When is last time that you heard fans at an athletic event cheering: "We're number 26!, We're number 26!!..??" We do love our rankings and love being Number 1, but I wonder at some of the formulas for how we are determining rankings, and how we are measuring the usefulness of technology in our schools. Take this article, for instance: "School technology status good now; future uncertain":
The journal Education Week looked at the ways computers are being employed in education for its review, Technology Counts. The Palmetto State (South Carolina) ranked 26th nationally in technology access. There are four students per instructional computer here compared with 3.8 nationally. When students per Internet-connected computer are considered, South Carolina averages 4.0, while the U.S. average is 4.1.
As a proponent for having the ratio of internet accessible devices be 1:1, this will probably sound strange...Just because the ratio of computers per child seems to be getting better (and I would question how the word computer is defined in that equation), what does that REALLY mean in terms of measurable learning that is taking place? From that same article, reference is made to a shift in computer use within the classroom setting for NCLB assessment purposes. Certainly, assessment is an appropriate use of the computer, for the instructor:
South Carolina, with the rest of the nation, is in the middle of changing views on how technology will be most useful in schools. Of late, it is expanding as a method for assessing and tracking student performance.
OK, I am willing to wave the white flag. Forget student use of computers...it is too easy to make that a measure of economic have's and have not's. Let's start over and make sure that every teacher is equipped with a computer, the software needed to do student tracking (assessments), and the training to make sure that the teacher can comply with NCLB reporting. I would suggest that we can soon be Number 1 in the world in our ability to assess students...but we still will not like what the assessments tell us in terms of student learning. (insert cynicism here)