Laptops Don't Improve Education--What A Shocker

It has taken me a while to get around to this article, but as the New York Times reported a few days ago, laptops issued to students don't actually improve education. Color me shocked.

The students at Liverpool High have used their school-issued laptops to exchange answers on tests, download pornography and hack into local businesses. When the school tightened its network security, a 10th grader not only found a way around it but also posted step-by-step instructions on the Web for others to follow (which they did).

Scores of the leased laptops break down each month, and every other morning, when the entire school has study hall, the network inevitably freezes because of the sheer number of students roaming the Internet instead of getting help from teachers.

So the Liverpool Central School District, just outside Syracuse, has decided to phase out laptops starting this fall, joining a handful of other schools around the country that adopted one-to-one computing programs and are now abandoning them as educationally empty — and worse.

Many of these districts had sought to prepare their students for a technology-driven world and close the so-called digital divide between students who had computers at home and those who did not.

“After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none,” said Mark Lawson, the school board president here in Liverpool, one of the first districts in New York State to experiment with putting technology directly into students’ hands. “The teachers were telling us when there’s a one-to-one relationship between the student and the laptop, the box gets in the way. It’s a distraction to the educational process.”

I have said this over and over again in a number of different contexts, but technology is a tool not a substitute.

School districts that implemented "laptops" for every student failed to realize the basic truth that technology cannot supplant real curricula and solid teaching. The almost inevitable result of rushing to technology occurred.

Technology is a multiplier of power, it is not power itself. If technology is used to supplement, not supplant, solid teaching and curricula, then technology can be a force multiplier in education. But until school districts can develop curricula that can accomodate all individuals and help all student learn, a far better expenditure of funds would be to make sure that learning actually takes place.

As the story points out, most educational programs are not designed to accomodate one-to-one computing nor have school districts figured out how to handle misuse and abuse by students. The later may not be possible.