Interview with K-12 Stakeholders

K-12 Stakeholders: Matt and Caleb
In order to learn more about the perceptions of technology integration in a public school, it can be useful to solicit the opinions of the stakeholders--the people who are actually using, or not using, the technology.

I spoke with two high school upperclassmen, Matt and Caleb. Matt is a senior, and Caleb a junior, and both boys have access to internet-connected home computers with a variety of applications and cell phone texting. Both use Facebook regularly as their primary online social networking tool.

Both boys attend Carrollton High School in Carrollton, Georgia, about an hour west of Atlanta.


Establishing the Context
On the high school website, Carrollton High School is described as a “break the mold learning environment" where students learn in hands-on, relevant ways. The website also notes that the school offers 12 Advanced Placement courses and consistently ranks among the top 20 high schools in Georgia for graduation rate performance.

Looking at the 2008-2009 data in the most recent School Improvement Plan, the high school has a student population of approximately 1200 students. The school system overall (from K-12) is 53% Caucasian, 34% African-American, 7% Hispanic, 3% Multi-racial, 2% Asian, and .2% Native American. 47% of students are eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch. The 2008-2009 graduation rate was 84%.

On the System Goals and Objectives webpage, the system states the goal of providing “increased access to technology as a learning tool to improve instruction and student achievement for all students.” To this end, the school system is working on the following objectives:

• Students will acquire the knowledge and skills, as outlined by state and national technology standards, to become proficient with the continually changing technological applications.
• All teachers will acquire the knowledge and skills to seamlessly integrate technology into their teaching practices.

It is not clear which "state and national technology standards" the school system means, but it's likely that on the national level, they are referring to the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) and the National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS-S). On the state level, they are probably referring in part to the Georgia Performance Standards, which call for some technology-integration-related components across the curriculum. Additionally, the Georgia Department of Education, as per its Technology Plan, explicitly recognizes the value of the NETS-S (p. 15) and 21st Century skills, as defined by the Partnership for 21st Skills.

In a very small nutshell, the NETS-S call for students to use technology to support

• creativity and innovation;
• communication and collaboration;
• research and information fluency;
• critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making;
• digital citizenship; and
• fluency in technology operations and concepts.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills calls for growing students'

• information literacy,
• media literacy, and
• ICT literacy.

But enough statistics and prefacing!

Now, let's see what Matt and Caleb have to say about the use of technology in their school this year. For ease of attribution, I have color-coded each boy's words and/or ideas. Matt is blue, and Caleb is green. Interview questions are in black.


The Interview

What classes are you taking this semester?
Caleb—AP Calculus, PreAP Chemistry, AP US History, Performing Arts (aka Drama)
Matt—Physics, Economics, AP Statistics, and Performing Arts


If you had to describe your school, would you describe it as high-tech, low-tech, or somewhere in between?

"The virtu-communists are pretty bad."

Matt says the Graphic Arts department is high-tech because they use iMac computers.
Caleb says the Broadcast Department and the Vocational Department overall are high-tech.
Matt adds that the internet has problems. "The virtu-communists are pretty bad." He explains that the internet is down a lot and the internet filtering system doesn’t work properly. Legitimate, non-threatening science information gets blocked, for example, and he finds this "annoying."


But don’t you have a phone you could look information up on? Are you really blocked from the internet at school?
Matt says that if you have an iPhone or Blackberry, you can look up info. But he doesn't have such a phone.
Caleb says he doesn’t have internet on his phone or even “multimedia messaging.” He adds that a lot of kids do have the ability to access internet via phone.


At your house, how is internet use regulated?

“Basically the idea that [my parents] could do whatever they wanted with my computer at any given moment keeps me from doing stupid things.”

Matt says that his home computers have McAfee, which stops him from going to certain websites. He says he is able to access more websites at home than at school since the school system blocks “everything.” The school filtration system blocks game sites, for instance.
Caleb adds that Google Images is mostly blocked out. On Google Images, “you can be searching for Gandhi, and [the school internet filtering program] will block like half of [the images.]”
Matt says “Yeah, my computer won’t block a picture of Gandhi, for sure.”
Caleb explains that when he was twelve or thirteen, he used to have a program that would shut down his internet at nine o’clock at night, which he found "obnoxious." But at this point in his life, there is no limitation on his internet access. He knows that having “tech nerds” for parents means that they can find out what he’s up to.
“Basically the idea that they could do whatever they wanted with my computer at any given moment keeps me from doing stupid things.”


Have your parents taught you how to behave on the internet, or have you just kind of figured it out for yourself?
Matt—yes.
Caleb says he's been given a few talks. He says that internet etiquette is common sense. “I’m not sure my parents are the greatest example of how to behave on the internet.”


