TQ# 10 – Ethical Issues for the Tech Director

I read several of the scenarios presented in the Class 10 documents section this week. Several of them presented some rather knotty issues. As someone has mentioned, sometimes there just are no easy answers no matter where you look. I chose the scenario concerning the tech director who finds the sexually explicit emails written to students (“a bad situation gets worse”).

Obviously in any situation like this, one has to be sure of one’s facts—i.e., is there sufficient evidence that something very wrong is going on? I think that there is no question that is the case here. I am not an attorney or specialist in child care issues, but it is obvious that writing sexually explicit letters to a minor is a very serious charge for which an educator should be fired and forbidden to work in child care or education again. Certainly, actual physical contact would be such grounds as well. The fact that this involves a minor makes me want to say that, regardless of the consequences, something has to be done no matter how long it takes or what pain is involved for me or others.

It is pretty clear from the scenario laid out here that the ‘powers that be’ in this district, by way of a history of coercion and subtle messages, have secured a protective wall around their illicit actions and the illicit actions of others. Several people in the district obviously know what is going on, but due to these “structures” that have been setup are afraid to do anything or find it to be too much work and stress. The second teacher mentioned in the scenario appears not to have been fired but left voluntarily, and still is involved with extracurricular activities. The principal, very obviously, appears to be involved in the cover-up. I would think the superintendent either knows about what is going on or is incredibly irresponsible, for he/she does not want to follow-up (or else left it to the principal to do so, but it is hard to imagine this is the first time he/she is hearing about such allegations).

Despite the fact that it could get very uncomfortable and my job as tech director may be at an end in this district (since I would either be fired or would find myself completely incapable of functioning here), I completely agree with the tech director in the scenario that I have a moral and legal obligation to pursue this, with the intent of putting an end to these kinds of illicit affairs as common practice here. Nothing else really matters at this point. (Besides, I could find myself legally at risk for not saying anything about this.) It was appropriate for the tech director to go to the superintendent first. Since not much help was forthcoming there, I would probably try feeling out some other administrators with greater tenure (and not teachers) in the district to see if I might start making a friend or two in this corrupt district. Perhaps others have felt bad about this situation also and were looking for some backup, as am I. If this tact did not work, I would next see if the district had a person in a legal capacity. If not, I would then seek advice from an attorney outside the district. Since I am not a lawyer, I cannot say what all can be done. I would maintain my day-to-day activities and share nothing with others during this process. Hopefully, through such intervention, I could find some workable options.

TQ# 9 – Grant Proposal for one Laptop per Every Child program

(Note: We should remember that very few grants are given for technology per se.)

Educational goals:

School District A is herein asking for funds, which we will match, to implement a plan to distribute one laptop to every child in our high school, grades 9 to 12. We have very well thought out educational goals with which a solid core of teachers and administrators are in agreement. Over the course of the last 6 months, first our principal Mr. Harry S. and then a core of 35 teachers have met and discussed their interest in providing every student with his/her own laptop for in school use. We have seen the increase in student motivation and positive attitudes to school work after last year’s addition of two computer labs in our high school building as well as the new policy at that time to allow students to check out those laptops when available and use them at school in classes. We heard comments from students like “now I do not have to go to the library to work on something, but can work on it here and now when I feel the desire” or “I can check an Internet page to further my research right away on something my teacher is talking about.” (c.f. experience on the NYC schools in English classes In OLPC in NYC”; retrieved from http://olpcnyc.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/57/, June 23, 2009) More than these comments, teachers and administrators here in the high school have been seeing a new sense of ownership of learning on the part of our students. When we talk about ownership of a physical computer, we are really talking about ownership of learning.

We also know that every teacher here recognizes that the computer is indeed a tool and how teachers direct students to use that tool makes all the difference. Thus, we realize the potential for students with their own laptops to sit in class and surf the Internet to sites other than those around which the lesson is wrapped. In other words, we recognize the fact that while the Internet opens up a vast arena of research possibilities and the digital world allows for a new realization of skills building like visualization, modeling, and archiving, it can be used educationally or not educationally. Teachers see students today using those laptops they have checked out of the lab in classes that run the gamut: they are writing their papers and revising better in their English classes, they are being assigned mini activities to go on the Internet and look for positions for and against an issue. Here, when they see that not everyone agrees on an issue and that choices are many times not so easy to make, we see them getting very excited. In short, we see students learning to think!

