Google's View - Follow-up

or...
What makes research of timely topics hard.

Just over one month ago, I searched Google Scholar for a particular set of search terms hoping to gauge the research community's interest in "computer technology access 'k-12' classroom school" over time. The one clear conclusion was that interest was on the rise. One oddity was that research, or research publishing, seemed to have dropped off over the past two years. I hypothesized, at the time, that this wasn't a true drop-off, but rather an artifact of the Google Scholar search-bot and of document indexing in general. After having repeated the exact same query only one month later, I see that I was correct. In fact, the number of research articles found in 2007 seems to be spiking dramatically and it'll be interesting to see just how many articles Google continues to find as time goes on.

This phenomenon highlights a particular difficulty for researching a topic like Technology Access in a field like Educational Technology where one needs to rely on current and timely research because the field itself is changing on a monthly, not yearly, basis.

Imagine the time-line challenges. Technologies are developed, then adopted at a grassroots level. At some point, an educational technologist comes along and decides to research some aspect of that technology's application towards education. She or he designs a study, gets the adequate permissions, conducts the study, analyzes the findings, then publishes the results. This is probably, at least, a year or two into the process. Then, if one is lucky, the results are published in a often-read, popular journal such that the findings can have a practical affect on the field of practice quickly. More likely, the results will be cataloged by a search-service like Google Scholar months to years after publishing. By this time, the technology, or more discouragingly the entire genre, has become antiquated and uninteresting because developers have developed new technologies and teachers have adopted new, more exciting, tools.

(This of course, is the gloomy way to view it. Many times, genres of technologies, if not technologies themselves, stay around for sometime and become worthy and possible research targets. However, innovation is speeding up, not slowing down, and this will become less true.)

HELP

Technology coordinator, Barbara McLaughlin, wants help deciding how to allocate computers to her district’s 40+ elementary schools and she’s turning to the community at Steve Hargadon’s Classroom 2.0 for help.

She starts by telling the community that her recent experience is that most schools would be happy to have their labs updated but that individual teacher’s are increasingly pushing back on classroom mini-labs because they find it hard to integrate them into the daily routine. Notice that “schools” want computers in labs, but teachers don’t want them in their room. This is not surprising given that shiny new computer labs look impressive to visiting parents and are easier to maintain and secure whereas in-class mini-labs are an additional responsibility on the teacher who may already be leery of her technology skills.

Let’s see what the group had to say…

Six separate posters replied to her request. Of those six, three enthusiastically supported laptop carts and provided their own testimonials as support. One suggested that he preferred his 9 computer mini-labs to bringing in laptops on a cart because it helped to get them to “blend into the everyday situations of learning.” One poster suggested that any of these scenarios could work because it’s more about the purpose of the computer than its position. Finally, one poster was trying to see Barbara computer furniture. There’s always one furniture salesman in the bunch, isn’t there. ;)

While these responses are exactly the opposite from what Barbara is hearing from her teachers, it’s not surprising given the audience of Classroom 2.0. However, the takeaway from all this is that despite the obvious convenience and potential cost savings associated with collecting all the computers in one room, not a single practicing teacher suggested that Barbara do that.
I suspect that teachers who prefer not have mini-labs in classrooms are exactly the ones that wouldn’t bother to take their class to the labs, anyway. Not having them in the classroom becomes a way to avoid them, altogether. Where teachers who actually attempt to teach 21ST Century skills are trying to get their students closer to technology in any way they can. They understand that the closer students are to tech, the more likely they are to incorporate it into their own learning process.

My solution is more drastic than anything we’ve heard yet. I’d take all the instructional computers in the building, and for one year, divide them amongst the teachers that have shown a propensity to use them as frequently and productively as possible. Let those teachers and students shine. Let them learn and love learning in the process and then sit back and watch just how many of the late-adopters start peeking into these interactive, energetic, exciting classrooms asking, “What’s going on in here?” We’ll Twitter our reply.

Eureka!

After much searching, I’ve finally found a piece of research, unfortunately unpublished, that directly addresses my question of technology allocation in K-12 schools.

A professor a Cal State, East Bay wanted to know how to better prepare his pre-service teachers for life in the classroom so he went searching for specific information about computer use in classrooms. He found none that satisfied his needs. So, he developed his own survey of 88 classrooms in 38 schools in the surrounding county of Alameda, CA detailing the number and type of computers available, as well as the actual time children spent on those computers.

