doi: 10.13140/RG.2.1.3064.0248 11 March 2012
Technology in Education: A Proposal for Adopting and Using Tablet PCs in Low-Income Urban Schools Khalil El-Saghir
[email protected]
Wayne State University
Abstract No one in the U.S. education realm denies the need for change. Yet, it is impossible to find a consensus on how, to what extent, and by what means such change can be brought about. Tablet PCs seem to marshal many characteristics needed to streamline the sought transformation. This study proposes to examine the effects on students’ motivation and academic achievement of adopting and using tablet PCs in low SES schools. It hypothesizes that using iPad tablets in a blended learning environment will positively impact students’ motivation to learn and, thus, improve their academic achievement in math, compared to those who are using traditional textbooks. Keywords Tablet PC, Urban School,
A Proposal for Adopting and Using Tablets in Low-Income Urban Schools Introduction No one in the U.S. education realm denies the need for change. Yet, it’s impossible to find a consensus on how, to what extent, and by what means such change can be brought about. However, after a century-long of futile education reform movements and programs, it should be evident by now that education is unreformable! A radical revolutionary transformation is needed and will eventually ensue whether preplanned for it or simply caught bickering for piecemeal and short-lived changes here and there. The reason for this eventuality is that the technological advances that are quickly and swiftly changing the way we think and feel as well as we act, react, and interact with the world around us will wait no permission from the teachers, administrators, and/or education researchers and theorists. 1
It’s true that the relationship between technology and education is perhaps as old as their first encounter. It may be dated back to the invention and use of clay tablets and charcoal sticks to learn and to teach. Reciprocally, the debate over the correlation between technology and academic achievement is as old as education itself. Hence, with every new and fundamental invention, there have always been, for various reasons, those who enthusiastically call for full and immediate adoption and use of the new technology and/or process in education and those who skeptically doubt its significance and, thus, tend to resist it. However, the depth as well as the speed at which new technologies (e.g., the internet and mobile devices) are changing every aspect of people’s lives, is unprecedented in human history. Alas, the time for the ultimate change in education is now! Although personal computers (PC) have been in the realm of education for no more than three decades, the transformation they have brought about in curriculum, instruction, and assessment is immense. Since the 1980s, education scholars have been studying the impacts of the machines on the profession (e.g., Cohen, 1988; Cuban, 1986; Levin, 1986; Papert, 1980; Piele, 1989; Sheingold, 1990; Solomon, 1986, Sloan, 1985; Stearns et al., 1991; Zorfass, 1991). Among the many questions that researchers attempted to answer were, what are the best uses of PCs in the classrooms? What are the advantages and disadvantages of incorporating PCs in the teaching/learning process? What are their impacts on curriculum, instruction and assessment? What is their effectiveness on learning? And whether or not they improve overall student achievement? With the advancement of the mobile technologies into the classrooms, the same questions have been researched, findings debated, articles published, conferences held, and, eventually, more reform movements have been cycled and recycled. Yet, students are still failing and dropping out of schools at alarming rates, and the U.S. public education, especially for the disadvantaged poor, is continuously slipping to a seemingly bottomless pit. Opponents and Proponents of Technology in Education While technology proponents called for the full adoption and use of PCs in the classrooms and predicted that the machines will solve most of the educational problems, skeptics warned of the negative consequences of such moves and did not foresee any significance in the introduction of computers and computer-assisted instruction into education. Papert (1993), one of the most educational technology enthusiasts, called PC “the Knowledge Machine” (p. 9) and argued that it will fundamentally transform learning and the future of school. In his meta-analysis, Kulik (2003) reviewed the findings of a large number of controlled studies, published since 1990, which evaluated the effectiveness of computers on learning in elementary and secondary U.S. schools (27 studies on reading, 12 on writing, and 36 on mathematics and science). He posed the following questions: “Are schools doing a better job because of their embrace of technology? Can schools improve their teaching effectiveness by investing more heavily in technology? Or are schools misusing technology? Are they using it inequitably?” (p. 1) Although a majority of the studies, especially the more recent ones, found that computer-assisted instruction had statistically significant positive impact on learning, Kulik 2
