This week's readings about the nature of literacy have posed some questions for me to ponder relating to a new initiative at the school where I work. The school where I have been an English teacher for the past eleven years is going forward with a plan to purchase netbooks for all incoming freshmen in the 2010-2011 school year, with the plan to continue this for all incoming freshmen for the next four years until the entire student body is netbook-equipped. The concerns many teachers have expressed about this initiative -- cost, maintenance/theft concerns, cheating, increased distractability in classes (all of the classrooms will be internet-connected), potential negative impact on traditional literacies, etc. -- have been largely dismissed by the powers-that-be. We are all for closing the digital divide, but our district already has a program to get laptops into the hands of students whose families can’t afford computers, many students already have laptops (of a higher quality than the ones they will be given), and there is no plan to provide internet access along with the laptops, rendering them useless at home (since they will not come with any non-internet based software). Anyone who expresses concerns about the plan and calls for, not necessarily a stop to the program, but at least a more clearly defined and better-researched rationale and plan for implementation, seems to be labeled anti-technology, anti-progress, and out of touch. The administrator in charge of purchasing this technology, in response to one recent question about the impact on print literacy, declared that “all literacies are the same.” Going into this week’s readings, I was curious how they would address this issue in particular.
The Wolf reading suggests that certain aspects of traditional reading encourage unique brain development that could be compromised in a generation engaged more in digital media at the expense of traditional reading. At the same time, Wolf acknowledges that perhaps these new literacies could encourage the growth of previously undeveloped neural connections and enable individuals with some disabilities in print literacy with a better ability to maximize their intellectual potential than in a world dependent on print literacy. Similar issues came up in the Braille article -- what is lost and what is gained by the dependence on these new technologies? I am not opposed to the benefits the new technologies have to offer, but I am concerned about what would be lost.
I am willing to entertain the possibility that my feelings on this issue are at least partially because I am more comfortable with print than digital media. Reading the Wolf excerpt, I wondered if I am just nostalgic for the kind of reading moments Proust describes. I do sometimes worry that my students who are poor readers, who never developed that "lost in another world" engagement with reading books, will never experience the pleasure I found in those moments. But perhaps I miss things that they experience through their engagement with digital media. Who am I to judge one experience better than another? At the same time, must one be gained at the expense of the other?
Beyond concerns of what the lack of print literacy might mean for the pleasures of reading, however, are concerns about whether or not the increased use of digital media in schools positively impacts student learning. An article from the New York Times that has been circulating around school -- Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops by Winnie Hu from May 4, 2007 -- chronicles several school districts around the country that are now abandoning laptop programs like the one upon which my school district is embarking. The reasons given include misuse of the computers (to cheat, look at pornography, etc.), costs for repair and replacement, and a lack of research showing that having the laptops improved academic performance. Part of the issue is that the programs are so new that little thorough research on the efficacy of these programs exist, but the results of existing studies do not look overwhelmingly promising. The article says,
"In one of the largest ongoing studies, the Texas Center for Educational Research, a nonprofit group, has so far found no overall difference on state test scores between 21 middle schools where students received laptops in 2004, and 21 schools where they did not, though some data suggest that high-achieving students with laptops may perform better in math than their counterparts without. When six of the schools in the study that do not have laptops were given the option of getting them this year, they opted against."
Later in the article, Mark Warschauer, a professor of education who supports laptop programs, acknowledges that there is no evidence that laptops increase state test scores, but he does say, “Where laptops and Internet use make a difference are in innovation, creativity, autonomy and independent research. . . If the goal is to get kids up to basic standard levels, then maybe laptops are not the tool. But if the goal is to create the George Lucas and Steve Jobs of the future, then laptops are extremely useful.”
Given that George Lucas and Steve Jobs, however, did not go to schools with one-to-one computing, however, and still managed to become as innovative and creative as they are, I still wonder if there is a way to merge what’s good about both these approaches. Is there a way for the new digital literacies not to replace the print literacies of the past, but to add on to them? Is putting a laptop in front of every kid all day at school the best way to do that?
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You say that your problem may stem partly from your preference for print media, but I really see that as a secondary concern with the netbook issue. As you say, netbooks are primarily intended for internet use, and so supplying one to a student does not, for example, give them the ability to write a paper, especially if the software doesn't come pre-bundled.
ReplyDeleteI have a mid-range netbook and love it, but it's primary purpose is because I commute to campus and need access to my myriad PDF documents, notes, and files without having to cart around a laptop or spending money I don't have on printing them. The only thing that makes this truly worthwhile, though, is the fact that I spent a little bit more money for a less bulky operating system (I have a Windows 7 starter instead of XP, and Vista can't even run on most netbooks) and a 6-cell battery (I get about eight hours of use on a charge instead of the 4 hours or so on a 3-cell).
Without those features, which I'm certain many schools cannot afford to add, a netbook is not a particularly useful investment in a student's academic future. There are plenty of technological expenditures that could be a much better use of the money available.
This, of course, is looking at the purely technological aspect of the program and not the media literacy part, on which you raise valid points. Though such programs decrease the divide between students with computer access and those without (though, as previously mentioned, netbooks are simply not the same as laptop computers), there is little evidence that this has a positive impact on academic performance. Without at least some guidance on the use of the technology, a computer of any kind is an expensive toy. Does the school have programs in place for utilizing these netbooks, or does it only wish to provide them?
Out of curiosity, has anyone tried talking to the school board instead of the in-house administration? Is this an option?
Great points, Anna. As for the school board, they have directly told the teachers that they are going ahead with this plan despite our concerns. It seems that they are motivated by being the first of the schools in our area to have "one-to-one computing."
ReplyDeleteWow. I was a teacher for eight years, and I have indeed seen blatant disregard for the input of teachers (you know, the competent, educated individuals that are actually in the classroom and might have a vague understanding of what students might need), but I've never seen it to such a large, expensive scale. Perhaps my districts have just not had the finances to be able to mount such a massive undertaking or they would have.
ReplyDeleteI am not familiar with netbooks, but if, as Anna says, they are primarily for internet use and can't be used as-is for composition, etc., then what exactly is the rationale in purchasing them? Are they really intended to be in constant sight on the student desks? Is the district intending to create usage guidelines or support for teachers for how to use them effectively in the classroom? Are they meant to replace textbooks or some other previously-used media?
I suppose that if they're as closed to teachers in this process as it seems, you may not know the answers to these questions, either because they haven't been forthcoming or because they haven't considered them themselves.
On a different aspect of your post, I wondered while reading the Wolf chapters about the differentiation between print literacy and digital literacy. Is she implying that reading, say, via Kindle is not the same as reading the same book in print form? Or is she saying that the primary sources of written material online are not as rich as print sources? Or is it the hyperlinked everything that fractures the reading experience as you go off on tangents, possibly never to return? What is your take?