Education and Technology

Our school district has invested $14 million dollars into putting Promethean ActivBoards into every classroom and Media Center in the district. This ambitious project has been an ever changing work in progress. The first phase of installs has been 15% of the classrooms. The teachers that have gotten ActivBoards in there classrooms have primarily been receptive to their new teaching partner, while the kids have just loved it.

Let me explain what an ActivBoard is so you can better understand how it changes the way a teacher has to teach. Watch a Video Overview here or an Interactive Demonstration here to see it in action. The ActivBoard is a large “Interactive Whiteboard” that you don’t use dry erase markers on. But as you can see it is much more, it is a PC, a VCR, a flipchart, a PowerPoint, a DVD player, an interactive lesson with your students, a center during class, the Internet, a TV for special events and more. An ActivBoard can be attached to a PC, either a laptop or a desktop running ActivStudio Professional or ActivPrimary for Elementary Schools K-2. Also standard with our ActivBoards are speakers with an Amplifier and a DVD/VCR. Along the line we will be adding a document camera, but you can also attach an ELMO and other devices to the ActivBoard.

Can you imagine showing a video or DVD of Martin Luther King, pausing the DVD during “I Have a Dream”, changing to the PC in two clicks where you have flipchart or a web page showing something that you want to focus on at that point in the speech, then switching back to the DVD to continue where you stopped? You can even have the students use the ActivBoard to answer questions about the DVD and the Flipchart lesson afterwards using the ActiVote personal response system that captures student responses by asking students to make a choice on the hand held voters by clicking a button. A mini quiz without the students knowing it. The kids think it’s a game, answer the question right and be the first or get the most questions correct.

I want to stress how much the kids really love the ActivBoard. It’s interactive, it’s entertaining, they get to use it and most important, they listen to the lesson. From my life experiences, when someone enjoys doing something they tend to pay better attention, learn more and retain it better. I have no statistical proof, but this would lead me to think that the kids will improve in grade point average and to some degree on the standardized tests that the lawmakers seem to think are needed to show Yearly Progress. The ActivBoards are by no means the only way we should teach, not at all. We should be doing some things the old fashioned way, like writing and reading. We shouldn’t stop going on field trips just because the ActivBoard can go just about anywhere, while it doesn’t have to move from the room. We shouldn’t stop going outside, sitting at a set of lunch benches and reading out loud with our students.

ActivBoards are a good advancement in teaching methods, they should be used in conjunction with current teaching methods. Some day the ActivBoard will break, you’ll need a backup lesson plan to do it the old way. Don’t replace the car when you are just adding a new coat of paint.

I think the ActivBoards are a great addition, take a look at Promethean World and Promethean Planet.

Technorati tags: Education, Technology, Promethean, ActivBoard, WhiteBoard, Teaching, K12, Educational Technology

I was reading the Wall Street Journal online tonight and came across an article that makes an argument that teachers are overpaid. I was shocked with the comparisons and the idea that you can compare the work a teacher does to the work an architect or economists does. The other thing I was astonished to read was that the author was basing his premise on an hourly wage.

Who, on average, is better paid — public school teachers or architects? How about teachers or economists? You might be surprised to learn that public school teachers are better paid than these and many other professionals. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, public school teachers earned $34.06 per hour in 2005, 36% more than the hourly wage of the average white-collar worker and 11% more than the average professional specialty or technical worker. [snip]…..

In the popular imagination, however, public school teachers are underpaid. “Salaries are too low. We all know that,” noted First Lady Laura Bush, expressing the consensus view. “[snip]…. time per-pupil spending, adjusted for inflation, has more than doubled; overall we now annually spend more than $500 billion on public education. [snip]….

It would be beneficial if the debate focused on the actual salaries teachers are already paid.

It would also be beneficial if the debate touched on the correlation between teacher pay and actual results. [snip]…. In fact, the urban areas with the highest teacher pay are famous for their abysmal outcomes.

Source: Is $34.06 Per Hour ‘Underpaid’? - WSJ.com

Teachers have contracts and a set number of hours they are required to work each day in our school district, but as anyone who has spent any time in a k12 school knows that teachers do not work the set hours and get their job done. 7.5 hours is not enough time to prepare lessons, prepare for the requirements of the state and federal “No Child Left Behind” standards or in the case of Florida the FCAT test. If a teacher just worked their 7.5 hours they would be woefully unprepared.

