Orozco Elementary School in the Pilsen neighborhood has five computers in each classroom. Pupils in Grade 4 and higher at Edison Regional Gifted Center on the city’s North Side all have e-mail accounts. And at Brooks Junior High School in South Suburban Harvey, kids are not the only students of technology: Their parents and teachers regularly enroll in classes as well.
Orozco, Edison and Brooks all have been touted by national surveys or local school districts as “high-tech schools,” and their progress is impressive. But researchers say filling a school with the latest equipment is only the first step in bringing kids into the new era.
The key to success is using equipment effectively in helping kids learn, which means an emphasis on teacher training and devising ways to make technology meaningful to students from all socioeconomic backgrounds.
“It seems there has been lots of emphasis on what schools have bought lots of technology,” said Andres Henriquez, a senior research associate at the Center for Children in Technology in New York. “But what is thought of least often is how that infrastructure is going to be integrated with the school curriculum and how teachers will be trained.”
According to a survey of public schools across the United States by Market Data Retrieval, the number of computers in schools has grown rapidly in the last few years. The 1997 study, “Technology in Education,” found that while there was one computer for every 36.5 students in public schools five years ago, today the ratio is one for every 7.3 students. The findings, based on the responses received from an attempted polling of all the nation’s 85,000 schools, also found that Internet access jumped dramatically in one year, from 32 percent in 1996 to 70 percent in 1997.
The MDR report identified 107 “high-tech schools” in Illinois, including 30 in Chicago. Both Edison and Brooks are on the list. While Orozco, whose program has been upgraded in recent years, was not on the list it is one of several dozen schools recognized by the Chicago Public School’s Department of Learning Technologies office for its strong technology program.
Another new report, by the CEO Forum, a national network of businesses and educational organizations, suggested that despite the rapid growth in technology infrastructure in the classroom, the majority of American schools have limited or outdated technology. In its survey of 80,000 schools in 1997, the group found that only 3 percent of the schools had what they called “target tech” programs–2 to 5 students per computer as well as high-speed lines, on-site maintenance staff and other indicators of strong technology. The study also found that 59 percent of the schools actually had outdated and inadequate classroom technology.
Researchers and educators agree on the essential components of a good school technology program: Internet access, modems, CD-ROM, cable, video disc players, local area networks (LANs) and a low student-computer ratio. The most successful schools also concentrate on placing computers in the classroom, where students can use them during the course of the day, rather than in remote computer labs.
At Edison, which has one of the top academic programs in the state, technology access is high but not in the CEO Forum’s “target tech” range. But all of the 275 students regularly use the Internet to do research for social studies and language arts papers, camcorders and video editing equipment for video productions, and word processing and graphics software for student literary magazine, “The Edison Lightbulb.”
Gail Smith, head of the school’s learning resource center, said Edison teachers and students regularly use computers, but only as a means to an end. “Our general theory is we learn with computers, not about them,” Smith said. “Technology should be integrated seamlessly on an as-needed basis. If a low-tech tool is better, we use it.”
While schools overall are focusing on finding ways to better use their high-tech equipment, researchers say schools in minority and low-income communities still are lagging in their access to technology. According to the MDR report, for instance, the student-to-computer ratio averaged 8.4 to 1 in schools with high minority enrollments (the overall average is 7.3 to 1). The survey also found that only 61 percent of those schools had an Internet link, compared with 75 percent of all schools with minority populations between 5 and 15 percent.
At Orozco, which has used state Chapter One funds to purchase computers and, like Harvey’s Brooks, has educational programs for parents and staff, principal Rebeca de los Reyes is known for her vision: giving students at the predominantly low-income, Mexican-American school an edge in technology education and training. “I made sure that it became a goal,” said de los Reyes, whose school has a writing lab and a learning center lab in addition to computers in each classroom. “I said, `How can we have this urban school in a Mexican-American community and these kids are not being trained?’ It is essential for them because they, especially, need to have access to the world.”
At other schools with highly ranked technology programs that serve low-income communities, administrators have made training teachers a priority.
Mattie Young, principal of Brooks Junior High, said her school has four full days of technology training for teachers every year before school starts. In addition, the school has periodic workshops for teachers who want to learn more about computers and other technology in the schools.
“Teacher training is very important simply because you have teachers who were once afraid of technology and intimidated by it,” said Young, whose school began developing its technology after President Clinton’s 1996 campaign push for Internet access at every school by the year 2000. “We want them to feel comfortable with technology because technology is here to stay.”
Brooks students like Donae Richmond say the training has paid off. Richmond, 14, said that her teachers give tests on the computer, allow students research time on the Internet and have sessions where they give quick lessons in using word processing programs and other software. At her elementary school, Richmond said few of the teachers ever used computers in the classroom.
“Brooks is a lot different,” said Richmond, who lives with her father in Harvey. “At my old school they had just two or three computers that they would bring to classes. We didn’t use the computers as much as the teachers did. Matter of fact, I don’t think we used the computers at all.”
Richmond, who said she doesn’t have a computer at home but learned to used one at her aunt’s house, said that the recent increase in computer use at her school has made getting an education much more enjoyable.
“Having computers has been very helpful,” Richmond said. “They’re fun and they make (school) more interesting.”