(2003) concluded, “The literature is too uneven for sweeping conclusions about the effectiveness of instructional technology” (p. 60). However, the author clearly recognized that the increase in the ratio of students to computers, from 125:1 in 1984 to 5.7:1 in 1999, and down to 3.1:1 in 2008 (U.S. Department of Education, 2008), will significantly improve the effectiveness of classroom instruction. On the other hand, anti-machine sentiments preceded the development of computer. In 1938, in his Technics and Civilization, Lewis Mumford, as quoted by Eisner (1979, p. 93), described the machine as "purposeless materialism," which will eventually become in control of man. Half a century later and from a similar social efficiency perspective, Cuban (1986), one of the most technology-skeptic educators, predicted that PC was no more effective in schools than any of the older technology modes (e.g., film, radio, television). Such modes, which had been adopted and used as instructional tools in the classroom, initially promised dramatic reduction in “educational costs and exciting new educational possibilities” (Levin, 1986, p. 52). Accordingly, the purpose of the skeptics’ arguments centered on discrediting the assumptions that newer and more technology presumably leads to improved educational achievement. Technology and Social Inequality One of the major different views between contemporary technology enthusiasts and skeptics is that which pertains to the impacts of technological progress on technological literacy as well as on the economic and social inequality of low-income urban communities. Schön, Sanyal, and Mitchell (1999) traced back this fundamental difference to the late 1960s when the eruption of the economically and racially charged urban riots coincided with post-Sputnik technological progress which led to putting a man on the moon. “Since then, advocates for lowincome communities had been skeptical of the benefits of technological progress, while the computer enthusiasts, derogatively called ‘techies’, preoccupied themselves with rapid progress in information technology without much concern for its impact on low-income communities” (Schön et al., 1999, p. 12). Vigdor and Ladd (2010) presented the findings of a report from the Urban Institute that looked into the “broad racial and socioeconomic gaps in home computer access and use” in North Carolina between 2000-2005 (p. 7). The study focused specifically on the impacts on students’ math and reading test scores upon the introduction of computer technology at home. The findings showed that inequality of access to computer at home between low- and middle/high-income families is still widening the digital divide and compounding the educational disparities in the society. The effect of students’ socioeconomic status (SES) on their education and achievement is well documented throughout the literature. Among the findings of the Pew report, “The rise of ereading,” published last April, is that “those age 16 and older who own tablets or e-book reading devices are more likely than others to read for every reason” (Rainie, Zickuhr, Purcell, Madden, & Brenner, 2012, p. 9) and that they, indeed, read more often. The report also shows that e-book readers are more likely to have higher levels of education (College 35% vs. High school grad or less 19%) and are living in households earning more than $75,000 (almost double the percentage 3
of e-readers who live in household earning less than $30,000) (Rainie et al., 2012). Furthermore, the last Pew report, “Younger Americans' reading and library habits,” found that “Among Americans who read e-books, those under age 30 are more likely to read their e-books on a cell phone (41%) or computer (55%) than on an e-book reader such as a Kindle (23%) or tablet (16%),” mainly due to price (Zickuhr, Rainie, Purcell, Madden, & Brenner, 2012, p. 9). Hence, household income and the price of the tablets/e-book readers are major factors in having access to the device and, thus, in contributing to closing the gap in reading. Notwithstanding all the skeptics’ views about the role and impact of technology in education, the literature overwhelmingly supports this correlation. It is also evident that students from low SES families are significantly lagging behind when it comes to school adoption and use of technology, in spite of all the efforts to close the digital divide. Technology and the Transformation of the Classroom The move from print to digital and from static text to fully interactive content and multimedia is as revolutionary as the Gutenberg’s. Meanwhile, the resistance to digitization is not expected to subside anytime soon, though its death is inevitable, just like the resistance to all past transformative technologies. Nowhere this transformation may be as revolutionary as in education; and nowhere the resistance to it may be as fierce. And while the vast majority of students enthusiastically welcomed and quickly adopted the use of mobile devices for communication, entertainment, and educational purposes, only a minority of educators, mostly young ones, is keen about transforming classrooms into the digital age. Apparently, the technology gap between young and older generations is as old as human innovations. Throughout the U.S. and around the world, there are numerous technology-based strategies being used in the classrooms today. Most of the teachers in this domain are ‘blending’ traditional