E-Wire: June 1998

Dispatches from the school technology frontier / June 1998

Schools police home web sites

Can schools control the content of web sites students make on home computers, particularly if those sites feature derogatory remarks about teachers or students? If two recent cases offer any insight, the answer is as tangled as the web itself.

Westlake School District, near Cleveland, agreed in April to pay $30,000 in damages to a high school student suspended for creating a web site that described his band teacher as a chubby man with a bad haircut. In return, student Sean O'Brien agreed to drop a lawsuit claiming the Westlake School Board violated his First Amendment right to free speech.

The 17-year-old baritone horn player had several confrontations with his band teacher, Raymond Walczuk. To express his frustrations, Sean created a web site at home with the inflammatory address of www.raymondsucks.com. The boy posted a yearbook photo of Walczuk along with the teacher's address and home telephone number. He described the teacher as "an overweight, middle-aged man who doesn't like to get haircuts," and he accused the teacher of playing favorites.

When district officials learned of the site, they suspended Sean for 10 days for being disrespectful to a teacher. The boy sued the district, and a federal judge ordered school officials to reinstate the boy, who had served eight days of the suspension. School district lawyer John Britton told the Cleveland Plain Dealer the district agreed to the settlement to avoid spending large amounts of time and money in court arguing over how much Sean should receive in damages. He also said the district acknowledged that administrators made a mistake disciplining Sean because the web page was created at home, not at school.

"Schools need to be very careful before disciplining for anything they do outside school grounds," says Michael McGuire, who practices school law in Minneapolis. However, there are circumstances where the schools can and should step in. Unfortunately, says McGuire, there is no case law on web site issues to guide schools.

While the Ohio case has been decided, another situation over a home web page was being sorted out at press time. School district officials in Cashmere, Wash., were mulling over the fate of eight teens who created a web page listing how hundreds of their fellow high school students should die. Seven high school boys and a middle school girl were suspected of creating the "People Deserving to Die and How" web page at three Cashmere homes. Although meant as a prank, the page violates district policy against lewd, indecent, or obscene acts or expressions, says Cashmere superintendent Joe Crowder.

The page didn't contain any specific death threats, or the last names of the students, but listed some quirky ways the students would die. One student, for example, would be consumed by enormous hair. Many of the death methods related to sexual activity and drug use.

The students could face suspension or expulsion. Chelan County investigators obtained search warrants from three Internet service providers to get the names of the students. Because they did not intend to harm anyone, says sheriff's inspector Mike Harum, the students were not arrested, and the county prosecutor's office does not plan to file criminal charges.

While some folks are buying into voice-recognition software and DVD technology, others can't quite give up that old Smith-Corona. Ironically, they're often proclaiming their love for old typewriters on that virtual monument to the computer age, the Internet.

Several web sites are devoted to the history and maintenance of old typewriters. Richard Polt, the Xavier University assistant professor behind "The Classic Typewriter Page" says he hears from "other typewriter people" on his web site every day.

Some of the typewriter people are collectors, but many are professional writers -- and Polt's not surprised. He compares writing with a typewriter to "drawing in ink, rather than pencil. The word processor is like a pencil: You can always erase, and easily start over. Composing on a typewriter is more like ink: Once you put it on paper, it's hard to alter it." And that, Polt insists, "encourages a more forceful style, greater decisiveness, and more reflection."

Equity problems persist

Here's the good news: More than three-quarters of public schools are now connected to the Internet, double the number from just three years ago.

This statistic comes from an annual survey released by the U.S. Department of Education, detailing how schools are doing in their pursuit of President Clinton's goal to have every classroom wired by the year 2001.

The bad news, according to the survey, is that a yawning technology gap remains between poor and rich schools; and a majority of public school classrooms still are not connected to the information highway.

More bad news comes from a study by Vanderbilt University professors Donna Hoffman and Thomas Novak, who found that 73 percent of white students had a home computer, compared with only 33 percent of African-American students. The gap remained even when researchers accounted for differences in income.

