Questions about technology that need to be asked in Joplin, other school districts

A Los Angeles blogger asks some questions about the use of educational technology that make great fodder for thought for those of us in the Joplin R-8 School District and other districts that have taken the plunge into providing laptops or IPads to all students.

Los Angeles, of course, has had the recently publicized problem with the IPads it provided to every high school student. They were purchased primarily because they were needed to take Common Core tests, but they did not have keyboards, necessitating another expense.

The district also paid for the technology out of bond money that had been targeted for building improvements.

And it was embarrassed when word leaked out that the students had already worked their way around the blocks the district had set up to keep them off bad sites.

The blogger, Red Queen in LA asks the following questions:

• If the ipads stay in the classroom, how is their distribution to be managed in any way efficiently?
• If in the classroom, is the physical integrity of the building sufficient to ensure everyone’s and everything’s safety?
• If staying in the classroom, does that forfeit the device’s biggest potential, as substitutes for heavy, expensive, resource-intensive textbooks?
• If not to stay in the classroom, how will internet access be managed among “not-wired”, very poor or chaotic homes?
• How are electronics to be harnessed for education alone and not hijacked by its social, interactive component?
• If not in the classroom, how to reconcile bond construction monies targeted to long-term infrastructure support, with transient instruction delivery tied to non-durable goods?
• If not in the classroom, how to manage the high turnover (purportedly up to one-third) among students of some high-poverty communities? What is the implication for device-specific instruction? For physical disappearance of the devices?
• When was the imperative of Common Core testing agreed upon, as it underlies the drive behind implementing the ipad program precipitously?
• When were teachers presented an honest cost:benefit analysis toward soliciting professional input regarding utility and efficacy in educating their students???

And legions of parents point out, variously:

• If bond monies are to be so misappropriated, how will the public ever trust a future bond measure to be managed appropriately?
• What are the future taxpayer and spending implications of an electronics education habit?
• Why must parents support inefficient duplication of devices within a family?
• When did the cost of implementing one program get stacked against the hardship of precluding another? Where is the discussion, bidding, testing, evaluating, thinking and scrutinizing of true needs and practices?
• When did ancillary, support and ongoing upgrade costs get considered as part of the deal? From security to software to obsolescence, the costs of this decision are staggering.
• When were parents presented an honest cost:benefit analysis toward soliciting parental input regarding utility and efficacy in educating their child???