Implementation plan:

Our plans for implementation are as follows. We are even now working with vendors to isolate the machine that will create the best mix for us. The computers will need to emphasize the best combination of a lighter weight, with speed and battery life. We have looked at Apple and Dell minis so far. As for software, we will extend our licenses a bit to the M.S. office suite as well as some applications we now use educationally. There will not be any need to purchase applications other than the ones we already use. Students at the high school level need the standard fare of productivity applications and the Internet. Speaking of the Internet, School, District A already has a robust wireless network in place in our high school that has proven itself over the course of the last 3 years to be stable and fast, as evidenced by a record of 5% outages during a span of 2 years. The laptops will be ordered and distributed along the lines of the following schedule: every student in the 12th grade will receive his/he own laptop after Christmas break of our following school year. We will make careful observations about this program before proceeding to the other grades. Teachers will be given extensive training on how to implement the laptops substantially into every part of what they do. This training will occur in October of the new year (September is too early, with all that is usually going on at that time) and will continue right up to before Christmas break. Training sessions will occur for all teachers on a weekly basis and on a staggered basis and will be conducted by fellow teachers, those known for already using technology in their classrooms to a significant degree. The training will be discussed/laid out at the end of this current school year and this will be done in cooperation with the tech director of our high school as well as with the technology oriented teachers mentioned above. The training will focus on some or all of the following areas: technological aspects of using the machines, training on certain applications, and training on specific ways to integrate the computer into actual class lessons or activities. Concrete and specific techniques and advice will be emphasized. The distribution of laptops will happen all at once in January and before this students and parents will be informed about their responsibilities concerning care and use of the machine, and the Acceptable Use Policy reiterated. Students will not be allowed to take any laptop home at this time.

Evaluation plan:

The plans to evaluate this implementation will proceed as follows: we will initially isolate, through focus groups, areas that teachers might still be uncomfortable with concerning the implementation and try to allay them. In the first 2 months after distribution, we will send questionnaires to teachers and students focusing on different aspects of their experience with the machines. We will also conduct two focus groups with teachers and one with students at this time focusing on concerns with technology, the downside and benefit of certain software, and ways having one’s own laptop is benefiting one’s educational program and learning experience. The focus groups will allow some direct interaction and Q and A. A rubric that might be used in this regard appears below. The rubric will be roughly the same for summative and formative evaluation, but questions focusing on specific benefits and drawbacks with be emphasized in the summative evaluation. At the end of our academic year, test scores from some of the vehicles normally used for reading and mathematics assessment and testing will be employed Extended quantitative testing (at beginning of second year) in reading and writing and math and social studies will be conducted by a local firm hired for this purpose

Possible Rubric:
1. The degree to which you experienced hardware concerns with the computers: NEVER experience a problem; OCCASIONALLY had an issue; MORE THAN TWICE had an issue; MANY TIMES had problems.

2. Your degree of technology savvy: VERY INEXPERENCED and ill-at-ease; somewhat EXPERIENCED and comfortable; VERY ADEPT

3. The degree to which you experienced usability issues with computers: ALWAYS UNDERSTOOD how to do something; RARELY had problems, but always figured it out shortly thereafter; SOMETIMES had a problem and could not get an answer until too late to have desired effect; EXPERIENCED SEVERAL ISSUES/PROBLEMS

4. The effect on your ability to teach: BENEFITED RARELY if at all; BENEFITED SOMETIMES, but not worth cost; BENEFITED TO POINT where laptops should be purchased; BENEFITED a GREAT DEAL and cannot do without them

5. For students: the effect on ability to learn: BENEFITED RARELY if at all; BENEFITED SOMETIMES, but not worth cost; BENEFITED TO POINT where laptops should be purchased; BENEFITED a GREAT DEAL and cannot do without them.