This is exactly the data for which I’ve been looking and had not been able to find. Unfortunately, he only details computers actually in the classroom because he says, without corresponding data, that they are the ones with “greater potential to distribute [their] potential effectively.” (Razo, 2006) (The effective impact of classroom vs. other located computers would, of course, be valuable related research.)

In general, the author finds that despite these schools touting instructional computer to pupil ratios of about 1:4, each classroom has only about 3 functional computers that are used for approximately 1 of 30 instructional hours per week.

Is it any wonder why researchers haven’t found conclusive evidence of the positive effects of classroom technology?


Razo, Felipe H (2006). A Survey of Computer Utilization in Elementary Classrooms. Educause, Retrieved April 15, 2009, from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/WRC07017A.pdf

Labs vs. In-class: The Debate Continued

This article is by far the most germane to my research question of determining the distribution of student computers within an elementary school. The article admits to a long and unresolved debate over placement of computers often between either a computer lab or distributed among the classrooms of a school. Additionally, it discusses the large pedagogical impact of such a decision.

Jenson and Rose examine, first hand, 32 Canadian elementary schools in six different provinces of Canada. Schools included ranged from old low-income, inner city ones to those designed and built within the last five years. The article comes out of a larger Canadian study of technology use in education but the authors quickly realized that the fundamental and “seemingly basic” question of where to locate computers drives much of both how their thought of and, ultimately, how well they’re integrated into the daily curriculum of the school. In fact, “physical location and access” were cited as the most important factors affecting how well teachers were integrating technology into their teaching.
In addition to reciting the advantages and disadvantages of one location vs. another, the paper strongly suggests that schools not take an all-or-nothing approach and attempt to find solutions that are more flexile such as laptop carts. This same solution was echoed by several readers of the very recent ZDNet Educational Blog written by Christopher Dawson “In-class computers vs. labs.” While laptop carts may be an excellent solution for schools that have control over their own technology budget, some schools are simply allocated technology from a district level and thus may not have an opportunity to choose laptops.
Finally, as helpful as this article was in helping to understand that placement question, it did not give a quantitative account of where computers were located in the 32 visited schools.

Jenson, J., & Rose, C. (2006). Finding space for technology: Pedagogical observations on the organization of computers in school environments. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 32(1).

What makes scary movies scary?

I’d never really considered this question before. I’m a huge fan of cinema and have often marveled at the enormous evocative power of movies. For me movies, and all media to some extent, but movies in particular, are an escape. Stepping into a darkened theater and an engrossing plot is also stepping out of whatever it is in the real world that I might be trying to avoid or simply take brief relief from. And what’s amazing it that, time after time, film after film, it works. I’m taken from my place and time to another world. Even more noteworthy is that the emotions that are evoked carry forth even after the lights go up and life goes on. It seems too obvious to acknowledge that sad movies make us sad and uplifting movies make us feel uplifted but what’s remarkable, upon further review, is that they do. The fact that stories told by other people about people other than ourselves can have such a lasting effect on us is a testament to the power of storytelling and of media.

And as for what makes a scary movie scary? What makes media so powerful? I don’t know for sure, but I’ll tell you this, I’ve got the nightlight on.

Fully Integrated?

Subpart 1 – Section 2413 of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 mandates that in order to be eligible for federal grant money, state must provide…

(13) A description of how the State educational agency will ensure ongoing integration of technology into school curricula and instructional strategies in all schools in the State, so that technology will be fully integrated into the curricula and instruction of the schools by December 31, 2006.

Yet, in a “Large-Scale Research Study” by Barron et. al. (2003), conducted in one of the largest district in the country, of 2,156 participants reporting, only 17% could report having more than five computers in the classroom and fully 39% didn’t even have access to a lab.

How can we even begin to talk about technology being “fully integrated?”


Barron, A., Kemker, K., Harmes, C., & Kalaydjian, K. (2003). Large-scale research study on technology in K-12 schools: Technology integration as it relates to the national technology standards. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 35(4), 489-508.

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Subpart 1—State and Local Technology Grants. Retrieved April 12, 2009, from ED.gov Web site: http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/pg35.html

Look to the Leaders

One way of better understanding access and use of technology in schools is to interview and observe the teachers that, despite all obstacles, still find a way to make it happen.

