I read a recent post from The Blue Skunk Blog that is evidently a repost. I actually think I remember the original post and belief I responded to that post as well.
Johnson states – I would find standards in the following areas extremely helpful as I try to evaluate our district’s technology infrastructure and plan for improvement :
- 1. Connectivity (LAN, WAN, and Internet I & II capacities)
- 2. Security (firewalls, filters, policies)
- 3. Tech support (technicians per computer, tech support response time, reliability rates, policies about technology replacement,)
- 4. Administrative applications (student information systems, transportation, personnel systems, payroll systems, data mining systems, home-school communication systems, online testing)
- 5. Information resources (e-mail, mailing lists, blogging software, online learning software, commercial databases, library automation systems)
- etc.
As I understand this portion of Doug Johnson’s post on standards, he would like to know just what resources schools should have available in order to provide effective educational experiences for students.
I develop resources to prepare future teachers and part of what I attempt to do is to offer descriptions of the situations they may face in the schools they will eventually enter. My interest is in the variability in such situations. Perhaps this is also what Doug Johnson is looking for – what are the standards that educators should be able to expect and what are the typical means and standard deviations for some of these indicators. In other words – how does my school compare, what should be expect to be able to provide?
I think locating good data on technology in schools – what is there and how it is used – has become increasing difficult. I know that good data on what technology exists is there, but these data are collected by businesses that intend to sell the information to vendors. I can’t afford access and evidently neither can the libraries I use. I used to use the National surveys conducted by Henry Becker and the Technology Counts annual publications to locate such data. Technology Counts abandoned the state to state comparisons. Perhaps some states were embarrassed and resisted offering up information. The vast differences among the states was pretty clear evidence that students had very different experiences.
I am thinking researchers found it difficult to secure funds to actually conduct quality surveys and this has cut off on-going, independently collected descriptions of what is typical in this area. The best resource I can find is offered by the National Center for Education Statistics (Teachers’ Use of Educational Technology in U.S. Public Schools: 2009 ). Still, even on the descriptive level, I do not think the data are complete enough. Wouldn’t you like answers to some of the descriptors Johnson identifies?
