GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

City students in One Laptop Per Child pilot show off their XO laptops.

Ruben took his Bronx fourth graders to the computer lab to have them do internet research for a biography project.

One of my students said to me, “I’ve never been on a computer before.” Can you imagine? 2008 and right here in New York City there are kids growing up without regular access to technology [we] take for granted.

The technology-in-education folks buzz about using technology in schools in really innovative ways, attempting to avoid simply transferring pen and paper tasks to a keyboard and monitor, and they’re absolutely right — new communication tools offer new opportunities for “digital natives” to synthesize information, think critically about sources, and use multimedia to participate in an authentic global conversation. But it’s sobering when thinking about these so-called 21st century skills to realize that some students in our classrooms have yet to reach the end of the 20th century in terms of the communication tools they use regularly.

Courtesy of The Guardian

If giving every student an iPod Touch could open up new possibilities in instruction, what might happen if entire desks functioned as interactive touchscreens?

That’s the technology a British company has developed, according to the Guardian UK. Designed to integrate technology into classrooms more easily — and literally — the large monitors can be used as both personal computers and multi-touch collaborative technology tools during class activities, and teachers can monitor all their students’ work at the same time from their own consoles. Developers say the screens keep kids engaged and help shy students and students with disabilities participate fully.

Currently in testing, the desks cost £8,000 — or about $14,000 — to produce,  but developers hope to bring the price down to £1,000, or about $1,800, before offering them for use in schools. They hope to see the interactive desks installed in every British school in 10 years.

Can you imagine seeing these desks put to use in New York City’s classrooms? Or can you just imagine them ending up covered in 21st-century graffiti?

Don’t want to wait until November to take a political stand? Besides voting in your local primary tomorrow, consider calling your Member of Congress. The National School Boards Association is welcoming back legislators with a “Back to School Call-in Day” this Wednesday.

One issue before the legislature is the future of E-Rate, a program that provides funding for internet connectivity for libraries and public schools in rural and low-income school districts, helping to close the “digital divide.” New York State’s schools and libraries received more than $300 million through E-Rate in 2007, using it to get connected and for email and web hosting services, among other things.

Just for fun, a conversation about tech integration in this century and the last:

iPod Touch by Mike Rohde

Looks like I was born too soon — my middle school is considering giving an iPod touch to every student and teacher. All the school ever gave me was a spiral-bound planner filled with motivational platitudes!

Culbreth Middle School in Chapel Hill, N.C. is hoping to raise $230,000 in private funds to become the first K-12 school to give an iPod to every student. Detractors say the potential for abuse and the initiative’s price tag outweigh any possible benefits. But Culbreth’s principal maintains that any tool that keeps kids engaged and allows teachers to “meet [students] where they are” is worth experimenting with.

Apple’s “App Store” is stocked with tools that a middle school student might find useful, such as foreign language dictionaries and a graphing calculator. I’m not sure whether any well-designed programs that are specifically aligned to middle school curricula exist for the iPod. But if they did, the iPods could be tremendous learning tools, particularly for students who prefer a hands-on approach to understanding new material. I spent time recently with a friend who is in her third year of medical school. She recently bought an interactive set of anatomy flashcards for her iPhone — and promptly learned many of the body parts that had escaped her memory in the past. She said having the physical experience of poking at the kidney’s medulla and being able to study whenever she had a chance, not just sitting at a desk, improved her retention.

Plus, she said, studying suddenly felt more stylish.

(And really, what other kind of teacher is there?)

Via DC Education Blog, instructions for making your own interactive whiteboard using a Wiimote, an LCD projector, a laptop, and some free software. The sound quality on dcteacher’s video is low, so I found another video that’s more detailed and easier to hear.

Research shows that when teachers develop personal connections with their students, often by sharing information about their personal experiences and feelings, their students behave better and work harder. But should they try to make those connections online, using MySpace and the Facebook?

CNN reports that many teachers are confronting that question for the first time as social networking sites gain membership among professionals and as the first generation of young adults comfortable with exposing their personal life on the Internet ages out of school and into the workplace — which sometimes means the classroom.

I can imagine plenty of legitimate, constructive uses for teacher-student connections on social networking sites, from homework help to letting shy students speak out in a safe forum to bolster collaboration among students. But the potential for trouble is also great. What if students see pictures of their teachers doing things no teacher would consider doing in a school building? And do teachers really want visual confirmation that their students break all the rules once the school bell rings at the end of the day? Social networking sites can also facilitate serious abuses — in Missouri, a recent spate of illicit student-teacher relationships has prompted legislation that would prohibit teacher-student online networking.

Teachers, where do you draw the line? What do you do when a student “friends” you?