Fraser Speirs, an influential Mac developer and a technology director at a Scottish school, recently wrote in his blog speirs.org that “the iPad is not the future of education. It’s the present of education.” Apple CEO Tim Cook, who is promoting the use of iPads in schools, says his company believes that the tablet can “change the way teachers teach and the way kids learn.”
If they are to be believed, the iOS operating system used by both the iPad and the iPhone has the potential to usher in a post-PC technology future for schools that could change the working lives of teachers.
Technology support staff in schools would find their loads lighter with the adoption of iPads, since tablet computers require less additional investment in infrastructure or software and have fewer maintenance problems. No virus protection is required. Schools do not need to purchase expensive and complicated software because there are small, mostly free or inexpensive applications (apps) that allow teachers and other educators to do more than they ever dreamed of doing on their laptops or desktop computers.
Because the iOS provides cloud-computing services, there is little need for local storage. That means there are no hard drives to maintain locally. Software updates come across a Wi-Fi network; therefore, you can add, delete and change information across the network no matter what Wi-Fi-connected device you use. For instance, if your school uses JupiterGrades, a Web-based gradebook, you can enter student information from desktops, laptops, tablets or smartphones no matter where you are.
Because it is easy to use, first-time iPad users quickly grasp how to navigate across the screen. The tablets are light and portable, unencumbered by keyboard or mouse or tangles of cables. On a full charge, battery power lasts about 10 hours.
The iPad changes the way we think about personal computing. PCs traditionally are “input” devices, while the iPad serves primarily as an “output” device or portable media player for music, TV, movies, games, books, presentations and Web content. But the potential of the iPad in the classroom is unlocked through the more than 500,000 apps available.
(A version of this piece first appeared in the New York Teacher )
Showing posts with label teachers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teachers. Show all posts
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Monday, March 14, 2011
Teacher Incentives? Not Cash!
Gotham Schools reports that New York City’s $75 million teacher merit pay experiment quietly bit the dust as the Bloomberg administration sheepishly backed away from the program last year after independent researchers deemed the experiment a failure.
The 2007 merit-pay deal, blessed by both Mayor Bloomberg and former UFT President Randi Weingarten, went public without much debate or kick-back from the union membership. The experiment affected only 200 low-performing schools and limited bonuses to a maximum of $3,000 per teacher if a school met its goals. Weingarten lauded the agreement since it allowed union members to decide how bonuses were distributed in their schools and the program also gave them an opportunity to make more money.
As noted by researcher Roland B. Fryer writing for the National Bureau of Economic Research, there was “no evidence that teacher incentives increase student performance, attendance, or graduation,” nor did he find “any evidence that the incentives change student or teacher behavior.”
“If anything,” Fryer said, “student achievement declined,” on state math and English tests and had little if any effect on student attendance, behavior or graduation rates.
In other words, Mr. Obama, if you are interested in school improvement, rethink your Teacher Incentive Fund initiative because unlike most professions in the private sector, financial incentives are not why individuals choose careers as teachers or public safety workers. No one became a cop to get rich or a teacher to earn Wall Street style bonuses.
The 2007 merit-pay deal, blessed by both Mayor Bloomberg and former UFT President Randi Weingarten, went public without much debate or kick-back from the union membership. The experiment affected only 200 low-performing schools and limited bonuses to a maximum of $3,000 per teacher if a school met its goals. Weingarten lauded the agreement since it allowed union members to decide how bonuses were distributed in their schools and the program also gave them an opportunity to make more money.
As noted by researcher Roland B. Fryer writing for the National Bureau of Economic Research, there was “no evidence that teacher incentives increase student performance, attendance, or graduation,” nor did he find “any evidence that the incentives change student or teacher behavior.”
“If anything,” Fryer said, “student achievement declined,” on state math and English tests and had little if any effect on student attendance, behavior or graduation rates.
In other words, Mr. Obama, if you are interested in school improvement, rethink your Teacher Incentive Fund initiative because unlike most professions in the private sector, financial incentives are not why individuals choose careers as teachers or public safety workers. No one became a cop to get rich or a teacher to earn Wall Street style bonuses.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Another Bad Idea: Merit Pay for Teachers
"Teacher unions should not be such willing partners in the merit pay group-speak coming out of Washington."
