Perspectives from "corporate educators" (a term some have used to describe people or companies primarily focusing on selling equipment and teaching materials) in integrating technology into the classroom. Below are two infomercials from Dell:
Practical? Sustainable? Your comments are welcome!
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Is this what the classroom of the future should look like? Absolutely. Is it the future yet? Not quite. We've talked in class about teacher training, which remains a huge issue with getting technology into schools, and of course expense is another. Not just initial costs, but maintenance--large companies employ whole departments of people whose job it is to keep hardware and software running, and a school is more or less a large corporation in terms of number of end users and complexity of applications. One difference, however, is that kids are *much* rougher on equipment than adults, which means that those shiny new laptops are going to look a lot less shiny after even a semester of use, much less a year or two. Think of the wear and tear textbooks go through. (Of course, a netbook might only be good for a couple of years anyway, before it needs to be upgraded--I hope Dell included software upgrades in their contract.)
ReplyDeleteExpense, of course, is an even larger issue for needy schools, who often barely have the money for a bookshelf, let alone a starboard. Often you will hear about a major technology manufacturer donating equipment to such schools. I find this corporate presence in schools slightly disturbing. It’s a major source of contention when schools take money from Coca-Cola, so that students are subject to a constant barrage of Coke advertising in the hallways and Coke machines in the cafeteria. What happens when Dell or Microsoft or Apple donates equipment to a needy school? It’s lauded as an act of charity to the community, but what corporate strings might be attached to such generosity? (Yes, I’m a suspicious curmudgeon.)
Bottom line: before we can create the classroom of the future, we must solve the problems of the present: training, costs, hardware durability, and software sustainability.
--Joyce
**starboard? I think that was my spellchecker's interpretation of "smartboard."
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