Nouns keep turning into verbs lately and let’s science, I say. In particular, I’d like to follow up more vigorously on the studies that suggest laptops and notepads are not improving learning outcomes. Research suggesting that our headlong leap into technological learning may not be fulfilling expectations has been cropping up in the news for awhile. But those studies don’t seem to be impacting school district behavior much. Maybe more science will help.
A report came out in 2015 from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), examining the effect of school technology on international test results. Using the Pisa tests taken in more than 70 countries, the report claimed that frequent use of computers in classrooms does not produce the results many advocates of technology expect, but is frequently associated with lower test results instead. The OECD report claimed that “education systems which have invested heavily in information and communications technology have seen ‘no noticeable improvement’ in Pisa test results for reading, mathematics or science.”
The results of this study ought to slow or stop our headlong rush into 1:1 laptops as a possible method for closing the achievement gap. According to the study, “there is no single country in which the internet is used frequently at school by a majority of students and where students’ performance improved”. More crucially, among “the seven countries with the highest level of internet use in school, … three experienced “significant declines” in reading performance – Australia, New Zealand and Sweden – and three more …”stagnated” – Spain, Norway and Denmark.”
Technology is no panacea. I refer readers to https://www.bbc.com/news/business-34174796, an article by Sean Coughlan from September of 2015, for more details from this report. The articles shows greater and lesser successes from adding technology.
What I would like to see: Let’s find large districts with at least two schools that produce highly similar spring test results. In one school, ban all student electronics except for keyboarding classes in a computer lab. (Keyboarding has too much utility to sacrifice to my experiment.) In the other school, continue with laptops, software, and possible loose phone policies. In the lower-tech school, students will take notes on lined paper and assignments will be done and turned in on paper. I recommend we do this across multiple large districts. The more data in this experiment, the better.
Come spring, we can look at results to see which group did better, assuming either group outperforms its counterpart. I predict the paper and pencil classrooms will do at least as well as their techy counterparts — and for far less money. If I am right, then IT’S TIME TO STOP REFLEXIVELY BUYING NEW TECHNOLOGY AND SOFTWARE. Instead of throwing funds at laptop carts, districts might invest their limited funds in more tutors, activity busses, infrastructure repair and better classroom climate control, for example.
Eduhonesty: I see advantages in laptops and robust software programs. I also see an enormous amount of time wasted on secret games and other activities. As a retired teacher/sub, I am more likely to see those games and YouTube diversions because kids often try to take advantage of the sub. In unfamiliar rooms, I have to close a few Chromebooks and “X” a few games or videos before they stop most days. But kids have been switching activities when the teacher approached since laptops entered the classroom. How much wasted time is too much wasted time?
As to phones, yes, they have calculators. Yes, they have search engines. But given the temptations of social media, phones should be kept in lockers or other secure sites.
We should not have to science this topic. The data available ought to be sufficient to help us make choices by now. But I keep walking into classes filled with laptops that are not working the way they are supposed to work.
Here is my admittedly anecdotal observation: Those high-achieving kids at the top of the class are reading their Newsela Paleontology articles. They are taking the quizzes the teacher assigned, providing the writing sample, and doing the critical thinking activity that is to be turned in for a grade. But despite regular redirection the kids at the bottom of the class and the more distractible kids in the middle are doing… something else, at least until I am nearby. As I approach, they click back to the picture of dinosaur bones that I saw the last two times I circled the room. Of more concern, a number of kids in the crowd are not bothering to read the quiz associated with the reading since there is no grade associated with that “self-learning” quiz. Then they are laughing about their zeroes. One girl yesterday asked me to give her the letters of the answers. “Can’t you just tell me? You know, CAEE or something?”
If I wasn’t a teacher and did not feel compelled to teach the material the classroom teacher provided me, those laptops would be a tremendous win. I could sit at the front of the room and watch as the screens quieted the classroom. The kids would look busy. I could wander out a few times to make people click away from the snakes game and go back to staring at the picture of the dinosaur bones, and the fiction of classroom learning would be maintained. But I know better. The kids know better, too, but the ones ignoring the assignment have decided they can catch up later or that paleontology simply isn’t worth the effort. I assume they mostly made up some version of a critical thinking response to turn in for a grade.
This picture’s not as bleak as I painted. I circled the room I am describing and redirected kids nonstop. A great deal of work was accomplished. But I also know that not all subs are getting in their 10,000 steps. Not all teachers are able to endlessly circle a room all day.
The problem with technology is that it works best for motivated students, Sometimes technology only works for motivated students. For the distracted and distractible, technology unfortunately offers a gateway to other worlds which have nothing to do with education. In contrast, paper and pencils can be used to doodle or write notes, but doodles have a much more benign effect on learning than YouTube videos, despite that occasional middle-school penis that gets scribbled on papers or desks.
Providing fewer temptations would be a kindness for those kids who are struggling to stay in the academic game. I am not advocating doing away with the laptops. But radical cutbacks might be the best move U.S. education has made in the last few decades.