The author uses a poor logic for the annual differences in salaries stating that:

But comparing earnings on an annual basis would be inappropriate when teachers work significantly fewer hours than do other workers. Teachers can use that time to be with family, to engage in activities that they enjoy, or to earn additional money from other employment. That time off is worth money and cannot simply be ignored when comparing earnings. [snip]….

Moreover, the earnings data reported here, which are taken directly from the National Compensation Survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, do not include retirement and health benefits, which tend to be quite generous for public school teachers relative to other workers.

Source: Is $34.06 Per Hour ‘Underpaid’? - WSJ.com

Now, nowhere in the article does the author link to his sources, he quotes them and tells us where they supposedly came from, but we have no easy way to check his facts. So, because a teacher can spend time with their family that’s compensation? Has the author tried to get a summer job? I don’t think so, especially when he is a higher education professor with the University of Arkansas and is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He doesn’t explain how the time off is worth money, it’s just a statement with no facts to back it up.

As for the benefits and retirement, if the data he quotes does not include these items for teachers, then they don’t include them for the other jobs he uses in comparison. How does he know the benefit packages for k12 teachers and economist? He again shows no facts, so how are we to believe his words.

I work with the k12 teachers, I know the benefits packages for these people. K12 teachers are underpaid for what they have to do, which is teach our kids how to read, write, count, be prepared for higher education and be a productive member of society if they don’t go onto higher education.

Technorati tags: Education, K12

 We’ve had some interesting commentary on my last blog about teachers coming into the 21st century with their teaching methods. I thought long and hard about some of the reply’s, emails and even a trackback about the post. So, as I was reading Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed blog today, this quote from his post on Tuesday, October 10th struck me with interest.

“We need to keep teaching writing with pen and paper if for no other reason that the kids need to have the physical strength to handwrite the 90 minute Regents exam.” (Comment heard during a recent workshop.)

That might be the most depressing thing I’ve heard in a long time, but it epitomizes, I think, the depth of the resistance that many teachers are feeling about the shifts that are occurring. It’s a legitimate concern, I know, in an environment where passing the test is at the end of the day what it’s all about. (Even though you know that in a few years, the Regents and the SAT are going to have to start providing kids with digital ways to take tests.) Our resistance, our inability to see new ways of learning is going to get us into very desperate times.

Please take the time to read Will’s blog. He is one of the most respected educators in our country today, you will not be disappointed.

That’s what I think….What about you?

The title of this blog entry says it all. We have so many new and exciting technology based learning aids, but not enough teachers that want to use them. As I’ve written in many of my posts, I do not like all the mandated testing because I feel it leads teachers to stop being creative, stops students from learning to be creative while creating average graduates. Reading and writing blocks are good things if they are used with new technology to keep the students interested.

The children of today are being brought up in an internet, media world. They have a different understanding, a different way of learning than we did growing up. Pong versus Xbox, playing outside versus going to the mall, Little League versus Soccer & Martial Arts classes and the biggest difference….computers, ipods, MySpace, Facebook. Most kids today can do more with a computer than the adult teaching them. This is unfortunate and it is even more unfortunate that more teachers are not trying to learn how to use these new technology advances to stay ahead of their students and give them the education they deserve.

At our school the Instructional Technology Coach has set up training classes at least two times a week for all the different technology available to the teachers. This year to date I’ve seen a few of the classes and while they are attended by 8 to 10 teachers out of 44 classroom teachers, it is always the same teachers. That is about a 25 percent attendance rate, which might seem good, but I consider it extremely low. I consider 75 percent a good rate of attendance, but I might be looking through rose colored glasses. The teachers attending are all teachers that have been teaching for less than 10 years and are willing to grow, to learn new things.

The teachers that really need this training are the old bloods that have been teaching for 15, 20, 25 years. They are set in their ways, they “know what we should be teaching”. I’ve run into these types of teachers in my effort to get them to stop using 10 to 15 year old CD’s to teach students how to read and write. We are here for the kids. They need to either jump into the 21st Century or retire so that we can get teachers who want to grow and use the new technology. We need people who want to teach the kids what they need, what they deserve.

That’s what I think…What about you?