Technology complements, not supplements
(Last of two parts)
AT THE TURN of the millennium, Stanford University professor emeritus Larry Cuban studied computer use in several preschools and kindergartens, high schools and universities in Silicon Valley. He concluded that generally, computers were “oversold and underused,” with few lasting benefits.
More than a decade later, Cuban had not changed his mind. So far, “cumulative evidence” regarding the effectiveness of digital devices in learning was “missing in action.”
“Occasional studies that do show promising results for new technologies are dragged in to cover the near nakedness of research, much like a fig leaf, to justify the high costs of these new devices in the face of little evidence,” said Cuban in his blog in March 2012.
“The fact remains that no one knows for sure whether the new hardware and software appearing in schools work,” he continued. “They are all beta versions, with glitches that teachers and students end up discovering.”
In 2000, policy expert Kirk Johnson of The Heritage Foundation studied data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress of fourth and eighth graders who used computers in class at least once a week and compared their performance to students who used computers less than once aweek.
He found that students who used computers more often did not do better than those who did not.
“The use of computers in the classroom may not play a significant role in explaining reading ability,” Johnson said. “Thus, dedicating large amounts of federal tax dollars to the purchase of computer hardware, software and teacher training could crowd out other worthwhile education expenditures on, for example, new textbooks, music programs, vocational education and the arts.
“[I do] not suggest that there is no place for computers in the classroom … [But] computers may not have the effect on academic achievement in reading that some might expect, even when they are used by welltrained instructors.”
In 2006, University of Chicago economists Austan Goolsbee and Jonathan Guryan studied how successful E-Rate was in providing Internet access to public schools. E-Rate, a federal program, subsidizes public schools for computers and the Internet.
The economists focused on California, where, because of E-Rate, the percentage of schools with Internet access grew from 55 to 85 percent in two to three years.
The researchers measured student scores in the Stanford Achievement Test in six subjects: mathematics, science, reading, language, spelling and social studies.
They found that the huge investment in computers had no effect on student performance in any of the six subjects after a year. After two years, student performance even went down!
The economists concluded in the journal Education Next that while E-Rate helped almost every school in the country get hooked up to the Internet, “the Internet itself, though, seems unlikely to be a silver bullet for solving the problems of America’s public schools.”
No more laptops
In May 2007, The New York Times ran the front-page story, “Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops.”
It was found that students in Liverpool Central School District outside Syracuse, New York, used laptops to cheat on tests, surf porn sites and hack into businesses. Technical glitches occurred regularly, maintenance costs increased and the net often froze when many students logged on, not exactly for educational purposes.
And “after seven years, there was no evidence it had any impact on student achievement—none,” Mark Lawson, Liverpool High School board president, told the Times.
“The teachers were telling us, when there’s a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the way,” he said. “It’s a distraction to the educational process.”
Especially in math. Instead of laptops, teachers preferred to use graphing calculators, having found the latter much more useful. Of course, nothing beats plain pencil and paper.
In subjects such as history, laptops were more helpful. Students used them to do research but their teacher, Tom Mc- Carthy, reminded them not to overlook books, newspapers and academic journals.
“The art of thinking is being lost,” McCarthy told the Times, “because people can type in a word, find a source and think that’s the be all end all.”
Quick fix
The Texas Center for Educational Research examined state test scores between schools where students received laptops and those where students did not, and got mixed results.
When six of the schools in the study were offered laptops in 2007, they declined.
“Such disappointments are the latest example of how technology is often embraced by philanthropists and political leaders as a quick fix, only to leave teachers flummoxed about how best to integrate the new gadgets into curriculums,” said The New York Times.
Several schools in the United States are giving up or giving back their laptops. Matoaca High School in Virginia phased out laptops after concluding that students did not make any academic gains years after using laptops.
Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts eliminated its entire laptop program after it found that more energy was spent on repairing them than on training teachers to teach with them.
Everett A. Rea Elementary School in Costa Mesa, California, gave away 30 new laptops to another school after new teachers did not do much with the technology.