More student laptops possible

This fall, every fifth- and sixth-grader in the Shoreline School District — about 1300 students — could get their own laptop computer for school use. That’s if the Shoreline School Board approves the district’s proposal at a July 25 board meeting.

If approved, students would use the computers at school, but not take them home.

The program would extend what’s been done in recent years. In fall 2006, the district gave almost 4,000 laptops for school and home use to all district middle and high schoolers, bringing the total to about 5,000 student laptops from earlier roll outs.

Some teachers are excited about the new proposal. Others question its timing, its long-term educational value and the use of money that could be spent elsewhere.

Do lap tops improve education?

In 2005, Echo Lake Elementary school gave a laptop to every fourth- through sixth-grader for school and home use.

School staff gave a presentation to the board June 5 about the program. The presenters — the school principal and two teachers — described it in glowing terms.

“We as a staff can’t imagine teaching without the lap tops,” said Shari Wennik, who teaches fifth grade.

Among other things, students made movies and did documentary-style interviews on the computer. They also researched sources online and used the laptops to access and organize school information.

Still, the issue of measurable outcomes remains a question.

“I have very mixed feelings,” said Elizabeth Beck, a teacher at Syre Elementary school and co-president of the Shoreline Education Association, or SEA. “On the one hand, I think the kids will be very excited about them and I know that they’ll in general be put to good use.”

But Beck and other teachers have concerns. Among them: Do one-to-one laptops actually improve learning?

“Part of a technology plan should have goals and objectives that are measurable, whatever you decide those goals are — increased test scores or something else,” Beck said.

As an example, she referred to a New York Times article about several school districts dropping their laptop programs.

The May 4 article, called “Seeing no progress, some schools drop laptops,” describes districts across the country who have had the programs for several years. Faced with student misuse during class, excessive maintenance, high costs and other problems, the districts stopped their programs. Studies found no overall difference in test scores between schools where students got laptops and those that didn’t, the article says.

The WASL and SAT don’t necessarily measure the benefits of a laptop program, said Jim Golubich, director of instructional technology for the district.

“To take a WASL report from Olympia — it’s hard to draw a direct line between the two,” he said.

He writes about the issue in the district’s 2006-07 Laptop Surveys Summary Report, found on the district’s Web site. This year, the district surveyed parents and staff about its secondary laptop program, with mixed results. Echo Lake wasn’t included in the survey.

“Due to many variables that bear upon the process of education, comprehensive studies that will yield a definitive verdict are virtually impossible to design,” Golubich wrote in the summary, describing studies to measure educational progress from laptops.

There’s been an outcry from teachers to see a long-range district plan for technology which outlines learning goals, Beck said.

The district doesn’t have its own plan.

“I’d say in the last five or six years there’s been a pretty profound trend toward districts adopting the state standards for technology in education,” Golubich said.

The state goals are on the Web site of the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. They include ramping up computer use in classrooms and making the machines a central part of teaching and communication in schools. They also include teaching students basic and advanced computer skills.

Much to learn

The district’s fiscal problems this year led to the closure of two schools and a redrawing of elementary boundaries. Because of that and other changes, many teachers will teach at new schools or teach different grades or subjects this fall.

Pat Valle, co-president of SEA, has suggested the district slow down the laptop program, partly because of those changes.

“It’s a huge impact — how will they meet the needs of a teacher who has never taught social studies and needs training?” she said.

The one-to-one laptop program requires teachers to learn new ways to deliver instruction, and that means a lot of professional development, Beck said. She said there are many areas teachers need training in, like how to integrate laptops meaningfully into lessons.

At the secondary level, there’s been a lot of problems with students surfing the Web during class and other off-task behaviors — another need for teacher training, Beck added.

She’s heard teachers say it would be good to slow down and focus on the technology the district already has.

In response, Golubich said the district wants to move forward this fall and not wait because it has staff already in place, funded partly with bond money, to set up and train for the new program.

Mixed feelings

Teachers feel differently about the fifth- and sixth-grade laptop proposal, and there’s no majority opinion either way, Beck and Valle said.

“Some people embrace it — they have a natural inclination toward technology,” Valle said. “Then others are saying, “It’s OK, I don’t need anything else.’”

Dennis Simpson, who teaches sixth grade and highly capable students at Meridian Park Elementary, said he can’t wait for one-to-one laptops.

“It’s going to be wonderful,” he said, adding that the computer labs and laptop carts at the school were heavily used. “We fight over those computer labs.”

Valle said her daughter, who will be in eighth grade next year, used her computer for research, typing notes and other useful tasks.

Still, Valle doesn’t want the district to run into a situation where the fact that teaching is a social act is forgotten, she said.

“Even with the most advanced laptop, with all the bells and whistles, unless there’s a connection between two human beings — the teacher and the student — all those bells and whistles will fall on deaf ears,” she said.