The Age of Metrics - How Technology Is Influencing Education

I recently heard an interview with a New York Times reporter about The Age of Metrics. Now, as a science teacher, my first thought was about measuring in base ten, but this is not what the Age of Metrics is all about. His premise is that as our society becomes more integrated with computer based technology, we are beginning to place a higher value on quantitative information and less value on qualitative information. His examples were based in the business world where marketing decisions are now made based on website hits and advertising click throughs. More philanthropic organizations are basing their decisions to fund research and programming on data based decisions and not intrinsic or cultural value which are difficult to measure or test.

The world of education certainly is being impacted by this shift to the Age of Metrics. Books, articles and blogs share ideas for how to gather data and use the data to make decisions in your classroom and schools. Research supports the fact that one of the keys to improving education is to analyze data to see if a program or curriculum is really doing what it supposed to do. No Child Left Behind has shown the value of standardized assessment of identified standards as a measure of the information that a student has learned. Students are identified by demographic information and test scores. Data driven decision making is the educational buzz phrase of this new century. There is certainly a role for quantitative data in education.

But where do One To One initiatives fit? Is there room in a data driven curriculum for qualitative decision making? I think there is. Laptop technology offers students a wide range of choices for expressing their thoughts and ideas creatively. Programs like Google Sketchup, Animoto, Glogster, Prezi and Flickr offer opportunities for designing visual presentations of ideas. Blogging, wikis and Google Docs allow students to collaborate on ideas and share information, building on each other's strengths and perspectives. Audacity and other online music programs allow them to create original music or utilize music to emphasize a mood or concept in their presentations. TeacherTube, iMovie, Windows Movie Maker and various open source software programs allow students to create and share documentaries, social commentaries and original short videos. Access to a wide range of information and primary source materials allow students to think more quantitatively as well - by gathering information from varying points of view, by observing how society responds to challenging situations, students can form their own ideas about the world.

It is difficult to measure creativity or the value of experiencing a new piece of music or sharing an original poem or the impact of researching information from a broad range of sources- but I feel that there is still room for qualitative experiences in the 21st Century classroom and that netbooks or laptops can be a tool to do this.

Guiding Questions for Qualitative Technology Based Lesson Development in the Age of Metrics

• What choices will the student have for representing their mastery of a topic?
• What collaborative tool might the student be able to access during this lesson?
• How can technology be used as part of the reflection process either before, during or after the lesson?
• What web-based tools might the student access to expand their creative thinking abilities in this lesson?
• What tools might the student be able to access to help them map their ideas?
• What opportunities will the student be given to research information from opposing or different points of view in order to draw their own conclusions on a topic?

Related Articles
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/us/21iht-currents.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
http://astoriedcareer.com/2009/12/what-stories-can-do-that-metri.html
http://blog.ubervu.com/

Help...

Help...
A good portion of my weekly hours are spent responding to help requests from the teachers and students in my building. Nothing will stop the momentum of your One to One movement faster than equipment and software that isn't working when the user needs it to work. The key to my sanity is a helpdesk system that allows me to monitor requests, assign the right person to handle the request and track the completion of the request.

Our district has decided to use School Dudes IT Direct as our technology help desk. This will take care of the hardware and software help side of the One to One system but it has some gaps. School Dudes will be used by the teachers to put in a help request for hardware repair or a software problem. Student netbook users will go to our Library circulation desk to submit a help request to School Dudes through one of our library technicians. All requests will be routed to our lead library technician who will then address the request or delegate it to me or the district technology supervisor.

Let me back track for a moment. In our initial discussions on how to manage loaner equipment, repair requests and power/battery issues, we decided to utilize our library staff and existing "checkout" systems rather than trying to put a new system in place. Students are already used to going to the library circulation desk to check out materials and sign up for activities. Our existing bar coding software can be utilized to track loaner batteries, power cords and netbooks in the same way that we track library materials that have been signed out or are overdue. Our library/media center is also a central location where students feel comfortable coming to do research and work with lab technology.


The drawback of the School Dudes system is that it is only going to be handling the hardware/software requests. It also requires a password and user name to access the request page. I still needed a system to track help requests for integration support, our online gradebook system and Google Apps. I decided to use Google Forms for this. Google Forms is a component of Google Docs. This app allows you to generate a survey style form that can be published on the web and linked to, in this case, the district homepage. Users do not need a login or password so parents can easily access this form. A Google Form has two faces. Its public face can be designed as a series of easy to fill in text boxes, checklists or multiple choice responses. Its private face is an excel spreadsheet that allows the creator to organize and sort information in a variety of ways and present that data in a graphic format when necessary.

Keeping good records and responding quickly to help requests will help make your program successful and encourage your users to try new ways of integrating their technology into their classroom experience.

Guiding Questions for Creating A Help Desk

• What is the available budget for this component of the initiative?
  
• What are the specific areas that users will need support on that we would want to include in the help desk?
• Who will make the initial decisions about which path a help request should follow?
• How will the staff access the help desk?
• How will the students access the help desk?
• What technology staff training will be necessary?
• How will that training be done?
• What end user training will be necessary?
• How will that training be done?
• What usable data might be obtained from the help desk?
  ( breakage patterns, persistent software or network issues, training needs)
• Who will be responsible for looking for these patterns and addressing them?
• What would be considered an acceptable turn around time for a request?
• Who will be making sure that the tech staff is being accountable for addressing requests in this time frame?