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TechnologyDaily Mobile
How Technology Is Helping One School
by Bara Vaida
CATONSVILLE, Md. -- It is Monday morning in Peter Beck's seventh-grade English class at Catonsville Middle School, and all 27 of his 12-year-old students are seated in front of Blue iMacs quietly working on their assignment. This week's project: Take an event from Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, a book the class just finished reading, and write a news story.
A year ago, Beck had his class complete the assignment on paper. But thanks to last year's $50,000 technology grant from the state of Maryland, students now are finishing many of his assignments on computers. They can type headlines, play with fonts and even pull illustrated pictures of Tom Sawyer from the Internet to paste into their news stories.
"Computers make the whole assignment much more fun," said Beck, who has been teaching since 1977. "And it is particularly helpful for kids who have writing and reading problems. Typing makes it much easier for them to write out their ideas."
A Boon To Students And Educators
Maryland's grant to Beck's school represents a portion of the about $40 million the state has begun allocating each year to school districts to make sure every school has one computer for every five students and that teachers get trained in using them. Over the past five years, Maryland has spent $128 million on getting technology into its schools. Over the same period, the federal government spent about $79 million on technology in the states' schools.
With only 15 percent of its students eligible for free or reduced lunches, Catonsville Middle School is not eligible for federal money for technology expenditures, but that is typical of almost half the nation's schools. In 1998, 48,000 out of 90,000 schools received some federal funding, according to the Education Department.
Congress is poised to pass legislation that would consolidate most federal educational technology funds, thus freeing more money for school districts. "If the federal technology dollars come in one lump sum, it will benefit local school districts," said Barbara Reeves, director of instructional technology at Maryland's Education Department.
While some observers have raised questions raised about whether technology is having a positive impact on students, others say it is increasing students' interest in learning. "While there isn't data yet to suggest that the integration of technology raises student achievement, it does show that it is an effective pedagogical use for teachers and teaching methods," said Jenifer Verdery, manager of human resources policy at Intel. "Teachers find they are able to teach a wider range of content and they are able to keep kids interested in topics from English to math."
Barbara Helmrich, a math teacher and the lead technology specialist at Catonsville Middle School, cited anecdotal evidence of technology's positive effect. The school's math curriculum has been tied to technology use, and Helmrich uses circle graphs and spreadsheets for algebra problems. The school also has sent each student home with self-paced tutoring software. Eighth-graders' passing rates on tests leaped to 85 percent in 2000 from 31 percent in the 1999.
"I don't know whether it was the software or not, but the scores improved," she said.
The school also has seen technology's positive impact in the library. Last year, Baltimore County, where Catonsville is located, decided to spend $10.5 million on improving school libraries. The Catonsville library received $162,425 to put all of its book-cataloging system online. The upgrade also enabled librarians to order books online. With the new system, the school was able to expand its book collection from 5,000 to 12,000 within a month. In the past, it would have taken for such an expansion, said Alyssa Smith, new media specialist at the library.
Teaching The Teachers
Educational technology is not without its critics, however. Insufficient teacher training is one of educators' loudest complaints. They said many teachers lack the knowledge to use technology as a teaching tool. The nonprofit group NetDay recently found in a survey that while 84 percent of teachers believe computers improve the quality of education, 44 percent believe they lack the knowledge to use them.
Every classroom at Catonsville is connected to the Internet, and at least two Dell computers are located in the front of every room. Principal Tom Evans said most of the teachers have some experience with computers, but the state has provided $7,000 toward training. At the end of the school year, seventh- and eighth-grade teachers are scheduled to attend training.
Beck got his training from "playing around" on his own computer and through technology courses at Goucher College in Baltimore. He also has attended school-sponsored seminars.
Still, students in classes sometimes know how to manipulate their computers better than their teachers do. In Beck's afternoon class, for example, one student showed him how to download illustrations off the Internet. "Many of us aren't computer literate or comfortable using computers, and many times the students know more than we do," said Beck. "You just have to make yourself learn."
Beck also said the equipment can present challenges. While his morning class had no problem using the computers, a network failure in the afternoon forced Beck to teach on paper. And Kermit Cummings, a social studies teacher, said he does not assign his students to research projects in the computer lab as much as he would like to because of computer crashes.
The school does not have enough money to employ a full-time technology specialist, so math teacher Barbara Helmrich serves as a part-time administrator, which can be a problem if she is teaching a class and the computers crash in the lab. "I always make sure to have a backup on paper, just in case the computer does something weird," Beck said.
"Computer equipment failure and the fact that students know more than [the teachers] do are two of the biggest reasons why teachers aren't using computers as much as they could," said June Streckfus, executive director of the Maryland Business Roundtable for Education (BRT).
Still To Come ...
Streckfus said her organization is developing a strategy with the state Education Department to help school districts hire network administrators and technology specialists. The BRT is one of the main driving forces behind Maryland's generous educational technology grant program.
In 1992, the private sector group spearheaded a Maryland Plan for Technology and Education. The Maryland Board of Education adopted it in 1995. The plan set the goal of getting one computer for every five students. It also made sure that a grant was provided to schools for technology training. The group since has been conducting long-term research on computers' impact on the school system.
"Business got the big bang in the 1980s with adoption of computers," Streckfus said, "but it took 10 years to see the productivity improvements. I do think we will see that same spike in the schools. It just takes time."
Meanwhile, the students in Beck's class for whom technology is a daily part of their lives already are thinking ahead to the next wave. Thirteen-year-old Meghan Bloomer, who uses a high-speed Internet connection at home for instant messaging and downloading Napster files, said the computers at Catonsville lack only one thing: "Faster connections."
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