curricula and instructional practices with web-based materials (e.g., videos, educational games, web libraries and encyclopedias, imaging and graphics, presentations, educational worksheets and interactive assessments and practices, etc.) A few, yet quickly growing number, of young and technologically-savvy educators are completely transforming classrooms, departments, and even schools, by adopting open curriculum and open classroom (e.g., blended learning and flipped classrooms). Open and flipped classroom provides a platform for group instruction that is the most analogous to one-to-one tutoring. In his meta-study, Bloom (1984) found that “the average tutored student was above 98% of the students in the control class” (p. 4). Hence, these avant-garde educators are creating classroom environment that allows students to learn at their own pace and provides them with mastery-based, gamelike and individualized instruction. This kind of environment increases learning through enhanced motivation by making the learning experience much more joyful, intriguing, relevant, and rewarding. Whether the ultimate educational goal is an evolutionary change or a revolutionary transformation, one of the most important variables in the process is still the individual technological device, which easily and quickly connects the student to the web and provides powerful and rich computing capabilities to collect, organize, and synthesize knowledge and to 4
generate and disseminate new ideas. Internet-ready PCs, through the revolutionary lens, were viewed as ‘the knowledge machines’ (Papert, 1993). They indeed tore down the wall disconnecting the classroom and the outside world by bringing instant and continuous connectivity to the education environment. However, their price, size, and, most significantly, their immobility quickly erected new obstacles in the overall transformational process. The rise and proliferation of smart mobile phones, with full online capabilities, into the hands of teachers and students created another wave of hope for those seeking the ultimate change in education. Nevertheless, their limited size and computing capabilities (e.g., data entry, synthesis and generation) significantly reduce their applicability as the ultimate knowledge machine. Even as e-readers, as per the cited Pew report findings, smart phones are only utilized as supplemental mobile devices used for quick and simple reading, and not for complex and authentic reading. However, extremely useful single-task educational apps that utilize the power of connectivity and mobility of smart phones (e.g., mapping and navigation, calculating and graphing, translating and interpreting, note-taking, task-managing, audio-books listening devices, etc.) cannot be underestimated and will continue to evolve and slowly change the education landscape. Why the Tablets? Tablet PCs, on the other hand, seem to marshal many of the characteristics needed to streamline the sought transformation. They are supreme in terms of connectivity and mobility and their computing power is more than adequate to sustain any and all school tasks. There is an abundance in educational apps that customize the process of developing learners’ speaking, listening, reading and writing skills for early literacy development as well as for advanced linguistic development skills. Similarly, there are many apps with math, science, and social studies content that are developed in game-like platforms and/or virtual three-dimensional format rendering learning of the most complex school content intriguing, challenging, and much less boring and intimidating. Additionally, the majority of these apps intelligibly automate the differentiation of instruction and assessment according to students’ performance. Thus, students are never bored attending to materials they already know or ever lost grappling with content beyond their level. The most applicable school use of tablets, however, is as e-readers. For the new generation, as well as for many older technology users, e-books are quickly becoming their first choice. There are many advantages of this development, especially in education. Textbooks are static and, no matter how graphically enhanced, can not stand the competition against fully interactive and multimedia rich e-books. The life-shelve of high school textbooks is about five years and they are a major budget item for schools and districts. Tablets are much lighter than textbooks, especially high school books, and one device replaces all the textbooks that a student will ever need! Table 1 below provides weights and prices of a sample textbooks used at John Glenn High School, in Westland, where I teach. The average weight of a textbook is about five pounds. A student is normally issued, on average, about 4 textbooks per semester, thus the weight of 5
textbooks alone (not counting all other school related materials and the backpack) is over 20 pounds. A fourteen-year-old may have to haul up to thirty pounds backpack throughout the high school, which, depending on the size of the student, may cause injury or, for most students, force the student to store her textbooks in the locker and rarely use it. In comparison, none of the tablets available in the market exceeds 1.5 pounds. Additionally, replacing a set of four textbooks cost the district as much as the purchasing of an iPad or two of the other cheaper tablets available in the market (e.g., Google Nexus, Samsung Galaxy, Microsoft Surface, Barnes and Nobles Nook, etc.) Table 1 Sample of Textbooks Used at JGSH (2011-2012) Subject Algebra 1
