There is something in Woodland District 50’s response about Chromebooks that I agree with.
The computer is a tool. It is not the lesson. A student’s mastery of a skill is more important than the device sitting on the desk.
Good.
Now can we talk about the tool?
Yesterday I published the questions I’ve been asking Woodland since August, along with Superintendent Dr. Robert Machak’s response after I visited the district office. I appreciate that he came out and that he followed up in writing.
He explained that a Chromebook is used with other classroom resources, and that the better measure of learning is the purpose of the assignment and whether the student mastered the goal.
That is a reasonable distinction.
It also raises a question that ought to be pretty easy to understand: If the student learned something, how do we know the Chromebook is the reason?
Maybe the teacher explained it well. Maybe the student practiced. Maybe a parent worked with the child at the kitchen table. Maybe the software helped. Maybe several things helped.
The point is that a result does not tell us which part of the process caused it.
I spent 22 years in schools. I know a useful tool when I see one. I also know the difference between buying a tool and demonstrating that the tool worked.
If I brought home something expensive and announced that it was improving everything, my dad would have asked a fairly basic question: “How do you know?”
Apparently, that is now an accountability framework.
Schools do not have to prove a computer caused every correct answer. But when a district makes a technology decision on behalf of thousands of children, the public can reasonably ask what evidence supported the decision, what the district spends on it, and what it expects to improve.
And the learning question is only half of it.
The other half is what happens to student information while that tool is being used.
Which apps or vendors can receive student-level information? Can anyone view activity live or later? What information is kept? For how long? What continues when a child brings the device home? What can parents decline without cutting their child off from learning?
These are not accusations. They are questions about a school program.
I asked Woodland those questions in August. I narrowed them after a meeting with the superintendent and the technology director. My October 5 Freedom of Information Act request seeks records connected to the same issues.
Woodland may have good answers. Some may already be in written policies or contracts. If the records answer the questions, I will report that. I am not interested in pretending a problem exists before the evidence shows one.
But neither am I going to pretend the sentence “technology is a tool” settles the matter.
A pencil is a tool. A Chromebook is also a tool. The second one can involve software, monitoring, outside vendors, retention rules, and a family’s home network. Those differences are worth understanding.
Here is what I want to know: What did the district choose, why did it choose it, what does the tool do to or for a child, and how will anybody know whether the choice was a good one?
That is not anti-technology.
It is the kind of question adults should ask before they call a program a success.
The computer is not the lesson.
So show me what the lesson is—and what the computer is doing while the child learns it.