6. How beneficial do you see laptops in general? (directed to teachers an students):
· Advantages of their use: state three or more
· Drawbacks to use of the laptops in classrooms; state three or more

TQ# 8 – Reflecting on Meaning of some Technology in Education Research

I read the Metiri group report instead of the study by Wenglinsky because I had read the latter last semester. I also read the first study on Reading and Mathematics software effectiveness done by the U.S. Dept of Education.

The research in the first study (the Effectiveness of Reading and Mathematics Software or products, done by US Dept of Education) was done under the mandate of NCLB rules and was conducted by two research forms. The study was done with a very significant sample base (23 school districts). The second study I looked at in summary was the one sponsored by Cisco systems and conducted by Metiri, a highly respected organization.

In assessing what we are learning about the effectiveness of educational technology in our schools, I read the reports with great interest. The amount of dollars spent in schools on technology is significant and one wants to see if these tools are actually contributing to improved learning. As more and more studies occur and, depending on relatively negative or positive findings, the future of technology in schools may be affected at some point.

After reading the first report, I was left with some questions as well as with a general “flat” feeling. One almost had to read the entire report in order to get a clear view of the validity of the study. This study seemed to follow a pretty solid methodology. The sample size was large enough and the data collected on the object of study combined a nice mix of quantitative and qualitative means. Also, both the treatment and control groups were working with software and not just non-technological methods, which thus equalized the groups in some ways. One thing that concerned me was the fact that the teachers were given training on the products by the vendors and not by the testers or by people necessarily in education. We do not know whether any of the trainers might also have been teachers; it could be assumed many were not. One thing we do know was that teachers said they felt confident right after having their training, but not so confident after actually using the products in a classroom. Also, I believe the time the products were actually used in classrooms (a percentage of the total school day) was rather small. No technical difficulties seem to have gotten in the way of the use of these tools.

It is difficult for me to say what was actually going on in this study and in these classrooms, mainly because I did not know most of the products that were actually used in the study. We have teachers reporting that children are working more on their own and not being subjected to lecture style teaching, and these are, of course, good things. However, these observations seem almost unnecessary to make because when you use software you, almost be definition, are not lecturing. I believe that maybe the test scores were little if at all changed due to the following factors or reasons: 1) the teachers did not have adequate training on these products (i.e. training by educators themselves), and 2) the products were not used nearly as much as they should have been to get a good gauge of their capability in enhancing scores and learning. For the study, teachers should have been required to use them more often.

As for the Technology in Schools report by Metiri, this was really a ‘study about studies’ of educational technology and its effects on learning. It made some very good points, I thought, concerning the kinds of skills we should look for that represent the deepest and best kind of learning (things such as automaticity, authentic learning, information processing and visualization, and higher order thinking). It also castigated some studies for not using proper controls (i.e., not even having a control group). Finally, it also reminded us that high quality teaching when using the technology is an absolute requirement for learning advances to occur. They state that there must be “a triangulation of content, sound principles of learning, and high-quality teaching” for technology really to work and be worth the effort. The report, thus, is pretty much a critique of the “Effectiveness” study I looked at above. It also mentions that the technology must be used for a longer term than sometimes has been looked at, and this also was one of my criticisms of the “Effectiveness” study above. The report also says that research is getting better, but that much more good research is needed to assess what effects technology is having in our classrooms.

As the report scans down through the various technologies, going in roughly chronological order, it notes the many places where research has yet to even appear. For some of the cognitive function areas, like visualization skills—which I know a bit more about through personal experience—I found myself agreeing with what the report was saying: these kinds of tools assist students in picturing what-if’s and seeing causal relations in a better way. In sum, this report excited me because, on the one hand, it pointed out that there has been some research which shows some definite positive gains where technology has been implemented, but also, on the other hand, drew attention to the many opportunities for research. I also thought that the study was cautious where it needed to be. All in all, it was a nice review of what has been going on in the area of educational research over a period of some time. Our intuitions are correct, I believe: technology is doing some good things, but doctoral students also will not run out of dissertation topics anytime soon.

