The Texas long range plan for technology as a whole has some wonderful ideas that, on paper, seem to have answers to many challenges. They suggest virtual museum tours to save money on buses, web conferencing to increase collaboration, and increase teacher professional development to help teachers stay on top of new technology.
The challenge that I see with this plan is the same challenge I see in almost every document written by the government regarding education – lack of funding. To implement many of the ideas, which would be fantastic, the cost would be extraordinary! One of the TIPS calls for equipping every student with a wireless device to access the internet and reference material. For the virtual tours to take place the schools must have a full computer lab, which are extremely costly for rural districts with lower tax income systems. Why are we requiring teachers to become more tech savvy, when we no longer require technology as a requirement for graduation? While many of the students appear to be basically tech savvy because they can work a cell phone, if you peel back one layer you will see that many more students cannot attach items to emails, use many of the functions in Word, or even make a basic Excel spreadsheet.
In this day and age when we are trying to decide if the district can buy paper or keep a teacher, I do not think that spending excess funds on equipping students with handheld devices is not the best use of our limited resources. If the government is going to require this level of technology commitment, then the government needs to supply the funds instead of forcing already strapped districts to pull money that is needed for more teachers to reduce already overcrowded classrooms.
Texas Long Range Plan for Technology, 2006-2020: Teaching and Learning; Educator Preparation and Development; Leadership, Administration and Instructional Support; or Infrastructure for Technology
No comments:
Post a Comment