"Throw me the idol, I'll throw you the whip."
In the past half decade, Indiana has taken some risks in the ways of educational technology. If you can think of "the old ways of education" as the idol, untested educational technology as the bag of sand Indiana Jones replaced the idol with, the Indiana school system as the temple itself, and the rolling stone (which gathers no moss) as the possible dangers the Indiana has to run away from, you can understand an extended metaphor regarding how Indiana has treated educational technology. Indiana has taken the idol from the temple and replaced it with the bag of sand. Indiana wanted to be the first to take idol safely, but because Indiana didn't test the bag of sand beforehand and there had been no real research on whether the bag of sand would be a safe alternative, Indiana has found itself in a load of trouble.
If that metaphor makes sense to you (and major kudos if it does!), then you probably get the gist of what I'm trying to say here and can skip the part in brackets. If not, please, feel free to read on.
[According to Indiana Public Media, in the last three years (as of Oct. 2011), Indiana has given out 22 grants for around $200,000 each. These grants were given to the 22 schools to integrate new technology and teaching methods that had not been well-researched. Indiana really just wanted to be in the forefront of this move to technology. I mean, that's pretty cool and innovative, but if you were a policy maker, would you vote to risk $4.3 million on untested methods? It seems a little crazy, if you ask me.]
The previously linked articles give this whole situation a rather negative tone, and rightfully so! I agree with Indiana (and this article) in that it's great to be on the forefront of the technology wave. Get our students to use this godsend we call technology to their benefits. Let them learn more quickly and with more efficiency than we ever did so that they will be innovative thinkers. Let their education lead America and the world into a better world with new cures, technologies, methodologies, and thoughts. By all means, yes, do those thing, but do them with a sense of responsibility!
The articles linked above mention that the policy makers were apprehensive. They didn't want to risk all that money, but more importantly, they didn't want to risk missing the opportunity to make a positive example out of Indiana. From my personally experience, I think they wasted a lot of money. I have spent time working with educators to use iPads effectively in the classroom, I have seen other educators attempt to use tablets without any outside help, and I have witnessed corporations who claim the technology is helping, but really have no idea what the students are doing with it. This doesn't mean all 22 grants were put to waste, it just means that what I've seen wasn't pretty. I'm sure there are some corporations who are using the technology they were given in the best possible way, but I haven't seen them.
The important take-aways here are that:
- Indiana is doing something to change the course of educational technology
- Indiana's methods of changing that course, are unstable at best
- Indiana seems to be wasting a lot of taxpayer money
- Perhaps, with a LOT of professional development, the money wasted can be redeemed by setting a standard for how technology is getting used in the classroom.
