I participated in lobbying for MLTI, in person here in western Maine, and also in the letters columns statewide. Below is an exchange that began with an editorial by a professor in the Bangor Daily news. The names were expunged when it was added as an artifact to the National Technology Plan, relating to one-one computing.

Prof: My goal is quality education. Technology does not equal quality.

JM: This is a straw man argument. No proponent of technology would say that technology equals quality.

Prof: You're right. We can't put the genie back in the bottle. But I don't see better students because of it. I've been teaching the same sorts of students here in Maine for 28 years. The kinds of students don't change. University College was and is pretty much open admission. My writing students are dumber than ever. Oh, they're plenty bright, but they have been dumbed down by dependence on spellcheck and grammar check, and whatever else is designed to keep them from understanding the whys and wherefores of the English language,

JM: I have taught writing for years also, and I think the “what else above is the greater cause. I mean our culture. When I was young I used to watch Dick Cavett on late night (while I did my homework.) Today, they watch Jay Leno. Aside from the incredible coarsening of culture, there is real difference in the use of language. I believe the culture is changing and yes, media is helping that, but that doesn’t mean we should hide the keyboard from the student who must use it to transcribe the written language. The automobile is clearly a net negative for our society, but only the very wealthy can avoid learning to drive.

Prof: … not to mention what constitutes a sentence. Read the article, "Adolescent Apocalypse" in this month's Atlantic Monthly. It speaks to the limits I'm concerned about. My night students this semester chalk a lot of it up to GameBoy (whatever that is) and Nintendo. They say many kids lose the distinction between reality and virtual reality. Too many grow obsessed with mythic violence. They also grow obese, and King wants a machine in their laps.

JM: I should warn you that the retired professor with a copy of the Atlantic Monthly under her arm is a caricature we all speak of as the bane of k-12 board meetings. Belaboring the obvious to a group that fights these battles on a daily basis doesn’t endear. Neither does denying today’s tools to those who must use them to earn their bread in a few short years.

Prof: Let them use libraries. Let them feel the texture of the printed page with different sizes and prints and textures. Let them search the stacks‑‑learn the thrill of discovery. Sadly, I find that computers have narrowed their research lives.

JM: What about the leather chairs and oak tables? I too, am nostalgic for these things, but it won’t bring them back. Whatever’s left of them is like a game preserve, a shadow of its former range. Research is electronic now, and we can’t bring the old days back.

Prof: I get computer‑plagiarized papers and speeches. Students rarely get by with it in my classes, but they're plenty used to getting away with it.

JM: This project is not about going from paper to computer. That’s already happened, and we’re already dealing with plagiarism, copyright issues, etc. This is just about cleaning up the inefficiencies and inequities.

Prof: We need good computer labs in every school, as I said.

JM: The lab is an unworkable model. It doesn’t answer the question of “how many computers? It’s like putting pencils in a lab. It focuses people’s attention on the tool, rather than the work that is done. Kids don’t need computers all the time, and they don’t need them in their face or taking up desktop space which could be used for something else. Smaller, lighter, devices will actually be less intrusive, not more.

PROF: Increasing numbers of homes have computers. I wonder what percentage of homes really doesn’t have access. Before long, they will be as common as TVs, if they aren't already. You said it right. The ATM was really about getting the Internet pipe into the school. The whole thing was, and remains, a guise.

JM: Actually, it was conceived as in interactive video network, without the Internet. I and many other people insisted that the Internet be included in the bandwidth, because we could use it in a much more diverse way. We could see the video network [would have limited use, but the Internet was something we really needed.]

Prof: How cynical to get the state wired under the guise of education! It’s not different with the laptops. Why are we subsidizing Apple?

JM: Apple came into the bid process, which was spec’ed for Ford Escorts, and offered Camry’s with automatic and air. On balance, they were the best offer.

…

Prof: This is BUSINESS, let's face it. Well then, call it business, and don't siphon off the education budget as we did to get this state wired (a la Connick). Hello MBNA. Don't siphon off education funds to subsidize the hungry maw of technology.

JM Actually, technology is a required element in every school budget, as it is in every church, college, museum and corporate budget. It’s like the fuel oil and the electricity. We need computers (and quite a few of them; more than what is currently in place) just to automate the basic clerical and management functions of school today. The cost of this infrastructure will be about 3.5% of the school budgets. That’s the national average being spent today, and though it doesn’t provide a stable network , it is a fair estimate that by the time Maine gets to this level (it is currently at 1.8% of budget) the true costs will lower to meet us somewhere around this figure. One of the ways to reduce costs is statewide purchasing. Also, the K-12 LANs (local area computer networks) are currently a volunteer-installed snake pit of shaky wiring and cheap devices; they’re not going to get us ten years down the road. The state program will push us to a clean, wireless, and professionally installed (outsourced) network infrastructure. (not cheaper than new buses, but just as necessary to the work.)

Prof: I am not anti‑technology. I have a G3 laptop. I write the kinds of books that are made possible by the computer‑‑first‑person biographies. However, valuing Technology appropriately and providing laptops for 7th graders are two different things.

By the way, who are you?

Sincerely,

JM I am the curriculum coordinator for SAD#39 (Buckfield, a small rural Maine school district.) My specialization is the role of technology in school change. I’m as scared as anybody of its negatives, but I want to use it to make a more humane system, above all to strike a blow against the tyrannical monotony of the group pace in the classroom. I’d also like to use it for basic improvements, such as letting parents see their kids’ report cards from home on the web, or using the grade book software to eliminate some of the grosser abuses (daily zeros for behavior, etc.) of grading, using database technology to record student individual progress, helping to get quick reports on whether certain discipline infractions are going up or down, helping to analyze student and staff survey and performance data more easily (for instance, getting a scatter plot of your classroom grades compared to the same students’ MEA scores, to see anomalies or see if there is a gender bias, or whatever.) These changes all require a working computer infrastructure of the kind that colleges and companies take for granted, but we are begrudged here at K-12 because everyone is so sure they know that whatever tools were good enough for the old days are good enough for us, even though they use computers themselves both at work and at home [as you are doing.]

Thanks,

Joe Makley