TQ# 7 - Rewriting an AUP

A situation has arisen in this school district that I have been asked to respond to and, in such light, to rewrite parts of this district’s Acceptable Use Policy, such policy that is signed by all parents and students every year. The question has arisen whether to permit students to use their personal “portable electronic devices” during any part of the school day and especially during class time. Several students have voiced an opinion that use of such devices can be done responsibly and may also at times be vehicles toward extending their classroom learning experience. Others—-both students and teachers—-have indicated that such devices should never be used during class unless it is in the context of a teacher-led activity, but can be permitted on campus and used in the halls or cafeteria. There is thus a need to clarify the use of and even presence of such portable devices on school grounds.

First, there is a need to define the term “personal portable electronic devices.” (NOTE 1 I like the way the “medium-size” AUP lays out actual examples of the kinds of things permitted or prohibited in schools. These lists might never be comprehensive, but at least they give the idea of what is aimed at.) By this is meant any of the following: cell phones, mp3 players, ipods, portable a/v players, Blackberry’s and other smartphones, Palm Pilots, Pocket PC devices, and lastly laptop computers. In the final analysis, the emergence of this issue in our school district does not in any appreciable way change the digital acceptable use policies that have been in place for sometime. It has always been the view of the administrators and school board members of this school district that students have a right to the possession and use of their personal electronic devices on school grounds, when they use them in responsible and acceptable ways. (NOTE 2 This is another abiding them of the medium-size AUP example.) The view is that students (and teachers, for that matter) should be given an opportunity to demonstrate responsible behavior, which is the goal of any good educational program. Devices like cell phones or smartphones and ipods can have a number of legitimate uses, such as contacting one’s home or parent in a case of an emergency and gaining info about news events during the day. At the same time, such devices have no place in the context of a classroom or teaching activity when such activity is not directly centered on teacher-led instructing by way of such devices. Thus it is the educational technology coordinator’s position that such personal electronic devices should continue to be allowed on campus and used during non-classroom times, but used within the confines of the rest of the Acceptable Use statement.

Examples of what this means for the use of such devices now follow. Students should never use such devices in the context of a classroom unless the teacher is purposely making use of said device in the lesson plan or class activity (e.g., the Pocket PC as a data gathering tool or a laptop being used to search the Internet in the context of research). Students may use devices like ipods and smartphones when not in a classroom setting, and may even access their own email or Internet sites by way of the school’s wireless or wired connections (thus employing a proxy address in their personal software) as long as such access does not significantly drain school network bandwidth. The latter situation might develop if students are, for instance, downloading large videos via a website on their portable device or playing audio files by way of websites when connected to the school’s wireless network (NOTE 3 See fine but reasonable distinctions made in the medium-size AUP example statement, pp. 2-3). Students might choose to employ their own data plans when connecting to such aforementioned resources and this is also acceptable practice. Obviously, all stipulations regarding acceptable and unacceptable website visits through the school’s network resources as well as the giving out of personal information about another student, the use of cyberbullying, the use of peer-to-peer file sharing applications, the use of devices to do or facilitate illegal acts, and any attempt to gain unauthorized access to other computer systems are in place and thus prohibited. Moreover, anything done with a personal portable electronic device that in any way disrupts the ability of other students to learn or go about their ordinary and expected school day activities will also be considered a prohibited use. The school district, by way of any teacher or administrator, shall reserve the right to confiscate such portable electronic devices at any time during the school day and on school property if their use is found to be violating any of the aforementioned acceptable use policies. The device will be returned to the user at the close of that school day, and the student will be prohibited from using that device on school property from that time forward except for directly constituted classroom activities. There will be no second chances.

TQ# 6 – New Concepts in Networking

My understanding of networking principles used to be somewhat good. Now I have forgotten a number of things. Thursday night, I learned about the importance of picking the ISP your school will use and the kind of bandwidth you pay for. I also learned that fiber wire in our wiring closets provides no speed advantage over copper wire. Furthermore, I deepened my understanding of the firewall and its difference from the content filter infrastructure (though I want to follow up on this also).
I also found the talk by Robert Metcafe exciting.

As for what I am unclear on or what I would like to see discussed further in class, I would mention the following:

 Discuss what goes into the wiring of a building and some of the options someone who oversees that process has.