Pages Lbs 1,020 5.6
L x W x H inches 10.8 x 8.5 x 1.7
Price* $70.92
Grade Year 9 2008
Algebra 2
1,216
5.8
10.8 x 8.8 x 1.7
$68.99
10-11
2008
Biology
1,146
5.6
11 x 8.4 x 1.7
$77.96
10
2008
Chemistry
826
4.8
10.9 x 8.6 x 1.5
$76.43
11
2008
Economics
682
3.4
10.8 x 7.6 x 1.2
$106.80
9
2002
Physical Science
957
5.1
11.1 x 8.7 x 1.6
$74.01
9
2005
974
5.05
10.9 x 8.4 x 1.6
$79.19
Average:
The biggest obstacles to adopting and using tablets in education are (a) the initial cost of the devices, and (b) teachers’ technological skills and their attitude toward the introduction of any new technology. Taking into account the cost of adopting and using new textbooks, the initial cost of tablets would be largely eliminated. Many teachers are now tablet users and there are numerous professional development opportunities to train teachers on how to fully integrate the tablets into the learning-teaching process. Adopting and using tablets instead of textbooks and traditional curricular and instructional materials in an open curriculum and open classroom environment radically changes students’ learning environment by providing them with a myriad of advantages. To summarize some of these advantages, this transformative development (a) enhances students’ motivation and their engagement throughout the learning process via the use of an individualized, lightweight, multitasking, and game-like device that encompasses all their school activities; (b) improves their individual creativity and provides the tool for highly interactive group work projects; (c) enables individualized and differentiated curriculum and instruction that meets students’ needs and abilities, thus makes them more interested and less bored; (d) dramatically improves student-student and teacher-student academic interaction, allowing students to seek help from their peers and/or teacher in a less intimidating environment; (e) provides the tool for 6
online courses for all students, especially when certain classes are not available at their school; (f) improves students’ connectivity and interaction with students outside their classroom/school/district/country (e.g., join science and other content area group projects), which widens their perspective of the world; (g) provides them with powerful and highly interactive tool for note-taking, text highlighting, underlining and annotating, which cannot be done with school-issued textbooks; (h) improves their ability to complete homework and assignments, submit them, receive understandable and itemized feedback from the teacher, edit and correct, and resubmit when applicable; (i) eliminates the time spent looking for, storing and retrieving textbooks from lockers as well as the possibility of losing or misplacing these textbooks and having to pay for them; and (j) reduces health risks associated with heavy textbooks, especially for freshmen. On the other hand, and despite the great challenges associated with the adoption and use of tablets in an open classroom, teachers are not any less advantageous than students. This development (a) improves the attitude and behavior of the students, hence, classroom management; (b) streamlines the development and continuous update, improvement, and sharing of lesson plans; (c) provides teachers the ability to monitor the work and progress of each student and to extend immediate one-to-one direct or virtual assistance and intervention; (d) simplifies students and group paperless assessments, thus dramatically reduces the time spent on correcting and returning tests, quizzes, homework and assignments; and (e) eliminates the time and effort allotted for handling, storing, singing in and out, and accounting for textbooks and other instructional materials (e.g., graphing organizers, clickers, etc.). These are but few examples of what makes tablets perfect tools with unlimited potential functionalities, especially for education. Their applicable use in the classrooms has already been established and many districts throughout the U.S. as well as around the world have been using them, though mainly as e-readers. However, due to their price, they are still beyond the economic means of individual students as well school districts in low-income urban communities. Tablets and other mobile devices may prove to be viable means to revolutionarily transform education. However, the technology must empirically prove first that it is quite capable of significantly improving students’ academic achievement, especially in low-income urban schools, which continue to statistically lag behind the more affluent suburban schools. The Study I propose this study to examine the effects on students’ motivation and academic achievement of adopting and using tablet PCs in low SES schools. The study synthesizes a comparative analysis for the adoption and use of tablets versus textbooks in U. S. low-income urban schools. In the process, this paper attempts to answer the following research question: Will freshmen students in low-income high school academically achieve better in mathematics using iPad tablets rather than the traditional math textbooks?
