Teaching with Technology - Is the Timing Right?

My thirteen year-old niece Sarah just started high school and if that was not bad enough, her family recently moved so now she has to take the bus with her 10 year-old brother, ugh! She doesn’t like her classes, the new students or the “stupid” teachers…just being a teenager right? Well, maybe, but perhaps there is a deeper issue.

As I was getting the low down from my sister, I heard something that caught my attention. It seems the class curriculum is not as advanced as her previous school. Even though the family moved into a much more upscale (at least in housing price) neighborhood. “But her teachers told me don’t worry about that, she won’t be bored,” my sister said. Really? Really? I think that is exactly what she will be. Why is it that from one school district to another, only divided by a few miles, the curriculum, teaching practices, administrators, etc. is so different?

I recently read an article in U.S. News & World Report Using Technology as Our Teacher, regarding the new Obama plan for educational funding that may or may not help the educational variances from school to school. Reporter Mortimer Zuckerman states, “Now, the Obama administration has announced a $4.35 billion Race to the Top fund—and it could be different this time around. It's the largest pot ever in the history of discretionary funding for education reform for grades K through 12.” Okay, but we’ve been throwing money at education for a long time, what makes this time different? Mr. Zuckerman says this time the difference is providing more good teachers as opposed to bad. Seems logical, but how do you determine the bad from the good.

Zuckerman says that through technology, “We could escape geography by using the technology to have the best teachers appear in hundreds of thousands of disparate classrooms. This is a force multiplier. The classrooms would be equipped with a large, flat-screen monitor with whiteboards on either side; the monitor would be connected to a school server that contains virtually all of the lessons for every subject taught in the school, from kindergarten through 12th grade. The contents would use animation, video, dramatization, and presentation options to deliver complete lessons, to convey ideas in unique ways that are now unavailable in conventional classrooms.”

He continues to quote, Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education by Terry M. Moe and John E. Chubb throughout his article.

All well and good, but does it address the issues of schools that would need years to incorporate the technology into their classrooms? What about teachers with tenure that aren’t so “good?” There are many more questions than answers at this point. It will be interesting to see how our Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan administrates this increased fund to address the serious failings in the U.S. educational system.

I’m looking forward to keeping my eye on the administrations efforts. Now all I need to do is help my sister figure out how to keep my niece from killing her brother on the bus!