 Further explication of some of the tools one can use to monitor the network and/or the use of remote management tools.

 Setting up and managing an email system.

TQ#5 - Progress on Wikibook Chapter and One-to-One Laptop Initiative Research Project and also Difficulties Encountered

As for the One-to-One Laptop Initiative project, I have been targeting the Maine Initiative. So far, I have accomplished the following: have read materials off www.mcmel.org/MLLS/mlti.index.htm that chronicled the history of and vision behind the program, including how it was initially funded. I can see that this program had as its driving force a very forward-thinking governor of the state of Maine. The emphasis throughout the materials was also on the fact that the program lives or dies by the degree of focus on learning gains and including teacher preparation and participation and not on the gains in our knowledge of technology. The aforementioned website brings together very nicely a number of materials on several aspects of Maine’s initiative. I have also read three or more articles having to do with research into how the laptops (ibooks) are making a difference in various parts of the 7th and 8th grade curriculum and also how funding for the senior grades is coming along (i.e., through cooperation with forward-thinking businesses that see the vital importance of education for what they do also). I have some contacts also.

For the Wikibook chapter, I have been engaged in isolating the material I will cover as over against what my colleague, also doing Maintenance and Support, will cover. At this point, I am breaking now the individual parts of Maintenance and Support and then asking what needs to be looked at under each general area. The focus I want to take is concreteness—I want the Wikibook to have a strong real-world feel, so that a newbie or potential newbie Tech Director out there will find it a helpful resource before they plunge into their first job.

To be honest, my difficulties (primarily related to the one-on-one initiative research project) center on how to justify and/or describe the gains from so great an expenditure of money that was necessary to fund such an endeavor. What do we talk about when we talk about successes/gains—student test scores or just vignettes of students getting excited about their education? I am not saying these things are not highly important—they are…I just have trouble, at this stage, with how to quantify this in a research report…as well as with what questions to ask participants.

TQ# 4 - Cloning 500 laptops

Imaging or cloning (what I basically understand as the same thing) software and settings on computers is something that any Tech Director is going to have to learn to do eventually. Personally, I have been involved in the creation and execution of an image disc to roll out desktop computers in a corporate environment. A “coreload”—a standard set of applications (including the OS) that are licensed for as many machines as are going to be used— is defined and then other standard settings, such as operating system configuration settings (policy settings, registry restrictions, screensaver timeout settings, proxy addressees, etc.), printer setups, and OS network accounts and domain joinings are all isolated and then made part of the company’s or school’s “image.” This image is then run on every computer in a, mostly, automated (there is a need to hit a key only one time in our system) process, beginning from various media. We get our machines from Dell and they have the OS on them in an initial install state. We do not use this install; rather, our image starts fresh, formatting the hard drive, installing the licensed OS that we get from Dell and then installing the CL apps. Four reboots are required in our scenario and the process must not be interrupted (or it has to be started all over again). The complete transfer of the image will usually take 3.5 hours per machine.

For these projects I have used Norton Ghost and the image was at one time burned to a CD, but today usually run from a network drive. The network is fast enough at my company so that the 3.5-hour reference point is usually reached. When other applications are requested/purchased by the end user, however, the process can take up to 4.5 hours. Usually, these other apps are installed manually (i.e., not using the automated process of Ghost). Serial numbers or license keys are inserted in the software as the image is run on the machines.

The scenario I wish to envision here will be an installation of Linux (perhaps chosen due to lower cost for the school, but something with which I am mostly unfamiliar) on the 500 laptops. No matter how you look at it, this will take some time and there needs to be significant planning beforehand, if at all possible. For one thing, I have found in my research that Norton Ghost does not work very well with Linux (we assume here Ubuntu/Debian). Through research, I have discovered something called Systemimager, which I have never used before, but am hearing more and more good about it as I read. It is made by Soundforge, and appears to be open source (Soundforge’s website has been offline for some days now, so one, unfortunately, cannot check). It sounds powerful and likes all flavors of Linux. I have also researched what most would probably say is the gold standard of imaging software--Acronis True Image. There are definitely some bells and whistles here that Systemimager is lacking—for example, Acronis can go back to a previous image in the event that a patch causes problems and it can do this without reinstalling the entire image. For Acronis, you will be paying a hefty price to use it: there appears to be licensing dependent on how many machines you will image with it. Educational institutions receive special pricing, but nonetheless it is going to cost in the neighborhood of thousands of dollars compared to the open source Systemimager. Acronis will work with Linux fine, according to their website (http://www.acronis.com/industry/education/ ). If one goes with Acronis, the purchase of this software will have to be made sometime before the 500 laptops show up. The decision whether to purchase Acronis or some software with extra bells and whistles will involve a consideration of what other significant things the software can do for you down the road—for example, deploying patches and upgrades to software across your network. This will be a key decision, but generally I would probably go with something with a greater feature set.

