School Board News

Ars Technica recently reported that the growing presence of personal laptops in classrooms may be sparking a backlash. It describes their integration into the education process, down to the level of lesson plans, as a mixed bag.

The laptop is definitely “in.” Dropping laptop prices combined with campus-wide wireless access has lead to a spike in laptop usage among college students. And 1:1 initiatives have made it their goal to provide all k-12 students with their own laptop. But the question of whether or not these programs pay off has yet to be answered definitively.

The OLPC project itself has experienced numerous setbacks along the way, but they have made wonderful strides in making laptop technology available to all. Such initiatives have set out in hopes of expanding technological literacy and raising student achievement. Are they successful though? Well, a recent analysis of that question suggests the results are mixed.

As Ars Technica reports:

The 1:1 laptop programs do seem to help with the students’ ability to use the technology they’re exposed to, and a variety of studies show what might be an unexpected benefit: improved writing skills. Apparently, the ease of using a word processor, along with the ability to go back and modify things that would otherwise have been committed to paper, helps students learn how to write more coherent and persuasive text.

Outside of these areas, however, the benefits of 1:1 laptop availability are mixed. Different studies have found changes in math and science test performance that were inconsistent. In general, the authors argue, the benefits of laptops come in cases where the larger educational program has been redesigned to incorporate their unique capabilities, and the teachers have been trained in order to better integrate laptop use into the wider educational experience. Both of these processes are resource-intensive, and the degree of their success may vary from classroom to classroom even in a single school, which is likely to explain the wide variability in the results.

BoardBuzz thinks the answer is still up in the air. Technology can obviously be applied to benefit student achievement, but teacher training and application to curricula are key. Which leaves us with higher ed. Apparently college students get distracted by computers. We could have told you that.

The reality is that college students have the freedom and independence to make their own academic choices, the most basic being whether or not to go to class. When it comes to laptop use in the classroom, the theory is that they are incredibly efficient for taking notes. BoardBuzz sure wishes laptops were affordable in our day. Carrying one laptop around with all your coursework in place of countless notebooks = priceless. But the reality is that students new to their independence are just as likely to lose themselves in those laptops. Note-taking? More like IM-ing, online shopping, or one of a countless number of things to do on the internet. It really comes down to self-discipline.

A recent story from the Chronicle of Higher Education tells us that professors are frustrated by students who use laptops for such activities. Moreover, other students actually trying to pay attention find this distracting and annoying as well. Some professors have actually instituted laptop bans in their classes. BoardBuzz doesn’t think that’s the way to handle these situations.

We prefer the approach one professor from the University of Colorado at Boulder has taken to educate students about their laptop use. Diane Sieber, an associate professor, explains how she identified 17 students who most frequently used laptops. Those students performed 11 percent worse, on average, than their peers did on their first test. When she explained this to her students the number of laptop users dropped to six, and the test scores of the former offenders improved.

College students are adults and must be treated as such. Informing them so they can make smart decisions is clearly the way. The use of laptops and other handheld devices will only continue to increase. Perhaps k-12 laptop initiatives will educate students on how laptops should be used in college and beyond. Even better, professors should take note of successful k-12 initiatives and learn how to leverage technology in their own curriculum.