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This study hypothesizes that using iPad tablets in a blended learning environment will positively impact students’ motivation to learn and, thus, improve their academic achievement in math, compared to those who are using traditional textbooks. Purpose of the Study Taking full advantage of tablets capabilities is beyond the scope of this study. Hence, the purpose of this study is limited to examining the direct impact of using tablets as e-readers instead of traditional textbooks on students’ achievement in one content area, namely algebra. Based on the Michigan Merit Curriculum, all high school students must take algebra in their freshman year to fulfill their four credit math requirements. Establishing whether or not using tablets is superior to traditional textbooks in terms of students’ academic achievement in math will provide much needed empirical evidence in this domain. This is especially significant for low-income communities and their cash-strapped schools whose students are lagging behind academically, especially in mathematics. Methodology Three assumptions are preset for this study: 1. Apple Corporation, through its Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT), decided to donate an iPad tablet to every freshman student in a number of Southeast Michigan school districts, including Detroit, with a majority of Title I students. The program also provided professional development training for all the staff, including math teachers as well as for the freshmen students. 2. The U.S. Department of Education provided the necessary funding to install Wi-Fi connection throughout the participating schools. 3. This study received a grant of one million dollars and the fixed cost of conducting the study is $5,000 per school and $1,000 per student. The target population of the study is freshmen students, in low-income urban high schools in Southeast Michigan, who are taking ‘Algebra 1’ as part of their required four credits in mathematic. The treatment group, 400 students with low SES from 40 high schools was sampled from the schools participating in the Apple project. Each student in the treatment group received an iPad and being instructed in a blended learning classroom, which mixes e-book curriculum and classroom instruction infused with supplemental online instruction and exercises. The treatment is assigned to intact schools to eliminate the possibility of spell-over. Additionally, the random assignment of the treatment, regardless of the background of the students protects from violating the strong Ignorability assumption, as the potential outcomes are supposedly independent of the treatment assignment. The treatment consists of unilaterally using iPad tablets instead of textbooks to teach Algebra 1 to high school freshmen. Each ninth grader in the treatment group has been assigned an iPad tablet to be used instead of paper textbooks. Replacing traditional curriculum and instruction, Blended Learning will be phased in over the next four years, starting this school-year 8
with the freshmen students. During the treatment, the researcher will attend classrooms, take notes of the instructional methods used, individual students’ interactions with classroom teacher as well as their online practices. The researcher will also conduct an interview with each of the participant throughout the study to measure their level of motivation. A brief qualitative analysis of students’ behavior and motivation will add much needed depth and insight to the understanding of the effects of using the tablets vs. textbooks. However, no feedbacks will be given through these interviews as they may effect the external validity of the study. iPad tablets will be preset to adhere to state and local policies regarding appropriate educational materials. This will eliminate some of the possible misuse of the devices and reduce contentious behavior, which may affect the treatment. Eventually, all freshmen will receive comprehensive training at the beginning of the school year about appropriate use, customization, maintenance and troubleshooting, curricular apps and online materials. The Algebra 1 e-book as well as the correspondent e-workbook are freely available from an online open source (e.g., CK-12.org) and they contain all the math content standards set forth by the Michigan Department of Education in its High School Content Expectations (Michigan Department of Education, 2006). Online access to the e-book is open to public, just as online access to the textbook is available to students in the control group. The counterfactual condition of this study is using iPad tablets in blended learning algebra classrooms vs. using regular Algebra 1 textbooks in traditional learning environment. Students in the treatment group will use iPad tablets as e-readers of the chosen Algebra 1 e-book and other web-based materials (e.g., Khan Academy website). Students in the control group will be using the assigned textbooks and any other materials that are part of their traditional curriculum. To increase precision, the study uses eighth grade MEAP test results in math as a pretest for all students in the treatment and control group. A posttest is given at the end of the first marking period, about 6 weeks into the school year. The posttest will follow the standard benchmarks set by the state. During the six weeks of the trial, students in the treatment group will be using their iPads for all their curricular activities, including those in the algebra class. The general design of this study is a multisite cluster randomized trial with person-level outcomes at level 2. I sampled 20 students per school in 40 schools, a total of 800 students, which is considered a large sample. As for the effect size for the power analysis, I used Cheung and Slavin’s (2011) estimated effect size which they computed in their meta-analysis, The Effectiveness of Educational Technology Applications for Enhancing Mathematics Achievement in K-12 Classrooms. The authors found that “The majority of the reviews concluded that there were positive effects of educational technology on mathematics achievement, with an overall study-weighted effect size
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of +0.31” (p. 3). However, to be on the conservative side and to reach the optimal use of the grant, I reduced the effect size in the power analysis to 0.282. The attached optimal design includes: A Power Analysis (Appendix A) and the Minimum Detectable Effective Size (MDES) (Appendix B).