Another tradeoff in doing images, in general, involves the media by which we do our image, which in turn involves how fast our image will run. I have done imaging from CD’s and even flash drives, but this involves creating the master image on every one of those media so that multiple machines can be imaged simultaneously. For this reason, then, I do not think I would run an image today except from the network. However, depending on the speed of one’s network, it may be quite a bit slower doing it this way and, perhaps, not even feasible. One also has to take care that certain ports are opened when one has machines receiving an image across the network. The steps to setting up your imaging process for Systemimager (installing the software on both a server and a ‘golden machine’ and then running the commands to make it download to each machine attached to the network) are found here: http://www.howtoforge.com/howto_linux_systemimager The somewhat arcane command lines that have to be run can be learned by your typical Tech Director without too much trouble. Additional commands and a boot disk are required to allow the machines to connect to the network drives when the machines do not yet have bootable software on them. Thus, this is an extra step, where a bootable floppy (if it has one!) or CD first has to be made for each machine and then has to be inserted in each machine. I believe that a machine can start with the Dell image and then this can be overwritten by the image process once the machine connects to the network. If the flash drive or CD process is going to be used, the Tech Director will likely want to call for student volunteers to insert discs. What will be there motivation for helping out here? Perhaps experience itself can be the emphasis.

TQ# 3 – Wikibook Thinking and Planning (The Tech Director position)

This is a helpful question to ponder at this point. I think I am beginning to see what some of the priorities have to be for the tech director at this point. On the other hand, I am sure my perspective will change as I learn more about the position.

One thing that strikes me about the tech director position is that one has to learn to ask for help from others and, hopefully, have a few colleagues to work with. The tech director, for instance, will not be a full-blown network administrator; that’s really another position, by definition, requiring substantial and specific training. However, the tech director needs to know some basics about how networks work, since the director is involved in purchasing a network infrastructure, assisting end users one-on-one with concepts like saving files on network shares, setting up their email or a network printer, or simply understanding the importance of changing their password(s). The rapport one gains with the network staff by knowing something about their field will benefit the cohesion of the whole tech department.

It goes without saying that a tech director has to wear many hats, even in larger organizations. That actually may be the thing that makes the job more stimulating—you get to do various things in your day. The need to be organized will also have to be one of the top priorities. One needs to plan one’s day/week for getting things done in the most efficient way possible and yet be able to respond immediately to the most pressing things that come up in the course of a day. Restructuring one’s schedule for the subsequent days will then need to take place. Areas that I would think require the greatest organizational skills would be purchasing (including researching vendors and bidding), and then keeping track of inventory, including creating databases that store info about hardware specs and software licenses attached to those pieces of hardware. Good reporting functions also need to be built into those databases. These would probably be the most time consuming responsibilities. If one is involved in raising money for the institution (for instance, writing grants), that, I would think, would be quite time consuming also, though it may only be a concern at certain times of the year. Areas I would think would be the greatest joys (as least for this trainee), would be conducting training (on email and networking principles, for example) with teachers and students and putting together a tech plan that integrates technology into the curriculum. The latter would involve things like researching and testing educational (and administrative) software, and setting up and leading mini research and testing on software use in actual classrooms.

