The Seattle school board is asking the question: Where should technology fit into the education of K-12 students?
On May 3, 2017, Richard Best, Director of Capital Projects and Planning, and John Krull, Chief Information Officer, stood in front of the Seattle School Board with a proposal for $1.6M to purchase laptops to be distributed to seven schools. Krull estimated the budget would allow one laptop for every two students.
According to the proposal, All classrooms will receive the appropriate Teacher Work Station (matching the mobile device rollout that the Department of Technology Services (DoTS) along with Curriculum and Instruction (C&I) is currently implementing)… Curriculum for Seattle Public Schools is due for revisions and updates and so far no curriculum proposals have been presented to the school board for review by Seattle Public School staff. Also, the software to be installed, as School Board Director Leslie Harris pointed out, has not been vetted as would happen with any textbook used in a classroom. Harris also noted that the students at Middle College have alleged that the software program Edgenuity that is installed on all of the computers at a school where the majority of students represent minority communities, has racist undertones. Apparently no one took a critical eye to the software before it was installed.
There is also the concern by parents of how much of the curriculum to be installed on the laptop is based on the Common Core Standards with its concomitant testing. With so much emphasis on the Common Core Standards, there is concern that learning has become imbalanced leaving out history, civics and the arts, and the testing too obtrusive.
The proposal goes on to state, DoTS as well as Teaching and Learning have developed a vision of incorporating more mobile devices into the classroom, which not only The Seattle school board is asking the question: Where should technology fit into the education of K-12 students? | Seattle Education:
