Spotlight on District 109

Should the Classroom mirror the Real World?  I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, especially in terms of how STEM curriculum should be delivered.  The whole concept of “school” is to prepare our kids for adulthood, right?  Most of our kids will enter the work force.  Hopefully, many of them will go on to have great careers.  We have a certain core curriculum that they all must learn, the 3 R’s if you will.  Beyond that, we try to enrich their experience with things like music, art, and language.  I’ve always believed that you need to expose children to as many things as possible because you never know when they will find that spark and be inspired to their life’s calling.

Technology is such a big part of today’s workforce, and I’m not just talking about desk jobs.  The guy who recently installed my windows tracked his work on an iPad.  POS systems in retail locations are not simply cash registers anymore.  They tie into every aspect of the operation: sales, inventory, order management, labor tracking, etc.  This is why I believe that when it comes to technology, we need to give our kids all the tools they need to hit the ground running and succeed in the workplace.  That means we need to be mindful of what tools (hardware, software, applications) are used in the workplace.

Let me give you an example that is one of my pet peeves.  Most high schools make the kids buy graphing calculators.  In the 25 years I’ve worked in engineering, IT, and finance, I’ve never seen anyone use a graphing calculator.  We use data analysis and statistical software, sometimes as simple as Microsoft Excel, sometimes a more specialized application.  This is why I’m really struggling to understand the decision to adopt the Chromebook.

Let’s not mince words here…Chromebooks are cheap.  Why?  They don’t have a hard drive and they don’t have any installed software.  They have flash memory and use the Google web apps.  I have heard so many people, both software salespeople and educators say that they are “perfect for education.”  That statement bothers me just a little bit.  I can say one thing with certainty.  Right now nobody uses Chromebooks in the workforce (except maybe at Google).  The Microsoft Office suite is by far the most popular business software and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

So as I was pondering this I came upon a Letter to the Editor from one Jake Conway.  This young man was at a board meeting last year when the decision was made to buy the first round of Chromebooks.  He made a very nice speech questioning the decision.  He talked about losing access to applications.  He questioned the reliability of the Chromebook.  Well, Jake got a year’s worth of experience under his belt and you can read his review here:

http://deerfield.suntimes.com/news/schools/conwayletter-DFR-10102013:article

Now I understand that this is just one voice but to me it’s a pretty knowledgeable one.  I know the district has just presented the board with a plan to make a second round of investments in the Chromebook.  I think the board needs to do some more investigation into Jake’s claims before they approve that plan.  I think we also need to think about our technology plan as a whole.  Do we want technology that is only used in education or do we want to use the tools that are being used in the Real World every day?