Matthew C. Winner
Journal Article Review
May 19, 2006
Victor
Rivero, contributing editor of the American
School Board Journal, highlights under funding issues of the Enhancing
Education Through Technology program in his article
entitled “The Unkindest Funding Cut” from the May 2006 publication
of the ASBJ. Title II-D of the No
Child Left Behind Act, otherwise known as the
Enhancing Education Through Technology program or EETT, enables schools to
provide a number of services to teachers and students, using technology to meet
teaching and learning needs. The program funds support professional development
opportunities through which teachers can learn the function of and the
integration of new technology tools and software, provide access for rural and
urban students to courses online with are otherwise not available to them, and
equip student with the skills and tools needed to compete in a
technology-driven global employment market (Rivero, 2006, What’s at
stake, para. 1). The Bush administration’s recent budget cuts to the EETT
program and recent proposal to eliminate the EETT program altogether are cause
for alarm, according to Rivero. “We’ve had plenty of financial
resources and plenty of good leadership… we do not lack the will, or the drive
to succeed… what we lack—ironically, in this land of
opportunity—is just that” (Introduction, para. 7-8). Though Rivero
acknowledges an increase in the funding of schools across the country, he
stresses that the budget cannot support standards-based learning alone, but must
address the need to educate students to be successful in a highly competitive,
changing global economy. Those needs include an emphasis on technology
education. “Technology won’t save education,” says Rivero
(Speaking out, para. 4), “but restricting the opportunity for
technology-enabled learning certainly won’t get us there either.”
I’ve
been to a number of technology training best practices sessions through the
Howard County Public School System, and one point always raised is that our
students are raised in the technology teachers are struggling to learn or
struggling to implement into their teaching. Is technology education given a
back seat to other educational approaches on account of a general feeling of
trepidation from the educator’s perspective? Is it because schools lack
the funding to adequately provide the electronic tools their students need? Or,
perhaps, it’s because it is simply too risky a maneuver to abandon the
traditional, tried-and-true approaches to education in lieu of a more economically
conscientious, technology-infused approach. Rivero wrote of a need for
opportunity. I think our students seek the same need: an opportunity to employ
the technology skills and experience they already have with the content being
taught in the classroom. I think our government needs to approach technology as
an essential curriculum area and reconsider funding for the EETT program.
Technology can be an incredible tool that can propel education in the classroom
as we know it, but it needs supporters who trust in its power and capabilities.
I hoped the article would stress increasing technological integration in its
expanding environment, that being our schools, businesses, restaurants,
construction, and communication. Instead, it focused more on “investigating
in the education of our children in order to produce global leaders”
(Speaking out, para. 1), mind you, the world economy can only support so many
global leaders and, certainly, technology affects a great deal more people than
simply those that will grow to be world leaders.
Rivero, V.
(2006).
The
Unkindest Funding Cut. American School Board Journal, May
Retrieved May 19, 2006
from
http://www.asbj.com/2006/04/0406technologyfocus.html
Response to Journal Article Review
May 19, 2006
Katie,
It's great to read about
technology being used to support the curriculum rather than simply to
"wow" the students or to appear "high-tech". With budget
limitations, providing a one-to-one ratio of computers to students is a distant
dream for most elementary schools. However, I'm very happy that the local
counties are doing the best they can to integrate technology into their
schools, train their teachers on the usage and incorporation of technology into
their teaching, and the overall effort to make using technology more, well,
effortless.
Our school system has recently
undergone a technology upgrade in which desktops were replaced with iBooks.
It's exciting to have the new technology in our building, but the title of your
article couldn't have wrung more true for me! To many
of us, the laptops were a shiny new toy that we couldn't wait to open, explore,
and figure out. We're supposed to use them as much as possible with our
students, but many teachers didn't know where to go from there. It had seemed
that the computers in their rooms had long since taken over the role of storing
the student's grades and being used to access the county emailing system.
However, with the new computers came an all new shared
network!
I am one of two school tech
representatives at my school. We attended 2-3 technology inservices this year
to help us become familiar with the new tools and then return to our teams and
teach our colleagues how to implement the new tools. As you pointed out, this
is not to say there is actually enough time in the day to plan and implement
technology-infused lessons, but it's a good start. Our county has drafted a
technology curriculum and they are trying to make it essential countywide.
I think the best we can hope for
now is that educators don't give up on technology. The more we use and infuse
it, the greater the need will be to provide more computers to the schools. The
hard part is getting a schoolwide technology push from all of the teachers.
But, as the cycle continues, maybe having more inservices and more
opportunities for teachers to integrate technology into their lessons as
readily as easily as possible will create a greater interest among teachers to
put the tech into their teaching, thereby emphasizing to the county
representatives that we are serious about integrating technology in our schools
and that it can't be done without financial support.
Last month our school held a
"Technology Week". Each day was reserved for a different grade level
to be immersed in technology all day, beginning to end. The teachers traveled
with their students to different stations, learning side-by-side. At our first
session we learned about digital cameras. We went outside and took pictures of
nature, keeping in mind how species of an ecosystem fit together in a food web.
We then learned how to upload the pictures onto iPhoto. Another session used
our mobile lab and taught us how to take our iPhoto pictures and create a slideshow
and album. We're going to display the finished projects at this year's GT Fair.
I'm thankful that, with the limited resources we had, we were all able to learn
the new technology skills together. I think it was empowering for the students
and, honestly, it was so much fun!
The best solution for the
technology tools shortage may be to do what teachers do best: look at whatcha
got, get creative, and make it work.
Thanks for sparking such great
thoughts! Your approach to this article was very insightful!
-Matthew