This mixed-method research details the technology use of 30 teachers from one Southeastern county deemed to be “tech-savvy” by their principals and county. The study examines their use and the obstacles they had to overcome in order to achieve the level of use that they do. While the both few in number and homogenous sample may limit a broader application of the study’s results, it does help illuminate some of the concerns tech-savvy teachers have in teaching with technology. Additionally, it gives a glimpse into the deployment of technology within 3 elementary, 2 middle, and 4 high schools.

All of the schools (except for the H.S.) had “at least four serviceable computers” in the classroom but teachers preferred to use the labs where each student could use his or her own newer computer. However, the lab time was limited and hard to come by.

Based on both quantitative feedback and observation, the authors surmise that “schools need to upgrade the computers in teachers' classrooms, get teachers to use them (or find out why they don't), and de-emphasize ritual lab sessions. The best development to date to counter the lab phenomenon is the advent of the wireless laptop computers that can be carted from room to room. My overall impression is that while most of the elementary schools in this study had 3-4 “serviceable” computers in their classrooms that these were often provided by the teacher and were inferior to the well-maintained machine in the labs which were unfortunately hard to integrate into the daily routine.

Bauer, J., & Kenton, J. (2005). Toward technology integration in the schools: Why it isn't happening. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 13(4), 519.

The Digital Divide

While researching, it is becoming clear that there are many ways that researchers think about and measure “access.” In this blog, we have talked about “Access vs. usage” and “Access to labs vs. access to laptop carts” among other related issues. Today, I want to talk about equal access, or what has been dubbed the “Digital Divide” and our Libraries’ role in equalizing access to Information.

We know that despite nearly 100% Internet penetration in our nation’s schools, there are certain groups of students that don’t have those same valuable tools at home. For example, while 79% of school-aged children in New Hampshire enjoy at-home Internet access, only 43% of Mississippi’s children do, The discrepancies can be just as stark when comparing children from different schools within the same district.

When creative, libraries can play an important role in helping to empower these groups by offering Internet access through various programs. Some high schools offer their students laptop checkout for up to three hours a day. Still others allow students who own computers but not Internet access to use the school’s network while at school. Some districts are opening up their computer labs to the community in the evening hours to make better use of all of those valuable resources at a time they are otherwise sitting idle. These innovation ideas, among others, are helping to narrow the digital divide.

Lack of substantive access to the vast and often unique resources of the Internet is no longer simply a lack of convenience for those not afforded it. It is reneging of the promise of equality of opportunity for all, a promise upon which our country was founded.


Russell, S., & Huang, J. (2009). Libraries'role in equalizing access to information. Library Management, 30(1/2), 69-76.

Success in Korea

In my last post, I suggested that 1-1 computing is an increasingly effective and well-researched tool for student learning and that laptop carts are a financially responsible way of moving towards that goal.

In this post, I’d like to introduce you to just one of the research efforts going on around the world that also conclude that the laptop cart solution makes sound pedagogical sense, too.

In 2007, Professor Insook Lee of Sejong University published her efforts to research this technology’s effect on learning achievement and student satisfaction, efficacy, and motivation. Her conclusions are encouraging as she found positive correlations between the infusion of laptop carts and each of the factors examined.

While the scope of this study was fairly small and the reporting somewhat limited, Professor Insook is modeling well the type of questions that educational technologists must be asking if we are going to get this idea of laptop carts… rolling forward.


Lee, I. (2007). What Can We Learn From ‘S’Elementary School?: Wireless Laptop Computers in Regular Classroom Activities. In T. Hirashima, Hoppe, U., & Young, S. S.-C (Ed.), Supporting Learning Flow Through Integrative Technologies (Vol. 162, pp. 139). Amsterdam: IOS Press.

Putting the Carts Before the Labs...

You've read the research, (Dawson, Cavanaugh, & Ritzhaupt, 2008) understand the value, and now you'd like to get laptops in the hands of as many of your students as possible. Unfortunately, the cost of one computer for every student is prohibitive.

Try sharing the wealth with wireless laptop carts.

Wireless laptop carts allow schools to ensure that computers are available to the students that will use them in the place that they should be used, the classroom. They save the cost of having to have a dedicated “computer lab” and have been shown to increase teacher technology competence and encourage student-centered pedagogical practices such as project-based and collaborative learning. (Grant, et al., 2004) Additionally, laptops can be purchased as they can be afforded. If a school wanted to buy a cart with two laptops, that would be a good start. Just fill the cart as you can and buy another cart.

