing a program like this. However, I suspect this is similar to the debate about extra curricular activities and similar to the underpants analogy. I believe it would be foolhardy for any teacher, school, or district to say, "That school went to 1:1 and saw gains so we need laptops too." Is it the technology that produces these gains? I suspect the technology enables or rather encourages other changes to occur in the classroom that are the direct correlatives to academic gains.

When each student has a laptop or access to a computer in a 1:1 setting the teacher can plan instruction or rather learning activities that involve more independently tailored tasks and assessments. Having more tools to work with promotes a constructivist approach to learning. Effective 1:1 teachers are having students solve real world problems using digital tools to create, manipulate, solve, and innovate. They are approaching curriculum from a project-based inquiry model and sharing their time with students as co-learner, not "sage on the stage."

However, just plopping laptops in each classroom does not a constructivist teacher make. I believe for this to truly be effective the pedagogical shift has to occur first. Technology clearly enhances PBL in a way that academic gains can be measured. Technology enhances a behaviorist classroom by making presentations more pretty and entertaining but not really engaging. I feel engage is often equated to entertain by educators. The truth is that true engagement, the type that leads to knowledge construction and true understanding, is not entertainment. True engagement often is not fun. We need to take a close look at our practice and decide for ourselves how we will best engage our students in authentic learning and then decide what the tools are that will make this happen. It may vary well be that we will need a 1:1 laptop environment to achieve these goals but the machine is just a tool to assist in the process. The real actor in this is pedagogy. If the teachers in a school are not ready to adopt a constructivist pedagogy the money spent on 1:1 will be wasted and I fear will actually show a negative correlation with academic achievement. For those schools it might be best to start small. Place 5-10 computers in each classroom before jumping in and doing a 1:1. Otherwise we are just collecting underpants and hoping to get profits.