In your classes this semester, can you give me some examples of how you are using technology?
Caleb—“My blank stare means no.”
Matt's Economics teacher will use the Promethean Board for making notes, graphs, and visual aids to support learning. His AP statistics teacher uses a projector to show notes or "give problems." The physics teacher will sometimes use the projector for notes. Caleb adds that the Physics teacher plays a lot of YouTube videos, and Matt says, “but we won’t talk about that!” They laugh knowingly.
Caleb—“In my classes, we’ve barely used any sort of technology.” He goes on to explain that Drama is the best example of using technology. They take videotapes of their shows, put them on the big screen and analyze themselves. The piano is electronic, adds Matt. In Calculus, the teacher uses a whiteboard (the kind with markers), and he refuses to switch to an electronic whiteboard. Caleb thinks it makes sense to use the “old school” whiteboard in Calculus, because it suits his teacher’s method. The Calculus teacher occasionally hooks up a projector to a graphing calculator to demonstrate what the students should do on their calculators. In Chemistry, they use Bunsen burners, and in AP US History, they do nothing but sit there and listen to their teacher “babble on about nothing.”
Matt says “I don’t feel empowered at all.”
Caleb says “We don’t use [technology] ever in our classes….they’ll give us projects sometimes that require us to use electronics…like we need to print something out, or we need to create a PowerPoint, but usually that has to be on our own time, on our own computers, or we can go to the library. And, our new librarian has a lot of random, strict rules now…and the library’s often closed. So, a lot of the times people who wouldn’t have computers at home who need to do projects like that wouldn’t be able to because of her arbitrary scheduling of not having [the library] open.”

Do you know how to make movies, and if so, where did you learn how?
Caleb knows how to make movies because of his parents and because of his own playing around with the software. He did not learn it from school.
Matt learned how to make movies in a 9th-grade Computer Applications class.
Caleb explains that the entire vocational/business hallway has a bunch of computer labs with different classes. In 10th grade, Caleb took a Business Essentials class, in which students created PowerPoints and typed up documents and played games on the computer. “[Business Essentials] was the dump class that no one actually wants to be in.”

Do you ever use the easy, Web 2.0 type of technology on the web?
Matt says that in his Spanish class and in some of his Business classes, he has used the Moodle learning management system a little bit. In the Spanish class, students would use it to do activities. He estimates that they would go to the computer lab one day per week to do this.
Caleb recalls how one time in French he obtained permission to report on Toulouse-Lautrec using a wiki instead of through a written paper.

Have you guys taken any online classes?
Niether Matt nor Caleb have taken or are taking any online classes, although they know people who are. Caleb mentions a friend who is taking German online because he didn’t want to take Japanese, Spanish, or French, which are offered by the school.

How would you change the use of technology in your school?

"I think there are a lot more interesting and captivating ways one could learn US History than sitting and listening to someone talk..."

Caleb says it depends on the class. In Calculus, you don’t need a whole lot of technology to learn the concepts. Matt adds, “We don’t need Calculus to begin with.”
Caleb continues, "I think with things like AP US History, I think that a computer program could be teaching us better than we are being taught right now. While that’s sad, it’s true, I think there are a lot more interesting and captivating ways one could learn US History than sitting and listening to someone talk. And I understand that that’s one of the hardest subjects to teach because basically it is a bunch of storytelling. But US History could definitely use some updating and maybe some activities online. Some sorts of programs that bring you in to stories like that, to help you learn about it would be useful."
Matt says “To me, if they created this technology where they could put this recorder on the table, and it takes the person’s voice and turns it into notes on your computer, I would take History every day, because then I would get an hour and a half nap every day.
Caleb suggests, “Maybe we should design AP US History games."




Post-interview Commentary
Remember the Carrollton City School system's technology objectives stated up top? The ones that they're currently working on? Let's turn them into questions and see if we can patch some kind of answers together, using Caleb and Matt's input above.

1. Are students acquiring the knowledge and skills, as outlined by the Georgia Technology Plan, NETS-T, NETS-S, and Partnership for 21st Century Skills to become proficient with the continually changing applications?

It seems that students who elect to take classes in the Vocational Department (Communications, Graphics, and Business) may be obtaining some of the knowledge and skills. More information is needed on how these skills are taught. There is a big difference between learning technical skills and demonstrating the ability to use a piece of technology to actually communicate, collaborate, problem-solve and think critically.

Not all students take classes in the Vocational Department, and so it may be possible that some CHS students are graduating with very little technology use and exposure than what those teachers outside of the Vocational Department are providing.

Matt learned to make movies at school in an elective course, while Caleb learned at home. For students who don't take such courses or have the home support, we can probably assume that they won't learn to make movies just yet.

2. Are teachers acquiring the knowledge and skills to seamlessly integrate technology into their teaching practice?

As to whether or not teachers are acquiring this knowledge, I cannot begin to answer based on this brief interview. However, we can look at the ways in which teachers are using technology and draw some small inferences. We know that some Chemistry teachers use Bunsen burners; some Drama teachers use video for student self-evaluation; some Economics teachers use Promethean Boards or for displaying notes, graphs, and visual aids; some Physics and Statistics teachers crack out the projectors for displaying notes or "giving problems." Some French teachers are comfortable enough with allowing students to turn in assignments in alternative formats (e.g., the Toulouse-Lautrec wiki); and some Spanish teachers are using Moodle to support classroom learning.

Some teachers seem to expect students to have access to computers outside of their class, and some teachers, according to Caleb, ought to be replaced by a computer.

No one says it quite like a teenaged stakeholder. And reflecting on the things Matt and Caleb said, it would seem that this school has some work to do in meeting its stated technology objectives. However, there's no doubt that were we to talk to 2 different students at the school, we would learn even more, and perhaps contradictory information related to these topics. If we were trying to effect change of some kind in this environment, we would definitely want to gather a great deal of information from a diversity of stakeholders before planning and implementing change.