What are you waiting for? Go ahead and put a (laptop) cart before that lab.


Dawson, K., Cavanaugh, C., & Ritzhaupt, A. D. (2008). Florida's EETT Leveraging Laptops Initiative and Its Impact on Teaching Practices. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 41(2), 143-159.

Grant, M., Ross, S., Wan, W., Potter, A., Wilson, Y., & Center, E. R. I. (2004). A Modified Laptop Program Putting the Carts in the Classrooms: ERIC Clearinghouse.

Students say, "Expand Access"

Project Tomorrow, authors of the annual “Speak Up” (formally know as NetDay) survey, which this year polled over a quarter of a million students, just released to Congress their 2008 findings. The results can be easily summarized.

Students make frequent and proficient use of digital technologies to increase the reach of their own curiosity, just not in the classroom.

Project Tomorrow, guided by their 250K respondents, had five major recommendations for the nation.

• increase the use of mobile devices for learning purposes
• create interactive, participatory learning spaces
• incorporate Web 2.0 tools into daily instruction for collaborative learning
• expand access to digital resources in the classroom
• get beyond the classroom walls to make learning truly experimental

It is the fourth recommendation that is the topic of this blog and key to the other five. Without actual physical access to these technologies, students can’t use mobile devices, create interactive spaces, incorporate Web 2.0 tools, or experiment in a way that professional scientists and researchers experiment.

My research will attempt to uncover impediments to technology access in schools because...

Access is the key.

At-home Access

So often, when we talk about educational technology, we assume we're talking about school-based technology. But, as Michael Christensen (Christensen, 2008) suggests in "Disrupting Class," revolutionary educational technologies will take hold first at the fringes of the school system, not in the regular education classroom.

Gwinnett County Public Schools, the largest district in Georgia, is beginning implementation of home-school data communications program to better serve 600-700 of it's home-bound students. This latest technology will be an upgrade from simply voice communications to include video and interactive graphics. This experiment in distance learning will surely borrow from and lead to advanced insights into computer mediated teaching & learning.

Aronowitz, Scott. (2009). "Georgia's Largest District Expands External Education Capabilities," T.H.E. Journal, 3/23/2009, http://www.thejournal.com/articles/24169

Christensen, C., Johnson, C., & Horn, M. (2008). Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns: McGraw-Hill.

More than a Maine-frame

Considering that the press release was posted already twelve days ago, it's probably old news for the H.S. students of Maine whose governor just expanded their 1-1 laptop initiative to include all middle and high schools students in the entire state. That's approximately 100,000 computers in all.

The more I research, the more I'm convinced that only 1-1 laptops will satisfy the ever-growing technology needs of a 21st century student. Clickers are cool and interactive whiteboards can be fun but only a fully functional, massively multi-purpose device like a laptop computer can keep up with these kids' innovative ideas of how and when THEY want to learn. Why deny them the education that they want to give themselves?

Donate your old computer

Let's face it, most of us are computer snobs and we're done with our computers long before they're done themselves. Computers for Schools is a national computer reseller of refurbished computers to schools and non-profit organizations. So, instead of filling our landfills with your old, unwanted tech, let's fill our nation's classrooms.

Google's View

I’m curious just how much “academic” interest there has been over the years for technology access in K-12 schools and finally Google Scholar gives me, as imperfect as it may be, one way to measure it. I searched for… computer technology access "k-12" classroom school by year starting in 2009 and working my way backwards to 1991 charting my results as I went.

Here they are…




There is one really clear trend here… interest is on the rise, dramatically. (I’m not sure how to account for the drop in published articles over the past two years other than that it might be something to do with the way articles are indexed by Google Scholar. Maybe it takes some time to get “found.”)

Which would you choose?

Ok, let's say for a moment that your administration comes to you for advice about the school's technology allocation. (Hey, this is simply a mental exercise, don't get TOO excited. It's not gonna actually happen.)
Anyway, they come to you and ask...

Where should scarce computer resources be deployed for elementary and middle schools?
Mini classroom labs are really useful to the teachers, especially for elementary schools, and receive plenty of use

Full, 25-30 seat computer labs allow for full utilization of the few computers we have to go around; idle computers are a waste of money

How would you answer?

