The Fort Bend Independent School District in Texas bought iPads for students in grades 2-8. After nineteen months, the district put a stop to the 1:1 program and commissioned a report on the initiative, which was “scathing,” according to an article by Ben Herold in Education Week.
Guilford County, North Carolina, bought Amplify tablets for all its students, using millions from Race to the Top money. Amplify is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, managed by Joel Klein. The rollout was highly publicized. But last week, Guilford County recalled all the Amplify tablets because of technical defects.
The marketing outstripped the implementation.
Fort Bend wanted to know what wrong.
This is what the independent assessment found:
Among the problems the report highlights:
- An overly aggressive timeline: “Even under optimum project management practices, the District would likely have fallen short of its projected timetable for such a complex project.”
- Insufficient project management: “The iAchieve program was hindered by not having a qualified, fully dedicated staff member with expertise in large-scale project management, curriculum development, and instructional technology to coordinate the various teams and contractors involved in the program.”
- Poor contract management practices: “Project deliverables and payments did not match the contract requirements, and highly unrealistic timetables were negotiated and agreed to by both parties.”
- Lack of consistency with FBISD curriculum standards: “The methodology used in writing the science curricula, which emphasized specific scripts for teachers and did not follow the District’s lesson-building standards, resulted in content that teachers and Curriculum Department leaders felt was unusable without substantial changes.”
There are lessons to be learned from these early experiences. Vendors are eager to make sales and make big promises. Districts are eager to show that they are ahead of the times, and have bought the latest, best technology. But for the technology to be effective, there must be planning, forethought, teacher buy-in. But more than that, the content of the tablets must allow for teacher creativity, not teacher scripting.
The time will come when tablets replace the bulky, puffed-up textbooks that now burden students’ backpacks. The time will come when tablets contain all the contents of all the textbooks, as well as a wealth of additional resources, in multiple subjects. But they must encourage exploration and inquiry, not fidelity to a packaged program. Customized and individualized must become a reality, not a sales pitch for programmed learning.
Where does the gadget worship end, and the corruption/profiteering begin?
I can’t decide whether it’s a continuum or (scarier) a complete horrifying overlap between ed-tech junkies and corrupt profiteers.
There are two things to learn from Fort Bend. The issues surrounding a responsible rollout of mass iPad distribution are many. First, Fort Bend apparently DOES NOT let the iPads go home, so loss or damage is not mentioned. Second, the superintendent himself ordered the review of the program by an outside consulting firm.
Compare this to Los Angeles. Our superintendent not only was the driving force behind the iPad purchase, but was featured in a commercial for Apple. Second, he is insisting that the iPads will go home with all children, including kindergartners even though it was clearly stated during the initial pilot phase that no iPad would be allowed off campus.
Bottom line…….LAUSD is looking at a situation like Fort Bend, but much worse when you consider all factors. AND, our student population is 660,000!!!!!!!
You do realize that those “problems” are features, not bugs, right?
Your last two paragraphs are great! I think technology holds great promise in education but only if it comes from the bottom up… and it WILL come from the bottom up if we ever get out of this test-driven environment we’re living in today.
A consulting vendor involved early on in the Ft. Bend iPad purchases confided that they had the devices in hand but barely a clue of what to do with them. Software decisions were not made prior to tablet purchase. Teachers were not driving the acquisitions and once again, the purchase functioned as a Potemkim Village, nothing but a fancy facade designed to impress parents with innovation that had no basis in fact.
“The time will come when tablets replace the bulky, puffed-up textbooks that now burden students’ backpacks.”
And we will rue that time!
Maine has a long running 1:1 technology integration project in the seventh & and eighth grades– 10 years. It is now spreading to our high schools. There are major reasons for its success: (1) It has always been about learning, not the device, (2) state-wide professional development about teaching and learning with technology has been a critical part of the project, (3) then Governor Angus King (now Senator King) had a clear vision of the purpose of the project, and he clearly articulated it, (4) on-going assessments of the project’s progress were built into the plan, and (5) there has been a talented leadership team at Maine’s DOE who developed an excellent working relationship with the vendor(s). Maine is very much a local control state when it comes to education, however structures to build statewide networks for support are in place. The tech directors connect with one another through a listserv where they problem solve and share ideas and regional meetings are held regularly for administrators, tech leads, and teachers. The project (MLTI) partners with organizations such as Common Sense Media to bring free resources to schools in every nook and cranny of the state. Another Maine project is Auburn’s Advantage 2014 — iPads in the primary grades. It also is very successful. Again, there is a clear vision, great leadership, plenty of support and professional development, etc. Technology done right is powerful–it allows all students access to a rich and challenging curriculum while providing teachers with the tools to meet each child’s learning needs and interests. Unfortunately too many technology projects are just about getting the machine and software into classrooms rather than executing a powerful vision of how to improve learning and student engagement. Educators and officials come to Maine from all over the world to find out what we have learned about 1:1 technology integration and go home convinced to allocate the necessary resources to implement their own programs.
Years ago when I was teaching general music there were many glitzy colorful corporate programs for teachers, who in my opinion, had no business teaching. As Music Coordinator in our system they were not allowed. Teachers were expected to teach, not to entertain with mindless ways to nowhere. In our foreign language department, they tried using individual computer corporate made studies. These failed miserably. Isolated students were bored, did not learn material ad nauseum. Teaching is an art, not a science where students are treated as widgets into which we pour corporate controlled “facts”.
The saga of the Billion Dollar iPad fiasco continues in Los Angeles. Although the public has raised their voices, so far what we are seeing is alot of spin by Deasy and his supporters, the LA Times, and the Billionaires. Below is an essay I wrote this week
covering various aspects of similar problems to other parts of the country where nepotism, payoffs, and mendacity reign.
Both of these great blog sites picked it up.
HemlockontheRocks.com
K12NewsNetwork.com
Please let me know what you think about our California pigs who feed at the public trough. You can reach me at joiningforces4ed@aol.com