From the perspective of what would be the most difficult to do for a beginning or first year tech director, I would say that would have to do with where that person is best prepared from his/her past training. I do not believe any one area is inherently more difficult than any other, but some areas probably are more time consuming. Personally, this trainee finds desktop support and network support easier because I have worked with those kinds of things, whereas working through the purchasing and bidding process, including writing grants evokes the greatest anxiety. My advice to beginning tech directors would be to get some kind of a cheat sheet for the budgeting codes as well as secure some solid examples and “templates” for the bidding process and grant writing process, from either the previous tech director or someone in the business department. Thus, in putting together a preparation course for a tech director, I would emphasize the purchasing and bidding processes. Although it is one thing that I personally enjoy, putting together a tech plan can be a difficult task, mainly because it involves getting on board with the vision of others in the school. In previous positions, I have learned, sometimes through a painful process, that my vision for what children need to learn and what software best assists with that is not always shared (in any significant way) with others who have greater tenure at that school or institution. As the Bailey/Frazier text says, as well as our instructor in TLT 474, another key skill one has to learn is the ability to swallow one’s ego (not to mention having a sense of humor).

TQ#2 - Good and Bad Aspects of Australian Tech Studies

I looked first at the report on Netbook potential in education at the Queensland schools. Netbooks are the latest craze now and I was interested in how these might be used in education, as a low cost alternative to laptops (as the report states). My general impression was that the study possesses some major methodological/conceptual flaws.
I liked the way the report laid out the general goals of the study (three of them) and also pointed out the ways laptops have already been used to educational benefit. I also liked that the study employed multiple vehicles for getting data (quantitative and qualitative methods –see p. 9). I also liked the ways certain controls were put in place upfront—for example, all participants were on the same page when it came to being up to speed on ICT Pedagogical Licenses and were provided with orienting training before participating in the study. I also liked that pictures and specification information was provided for the computers used in this study. The study size seemed a bit small, but in the introduction section the point was made that netbooks might only work with the lower grades. However, when I read down to p. 10, I realized that only a total of 8 students were included in this study, a very odd fact and one that probably invalidates this study from the start. The timeframe looked at was 2 terms, which I thought was sufficient. On pages 15 to 19, some exciting trends were seen in student achievement and positive comments made from teachers, but some insuperable obstacles were also presented when it came to using the netbook as replacement for the laptop. I did not see any major mistakes in this study other than the absurdly small sample size.

I also looked at the Classmate PC 1:1 eLearning Project in Australia of Feb 2009. Here the study looked at whether student achievement could be improved through the lower cost mobile computing option. Again, what seems to have been done well is similar to the other netbook study: a sample that included schools in rural, regional city, and metropolitan locations and differing socio-economic levels, a use of multiple vehicles for measurement, a fairly clear laying out of the goals of the study, and collection of data from a range of stakeholders, and appreciation for the need for scalability. Negatives in the management of this study include the relatively small sample size (only 6 classes): not sure it is possible to proceed to generalization with such a small sample. There were some other aspects of the study that were just plain strange: why were such things as “delays in supplies of the laptops to teachers” or insufficient or non-existent wifi connectivity” considered to be impediments to the study? Are not these things that are under the control of the researchers—in other words, not a fault of the devices being studied? Some conclusions of the study also seemed to be so obvious as to prompt one to ask why they were related (e.g., teachers modified their room layout or workspace to accommodate technical requirements of the laptops or teachers modified their schedules when laptops were away for repair).

Generally, I found the study to be rather banal in what the researchers thought were important conclusions to relate and that there was little if any conclusions made about student achievement. Knowing that teachers need to be motivated about this technology and also knowing what pedagogies they favored was a helpful point to make, but there WAS still a good deal of other information provided that seemed to be entirely unnecessary (almost a forgone conclusion). Recommendations for future implementation that were provided were also rather banal or unnecessary—why does anyone need to know that opening firewalls for these devices to connect is important? The point is that this is a given before you even begin a study.

As future implementers of technology, the study did relate some helpful things in the category of follow-up and teacher training. As we think about rolling out a new technology, we should never forget the importance of teacher collegiality networks, fast access to helpdesk resources, the need to put on display models of best practices using the technology, and strategic and well thought out selection of the first participants for the study. Also admirable about the study was the way that teacher attitudes and total school culture was a key aspect for success with this or any technology.