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References Bloom, B. S. (1984). The 2 sigma problem: The search for methods of group instruction as effective as one-to-one tutoring. Educational Researcher, 13(6), 4-16. Cheung, A. C. K., & Slavin, R. E. (2011). The effectiveness of educational technology applications for enhancing mathmatics achievement in k-12 classrooms: A metaanalysis. Best Evidence Encyclopedia. Retrieved 5 December 2012, from http://www.bestevidence.org/word/tech_math_Sep_09_2011.pdf Cuban, L. (1986). Teachers and machines: The classroom use of technology since 1920. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Eisner, E. W. (1979). The educational imagination: On the design and evaluation of school programs (3rd ed.). New York: Macmillian. Kulik, J. A. (2003). Effects of using instructional technology in elementary and secondary schools: What controlled evaluation studies say. Arlington, VA: SRI International. Levin, H. M. (1986). The economics of computer-assisted instruction. Peabody Journal of Education, 64(1), 52-66. Michigan Department of Education. (2006). High school content expectations: Biology. Lansing, MI: Retrieved from http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Biology_HCSE_168202_7.pdf. Papert, S. (1993). The children's machine: Rethinking school in the age of the computer. New York, NY: Basic Books. Rainie, L., Zickuhr, K., Purcell, K., Madden, M., & Brenner, J. (2012). The rise of ereading. Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. Schön, D. A., Sanyal, B., & Mitchell, W. J. (Eds.). (1999). High technology and lowincome communities: Prospects for the positive use of advanced information technology. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. U.S. Department of Education. (2008). Educational technology in U.S. Public schools: Fall 2008. (NCES 2010034). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2010/2010034.pdf. Vigdor, J. L., & Ladd, H. F. (2010). Scaling the digital divide: Home computer technology and student achievement. Washington, D.C.: National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER), The Urban Institute. Zickuhr, K., Rainie, L., Purcell, K., Madden, M., & Brenner, J. (2012). Younger Americans' reading and library habits. Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.
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Appendix A Optimal Design: Power Analysis
General Design: Cluster Randomized Trial with Person-Level Outcomes at Level 2 Population: Freshmen students in Southeast Michigan high schools Counterfactual Conditions: Using iPad tablets in Blended Learning algebra classrooms vs. regular algebra textbooks in traditional learning environment Parameters:
Significance Level - α : 0.05
Number of Students / School – n : 20
Effect Size – δ : 0.282
Intraclass Correlation Coefficient – ρ : 0.099 (0.1)
Proportion of Explained Variation by Level 2 Covariate – R2L2 : 0.050
At 80% Power, The Number of Schools – J : 40
Cost attributed to schools: 40 x $5,000 = $200,000 Cost attributed to students: 40 x 20 x $1,000 = $800,000 Total Cost: $200,000 + $800,000 = $1,000,000
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Appendix B Optimal Design: Minimum Detectable Effective Size (MDES)
Minimum Detectable Effective Size (MDES) The Number of Schools at the effective size δ = 0.282 – J : 40
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