Well, this is exactly the question Christopher Dawson of ZDNET asked of his readers, and the answer surprises and disappoints me. Before you read on, please take a moment to go answer for yourselves even if you're not an elementary or middle school teacher. Go ahead, pretend... I won't tell.

Now, if you read Chris' article first, you may not be surprised to learn that 78% of the 130 voters chose the full lab instead of the mini-lab in the back of the room. Not surprising given that Chris strongly biases his results by giving his opinion of the issue before asking his readers. That's ok really, because while Chris is a great commentator whose work I thoroughly enjoy, he's not, nor does he claim to be, a researcher.

Researchers see it differently
Nobel Laureate, AI researcher, and educator, Herb Simon in “The Steam Engine and the Computer: What Makes Technology Revolutionary” says of computers...

I realized that the best advise was, in fact, just to have one around, for that's the only way a company or a university, or anybody else, is going to learn what to do with it.

I agree Dr. Simon. I completely agree.

NY schools score low on computer access

Yesterday, we discussed how the customary metrics of measuring computer access in schools fail when trying to understand computer usage in schools. Simply put, access doesn't ensure usage.

Today, we see a New York Post article lamenting NYC's lower than average access numbers.
Imagine how they'd feel if they had the actual usage numbers? :(

On the other hand, we should note that if access doesn't predict usage then it's possible that even with a lower than average number of computers per student, NYC school teachers might be doing a better than average job at employing those computers for educational purposes.

See, there's always hope!

My mission...

In 2006, the National Center for Education Statistics released "Internet Access in US Public Schools and Classrooms: 1994-2005" proclaiming that the percentage of instructional rooms with Internet access had increased from 51% in 1998 to 93% just seven years later in 2005. Furthermore, there had been a corresponding decrease in the ratio of students to instructional computers of 13:1 to 4:1. To the casual reader, this sounds like amazing progress that demonstrates the commitment of the U.S. educational system to infuse our country’s schools with the same technology that has bolstered its businesses to ever growing levels of production and efficiency. The report does neither, however, detail where within those schools the computers are deployed nor does it detail how much access the average student has to those computers.

Deployment Matters
Imagine a 1,000-student school divided into 40 instructional rooms with 250 instructional computers (4:1 ratio), two very different scenarios could emerge.

Scenario 1:
The school may have 1 instructional computer per classroom room and six 35-computer labs.

or…

Scenario 2:
The school could choose to deploy 6 computers per classroom, leaving enough for one 40-computer lab.

One would assume enormous pedagogical and usage differences between the lab-based vs. in-class models given here. (This is something I hope to explore in later posts.)

Access Matters
In “No Access, No Use, No Impact” Cathleen Norris, et al., begins with the most strongly worded assertion of the reason why the enormous infusion of technology into K-12 schools has not made more of an impact. Simply put, the author cites a lack of real access to the technology. She also states something important to our discussion, which is, “having one computer in a classroom is not access nor will it lead to any significant student use.” She claims that “almost without exception” the strongest predictor of technology use is technology access.

Using an online survey tool, 3,665 respondents from four states (both rural and urban) responded to the survey which is much more granular than the NCES survey. This study asked individual teachers how frequently their students use computers for both online and offline activities.

The author discovered that up to 45% of students used computers offline for less than 15 minutes/week and a full 67% used them less than 15 minutes/week online.

Such low numbers caused the author to look at students’ access to computers with Internet access both in the classroom and in computer labs. These numbers were equally alarming. 63% of classrooms have one or fewer computers while 94% have five or fewer. So they must be going to a shared lab, right? Unfortunately, 67% who went, went only two times/week or less, 39% of which went “seldom” or “never.” When cross-tabulated, 26% of students go to a classroom daily that has only one computer and seldom visit a lab. Finally, only 21% have either more than 10 computers in the classroom or visit a lab more than 2x/week.

That’s a lot to statistics, so let me summarize. Almost 100% of students in today’s schools have access to arguably the most revolutionary technology since the printing press, but only about 10% are given access to it on a regular basis.

How is that going to produce the change we expect?



Norris, C., Sullivan, T., Poirot, J., & Soloway, E. (2003). No Access, No Use, No Impact: Snapshot Surveys of Educational Technology in K-12. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 36(1), 15-28.

Wells, J., & Lewis, L. (2006). Internet Access in US Public Schools and Classrooms: 1994-2005. Highlights. NCES 2007-020. National Center for Education Statistics, 83.