California teacher's predictions for 2014- Education will move away from IPads

California teacher Larry Ferlazzo, who blogs for Education Week, has a list of predictions for 2014 that, if they come true, could spell a good year for those who are concerned about the efforts to "reform" and privatize public education.

One of his predictions, however, if it comes true, is not good news for the Joplin R-8 School District.

The district, which spent more than $300,000 to give IPads to all eighth graders this year and has plans to give them to sixth and seventh graders at some point, has not had the problems the Los Angeles School District has had with IPads (though it would not matter if it had since the Joplin Globe would never write anything about it), but LA's problems have education officials re-examining the push toward putting IPads or laptops in the hands of every student. Ferlazzo's prediction:

Thanks to the continuing iPad fiasco in Los Angeles schools, more and more districts will not only move much more slowly to integrate tablets/laptops into the classroom (no more large-scale roll-outs; instead, very small pilots followed by gradual expansion), but Dell’s and Google’s low-cost Chromebooks will dramatically increase in popularity and begin to overtake iPad use in public schools.
I question whether that move toward Google Chromebooks or any Dell product will take place. The words "low cost" cannot be found in Joplin R-8 Administration vocabulary.

2013 in Review: Former Joplin Schools tech employee had pornographic photos of high school girls on his laptop

(From September 10, 2013)

After the arrest of Joplin R-8 tech employee Ronny Justin Myers on child sexual exploitation charges earlier this month, Superintendent C. J. Huff told media that Adams' job provided no access to children.

While he may not have had access to the students, Myers did have access to pornographic images of those students, according to a sentencing document filed today in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.

In the document, Assistant U. S. Attorney Abram McGull says that during a three-hour interview "defendant admitted that he has secretly stored child pornography on his computer. He stated he had approximately 10 child pornography images of Joplin School District co-eds on his laptop. Four of the girl have been positively identified as D. F. (age 15), LS (age 16), GS (age 16) and NC (age 15)."

Placing technology ahead of teachers will not work

Some of the critics of this blog (and hard as it is to believe, there are a few) have said that my criticism of the use of laptops and IPads in our schools shows that I and other teachers are afraid of technology in the classroom.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

As anyone who has ever been a student in my classroom (and as far as I have been able to determine, that does not include any of my critics) I was always able to stay ahead of the curve when it came to using technology in the classroom.

If I had been allowed to continue my teaching, I have no doubt that I would have adjusted to the addition of IPads for every middle school student in the Joplin R-8 School District.

Unfortunately, that is more than I can say for the people who are implementing this ill-advised strategy. If you have watched the pronouncements of soon-to-be former Assistant Superintendent Angie Besendorfer you have heard  her talk numerous times about the students learning on their own with teachers serving as facilitators rather than doing any teaching.

That is a recipe for disaster.

Of course, we love it when students run with what we give them and seek knowledge on their own, but that is never going to be the way most education works even if we have world class facilitators. Pushing this idea that teachers are not important and are interchangeable is doing a disservice to students. How many of us can think back to our school days and remember teachers who provided us with knowledge and inspired us to learn more?

How many people who have succeeded would have done so if educators in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s had simply been facilitators and had not provided us with the knowledge we needed to succeed?

Learning, no matter what people like Angie Besendorfer say, is not something that magically occurs when you hand a student a laptop or an IPad. What is ironic is that today's teachers are being devalued by administrators who, for the most part, have spent little time in the classroom. Those of us who received our education in public schools a few decades ago were used to having administrators who served several years in the classroom before becoming principals and superintendents.

In today's education, many are fast-tracking themselves into administrative positions and are more interested in building resumes than they are in building an educational foundation that will last far beyond their years.

Unfortunately, we live in a society where the path to the top is not achieved by administrators who build a strong foundation and an educational community. Those who succeed and end up making salaries three or four times as much as the classroom teachers they often treat like disposable commodities are the ones who are willing to latch on to any new program, or several at once, just to be able to show they are innovative.

They move on, often leaving their former school systems in debt and having to recover from all of the "innovation."

Their school systems are loaded with technology and buzz-word programs, often at the expense of teachers and students.

Take a look at your local school district. Is that what is happening?

Problem for KC laptops: Seventy percent of homes do not have internet access

Seventy percent of the homes of Kansas City Public Schools do not have internet access at home. The parents are too poor to afford it.

Poverty- that is the biggest problem for the Kansas City School District, but that does not seem to matter to either Education Commissioner Chris Nicastro or the Missouri State Legislature.