technology based schools

Sources:
Mezzacappa, Dale. High School 2.0. EducationNext. Spring 2010 Vol. 10 No. 2.

Welcome to the Maine International center for Digital Learning. MICDL.(2010) http://wwwmicdl.org/Our%20Mission

In my last blog, I found an podcast about a school that gave each student laptops and used technology in every aspect of their education and managed to be successful and pull their test scores up.

In contrast, I just looked a scholarly journal article in which a school in Philadelphia decided to undergo a serious overhaul of their school and make it totally based on technology. They even built a state-of-the-art building to house all of the new technology. Here, each student was also given a laptop.

This school turned out to be a 32 million dollar embarrassment. Most of the students did not adjust well to the new technology and found themselves frustrated instead of challenged. Test scores did not increase. Students seemed to be in a state of shock from being taken from the normal school books and pencils routine to a grandiose school building with laptops and new technology. Today, it is a high school like most other schools in the U.S. with a few more laptops that average high schools. The pedagogy has not changed so far.

I also read an article from a website about the Main initiative project (which gave students in Maine each a laptop). From what I saw on their website it seems like instead of doing an entire overhaul of their educational system, they decided to build on what they had by adding laptops. This is the main difference I can find between these two schools and I am certain it is the reason behind the Philadelphia school's failure and the Maine school's success. It is important to not get too ambiguous when incorporating technology into the classroom. It is good to keep up with technology, but a huge influx of technology in a school (like in Philadelphia) is not beneficial to students and ends up frustrating them.