The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Classroom technology also vital to college readiness
DeKalb buying computers to help prepare students.
While computer use seems routine for social-media savvy teenagers, DeKalb County school offifficials heard that many of their graduates arrive at college without knowing enough about computer technology and classroom programs.
To better prepare students, the district is planning a $27 million purchase of more than 70,000 desktops and laptops so students at every grade level can have one to take home. The money comes from the county’s educational sales tax, and the computers will be distributed over two years.
The district learned from several university partners, including Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia, that students from the DeKalb County School District struggle with classroom technology when they get to college, often because they’ve not been exposed to what’s being used currently.
“That’s kind of my motivation, to get that equity gap,” said Gary Brantley, the district’s chief information offifficer. “They can’t enter college without a PC, and knowing how to operate it.
“We have a lot of kids — especially in our underserved regions as it related to those who have the ability to do for themselves — who are coming out not really understanding how to do basic tasks, Power Point presenta- tions, word processing,” he said. “They’re unable to live with (technology).”
Mauise Ricard III, Morehouse College’s interim vice president of information technology and chief information officer, said a clear gap exists with students entering his institution, mostly because the students have little or no experience with the teaching technology used on campus.
“Most students aren’t that far advanced,” he said. “There are tools out there they’ve not been exposed to.”
For DeKalb, it’s important because nearly two-thirds of its 5,267 students who graduated in 2015 went on to some sort of postsecondary education program immediately after graduation. About 17 percent of the students immediately began a job. District officials could not account for 22 percent of the students.
Data also showthat about 27 percent of those students took remedial math and 14 percent took remedial English courses upon beginning their postsecondary studies.
The district recently announced its Digital Dreamers initiative, a two-year program providing students with laptops and internet access through wireless hotspots. Eligible middle- and highschool students will receive hotspots donated by Sprint and Columbia University. The program guarantees students have access to the district’s online learning resources.
There is evidence that using technology also has its drawbacks.
An article published in the Economics of Education Review-earlier this year found that using laptops harmed the grades for students, especially male and low-performing students. They were scoring half a grade lower than students who took notes using pen and paper.
The article reported that “both laptop-required and laptop-prohibited courses predict that laptops significantly worsen academic performance ,” the report states.
Despite such worries, technology has found its way to the forefront in education lesson plans as school dis-tricts work to increase stu-dent achievement.
According to data com-piled from various sources by PracTutor, an online math and language arts learning portal, 77 percent of teach-ers use the internet for instruction, more than half of schools have a wireless net-work and about 40 percent of teachers report students use computers during class-room instruction.
At Gwinnett County Schools, all teachers have virtual classrooms and pages for students to browse for coursework. It's part of the district's eClass (Digital Con-tent Learning Assessment and Support System) initiative. “What we’re trying to do is extend the work done in the classroom through technology ,” said Tricia Kennedy, executive director for the eClass initiative. “There is definitely appropriate use for technology as a tool. We do allow our students to bring their personal devices to use onour secure Wi-Fi network. We feel like it’s really, really important for students to use the technology so they’re comfortable with and able to use it.”
In recent months, Sprint has worked with several metro Atlanta school districts, including DeKalb, to offer wireless hotspots to students. The company announced this week it was giving smartphones, tablets and wireless hotspots to 1,500 Atlanta Public Schools students, part of its ]Million Project to close the "home-work gap" for students who don't have Internet access at home and struggle to com-plete class work that requires online research.
Ricard, at Morehouse, mentioned summer pro-grams where students are given access to some of the tools to give them a better understanding of what would be used once the school year commences.
"Most students, from an instructional level, are up to speed with your Face-books and Twitters," he said. "But when it comes to Black-board, a learning manage-ment system, they're not used to using that curric-ulum."