Teacher unionists are abuzz with the new found attention their profession and their schools are getting from the Obama camp. However, there’s much to raise our concerns, especially the idea that merit pay will make a difference in the quality of teaching and the improved academic achievement in our students.
Over the last generation of teacher unionism, no issues have provoked union leaders more than threats to tenure or the idea of individual merit pay for teachers based on the performance of students. However, because the President said that he would include teachers and their unions in the policy decision-making process, union leadership is giving him a green light on the merit pay concept and AFT/UFT President Randi Weingarten eagerly portrays how her union has embraced a performance-based bonus system in 200 New York City schools.
But teacher unions should not be such willing partners in the merit pay group-speak coming out of Washington, because the concept of merit pay for teachers is fraught with more danger than benefit. If the concept became the norm in our schools, it could set the stage for a Ponzi scheme of supposed academic excellence, in which only a few would benefit, while the rest would find themselves bankrupt.
First of all, Obama is wrong about the research. There is no valid replicable scientific social research out there that proves that individual merit pay will make a positive dent in an objective measure of the overall quality of teaching in a school or school system. It’s mostly intuitive supposition that is based on the “carrot and stick” meme of Western culture. It’s not necessarily a given that the promise of monetary rewards when a goal is reached will improve the quality of the process used to get there.
Secondly, the concept of merit has inherent in it that only a few will benefit. The effect of the promise of financial reward may skew the Bell Curve slightly upward, but most will be in the average range and few will be at the top or the bottom. That’s automatic and it is antithetical to the idea that we must raise all the boats in the harbor. Merit pay is an elitist, anti-union concept that belongs in the tool box of CEO’s, but not in the hands of school systems and governments. Take a look at the stock market, or at our iconic corporate giants, and see where merit pay and bonuses have gotten us.
Embracing a business model for our schools is an idea that’s as defunct as many American businesses and as backward as the 19th Century factory model used to educate our youngsters. Stakeholders, corporate and social, should reconsider the processes used by businesses to achieve their goals and then rethink the ideas behind why we educate our children in the first place. Once we do that, the concept of merit raises for teachers will be a thing of the past.
Teacher unionists are abuzz with the new found attention their profession and their schools are getting from the Obama camp. However, there’s much to raise our concerns, especially the idea that merit pay will make a difference in the quality of teaching and the improved academic achievement in our students.
Over the last generation of teacher unionism, no issues have provoked union leaders more than threats to tenure or the idea of individual merit pay for teachers based on the performance of students. However, because the President said that he would include teachers and their unions in the policy decision-making process, union leadership is giving him a green light on the merit pay concept and AFT/UFT President Randi Weingarten eagerly portrays how her union has embraced a performance-based bonus system in 200 New York City schools.
But teacher unions should not be such willing partners in the merit pay group-speak coming out of Washington, because the concept of merit pay for teachers is fraught with more danger than benefit. If the concept became the norm in our schools, it could set the stage for a Ponzi scheme of supposed academic excellence, in which only a few would benefit, while the rest would find themselves bankrupt.
First of all, Obama is wrong about the research. There is no valid replicable scientific social research out there that proves that individual merit pay will make a positive dent in an objective measure of the overall quality of teaching in a school or school system. It’s mostly intuitive supposition that is based on the “carrot and stick” meme of Western culture. It’s not necessarily a given that the promise of monetary rewards when a goal is reached will improve the quality of the process used to get there.
Secondly, the concept of merit has inherent in it that only a few will benefit. The effect of the promise of financial reward may skew the Bell Curve slightly upward, but most will be in the average range and few will be at the top or the bottom. That’s automatic and it is antithetical to the idea that we must raise all the boats in the harbor. Merit pay is an elitist, anti-union concept that belongs in the tool box of CEO’s, but not in the hands of school systems and governments. Take a look at the stock market, or at our iconic corporate giants, and see where merit pay and bonuses have gotten us.
Embracing a business model for our schools is an idea that’s as defunct as many American businesses and as backward as the 19th Century factory model used to educate our youngsters. Stakeholders, corporate and social, should reconsider the processes used by businesses to achieve their goals and then rethink the ideas behind why we educate our children in the first place. Once we do that, the concept of merit raises for teachers will be a thing of the past.
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