Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Deviscism

Every year our state public schools have to report on a lot of data elements that will be released in the "School Report Card".  Many of the data elements are accumulated through the state and for a few elements, schools/districts have to manually enter.  This year, as in years in the past, we have had two technology items to report:
  1. The number of student Internet connected computers.
  2. The number of student Internet connected computers less than five years old.
In recent years, we were told to use the "minimum standards" for machines to determine #2.  This was all well until this year.  Essentially, the "minimum standards" say that a machine that has a dual-core is okay and if it is not dual-core, then we have to look at other specs.  The problem is that dual-core is now +5 years old.  Should we not be re-evaluating these "minimum standards"?

I digress.  The wonderful addition to #1 above was to include iPads.  That's it.  No mention of Android tablets or Chrome Books.  If you have an iPad, you can count it in #1. 

I understand that there might be some pull for this due to a few districts that have decided to go 1:1 with iPads and they want to reflect those numbers. However, we currently have no "minimum standards" in place for iPads or any other device.  The question of "minimum standard" seems to be left to the person reporting it.  And based on our current standards, an iPad would not meet this standard. 

Should we not, instead, report a separate data element on "tablet devices" available for students.  And where do we draw the line?  Is an iPod okay?  Which Android devices are okay?  Or are we  assuming that only iPads can reach the level of a "real" computer?

Devicism at it's best.
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2 comments:

  1. Nikkol BauerSeptember 13, 2012 at 8:23 AM

    Evidently Blogger doesn't like my friend Marty because it keeps loosing all his comments... here are his thoughts:

    Great point Nikkol! My addition... The thought of reporting separate devices based on footprint seems painful to me. At one time, I'm sure a suggestion was to count laptops differently than traditional desktops. For me, I say that any computing device 5 yrs old or newer should be "counted." For that matter, my current "phone" is way more powerful than the laptop I had 5 yrs ago... so the label of "computer" doesn't necessarily need a footprint definition does it? Of course all of this data, I believe is super important for understanding the landscape and being able to make decisions on funding dollars, etc...

    Having said that.... In a perfect world -- My proposal would be to DROP the 2 lines on # of devices. And replace them with AMOUNT OF TIME students get to spend connected to Internet based resources OR the AMOUNT OF TIME students get to spend using technology to transform learning experiences (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL5c2DUnYno ). That may be hard to actually calculate but gets to the point. After all... a really awesome car that nobody gets to drive is just lame.

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  2. Nikkol BauerSeptember 13, 2012 at 7:13 PM

    So, Marty, I agree with your thoughts about the amount of time and the actual USE of said technology. I tried to do that with the amount of time, but that was a difficult data element to collect. And ultimately, if you are looking at USE, you have to survey people to collect that data and that will just end up like the stats on teacher tech proficiency.

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