more on Computing technology in our schools

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
Date: July 3, 2006 12:38:26 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: lauren () vortex com
Subject: Re: [IP] Computing technology in our schools


Dave,

It's even worse than Tom suggests.  Computerization at schools is in
some cases wasting enormous amounts of valuable teacher time from an
administrative standpoint.

Case in point: The Los Angeles Unified School District.  A friend of
mine has been teaching middle school math here in L.A. for decades,
and reports that the LAUSD has now implemented what can only be
described as a frustrating and wasteful system.  While the system
has some positive aspects, the negatives are driving teachers
crazy.  Every middle and high school teacher is required to take
time out during *every* class to enter detailed attendance
information into a central system via a classroom PC, while students
are present.  If students come in late or their attendance status
changes in other ways, teachers have to update the system yet again.

Teachers are not permitted to wait until the end of the day (when
student supervision wouldn't be an issue) to enter the attendance
data.  If teachers fail to take the time out from each class for
this time-wasting chore, they are harrassed by school office
personnel demanding compliance.

Too much teaching time is flushed down the toilet even under the
best of conditions in this environment.  But to make matters worse,
my friend reports that the system (called "ISIS/LAUSDMAX") is often
slow, and is subject to frequent freezes and inaccessibility,
meaning that teachers have to waste even *more* classroom time in a
desperate attempt to avoid retribution from the powers that be.

As further icing on the distasteful cake, this system must now also
be used by LAUSD teachers to submit grades, comments, and related
information.  Not surprisingly, these functions have problems as
well, frequently losing submitted data, and frustrating teachers who
had meticulously entered the info with a great deal of effort --
assuming they are able to access the system at all, either locally or
remotely from home, which is apparently another constant problem.

As you can imagine, the reported frustration and time wasted in this
system is very disheartening to teachers.  It's made even worse by
the enforcement of a thirty-minute login limit -- enforced whether
there is activity or not -- which means that many teachers are
forced to login as many as a dozen times per day or more, fighting
the system sluggishness each time.

Now, here's the real clincher.  After all of this work has been done
by teachers to enter attendance data in realtime during classes --
eating up time that otherwise could have been used for teaching --
the saga isn't finished yet.  Once a week, each teacher receives a
dense *printout* of all the attendance data that they had submitted
to the system over the prior week.  They are then required to
*manually* crosscheck and certify the data on the printout against
the traditional paper rollbook that they are also required to
maintain.  So both manual and computerized systems are operating in
parallel, for even more work and wasted time.

My friend the math teacher estimates that given the number of
teachers in the district and the number of physical printout sheets
that must be certified and individually signed, that approximately
400K (!) sheets of paper are used just for this aspect of the
supposedly computerized system.  So much for our forests.

There's even more, but I think you get the idea.

Remember, the school days are the happy days.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren () vortex com or lauren () pfir org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
   - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, IOIC
   - International Open Internet Coalition - http://www.ioic.net
Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
DayThink: http://daythink.vortex.com

  - - -

> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Tom Fairlie <tfairlie () frontiernet net>
> Date: July 3, 2006 10:28:04 AM EDT
> To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Computing technology in our schools
>
> Hi Dave,
> [Long post, sorry]
>
> There's a very important issue that I'm concerned about and I'm
> hoping that perhaps you or some of the IP'ers can weigh in with
> their opinion.
>
> The problem I have is with the use of computer technology in
> primary and secondary schools. First, though, is what I love
> about it: teachers can now post grades online and reply to
> questions via email. These two developments make a parent's
> job much easier in many ways.
>
> However, I take issue with the fact that computer technology
> seems to have been sold to school districts with the promise
> that it would either revolutionize teaching or at least help today's
> student to avoid missing out on a good career. The problem,
> as far as I can see, is that the computerization of our nation's
> schools has instead crippled them.
>
> First of all, the quality of the teachers themselves does not
> appear to have increased at all over the past 20 years. In fact,
> I have seen many useful teaching methods (e.g., diagramming
> sentences) dumped over this same period because they were
> deemed "inappropriate" in some way (too hard?). Few teachers
> are savvy technologists and most have little understanding of what
> computers can do in the first place, let alone leverage them  
> effectively
> in the classroom. At best, the quality of teachers is a wash.
>
> Next, we have the increased reliance on computers. For example,
> my daughter's high school actually *required* that every parent
> purchase a $100+ graphing calculator. I hate to sound like a
> fuddy duddy, but I checked out her assignments regularly and
> never once saw any hint of linear analysis or anything that would
> even remotely require such horsepower. Classrooms that use
> computers regularly -- most likely 7-12th grade --put little
> emphasis on writing, printing, drawing, or any other manual
> skill. Composition is still being stressed, but most computers
> now catch spelling and grammatical mistakes so effortlessly,
> that the lesson is mostly lost on the student.
>
> Anecdote: When I was in college, my Composition 101 teacher
> required us to type out our papers on mimeograph paper and he
> wouldn't accept any errors whatsoever. That meant many long
> nights with a razor blade, scraping the ink off of the stencil. In
> retrospect, a very good way to be a careful speller and typist.
>
> Anyhow, the last problem I have is with the cost. While class
> sizes go up and up (a friend of mine had her daughter in a
> kindergarten class that was just shy of 30 kids), the schools
> make more and more budget room for their IT department.
> School districts are cutting art and music classes everywhere,
> while they dedicate funds toward CPU upgrades and network
> support staff.
>
> I am an engineer by trade and the computerization of schools
> seemed, to me, like a no-brainer 20 years ago. I also used to
> agree that teaching basic computer skills is a career-enabler.
> However, the more I think about this the more I believe that
> we, as a country, have fallen into a typical capitalist trap--
> i.e., that we've taken the advice of the IT industry (who is
> selling a product) rather than our teachers.
>
> I know there's a lot of anecdotes out there about how savvy
> the current generation of kids is about technology. However,
> I believe that this is almost entirely a function of their personal
> life (home PC, cell phone, etc.) rather than their education.
> I can safely say that the engineering graduates I've worked
> with since the 1980s to the present aren't getting any brighter.
> Recent graduates that I've talked to in other fields (business,
> liberal arts) seem to confirm this; they didn't care much about
> the technical side of their education and learned most of what
> they need on their own by using email, building websites,
> installing Linux on the family's old PC, etc.
>
> In the end, I think that we, as a nation, have been sold a bill
> of goods by the PC and networking industries. Our school
> districts have probably spent over a billion dollars upgrading
> their institutions with computing technology that is probably
> 10-100x more than what they need, and probably half as useful
> as what they want. Now, taxpayers are starting to vote down
> important referenda that might reduce class size or pay teachers
> more because they can't afford to. Very sad, when you consider
> the money that *could* have been applied here if they didn't
> instead need more PCs just to email around notes for our
> kids' Friday take-home folders.
>
> Please, I'd love to hear others' thoughts.
>
> Tom Fairlie
>
>
>
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