And schools, the ED report suggests, aren't closing the computer equity gap. Yes, 78 percent of schools now have access to the Internet, up from only 35 percent three years ago. But only 27 percent of individual classrooms are hooked up to the Internet. That is nearly double what it was a year ago, but it means the vast majority of classrooms in this country still have no Internet access.

That is especially the case in the nation's poorest schools, where only 14 percent of the classrooms are connected to the Internet. Roughly 63 percent of these schools are connected to the Internet somewhere in the building, compared to 88 percent for the wealthiest schools.

These disparities trouble officials at the U.S. Department of Education.

"You can't let the divide between the haves and the have-nots grow even larger," Linda Roberts, director of the Office of Educational Technology at the Department of Education, told the New York Times. "Increasingly, computers and telecommunications are the tools of the information age. ... If you ask any parent in America what they think is important, they will say 'reading, writing, and doing math -- and the new basic: being a literate user of technology.'"

The Vanderbilt researchers also conclude that the Internet has become an increasingly important part of American education and economic progress and warn that "a significant segment of our society is in danger of being denied equal access."

A technology director profile

If you're a typical school district technology director, you make around $50,000 a year, work about 50 hours a week, and you're pushing middle age, according to a recent survey.

School Planning and Management magazine surveyed 165 technology directors at districts with more than 600 students. According to the median responses to the survey, the typical technology director has a master's degree. Their immediate supervisors are most often the superintendent. They supervise from one to three full-time technology employees. Average age is between 45 to 49.

Other results show that typical directors have been in their jobs for about four years and have worked for their districts about seven years. Their main responsibilities include creating and putting into place the district's technology plan, providing software support, recommending and purchasing hardware, working with the technology budget, helping individual schools with technology plans, serving on technology committees, maintaining and repairing hardware, and training staff.

Survey results, including salary information by age, education level, tenure, budget, and district size, are available on the magazine's web site.

Apple kills eMate, promises new model

After barely one year on the market, Apple Computer's little green laptop for students is no more. The eMate 300 fell victim to corporate cost-cutting in February when Apple announced it was discontinuing all products based on the Newton operating system.

Although Apple won't say how many eMates were sold to schools, the laptop had gained a devoted following among many students and educators. The eMate's practicality and low price -- under $800 -- brought educators' goal of putting a personal computer in the hands of every student a little closer to reality, and kids loved the laptop's cool design.

Several schools that have made large investments in eMates show no inclination to abandon the machines. In fact, many educators say the eMate is still the best solution for their needs.

"At first we thought Apple had pulled the rug out from under us," says Sarah Skerker, a teacher at Mantua Elementary School in Fairfax, Va., where roughly 200 fifth- and sixth-graders have been using eMates since October in a program called One to One. After catching their breath, school officials decided to purchase another year's worth of eMates from Apple's remaining stock.

So far, the program has been "incredibly successful," says Ellen Schoetzau, the school's principal. "The computer has become an invisible tool, just like the kids used to use pencil and paper."

Students in the Mantua program use their eMates in every class and carry them home every night and on weekends.

The program's academic benefits are many, Schoetzau says: "Kids are doing more homework, they are writing more and lengthier pieces, they are staying on task longer, and they are much more motivated to learn."

The students in the Mantua program use their eMates for much more than word processing, says Skerker, who leads the One to One project.

"They use it for everything," Skerker says. "They use the spreadsheet and graphing functions in math and science. They use the datebook to remind them of homework assignments. They use it to draw illustrations for science labs."

Students can even turn in their work digitally by means of the infrared wireless feature built in to the eMate, Skerker says. "They just walk up to my desk and beam it to me. It's great. It makes the distribution of work so easy. And it's easy on my spinal cord; I take all their work home with me in my eMate."

Despite the eMate's demise, Apple claims it does not intend to abandon the idea of affordable portable computers for students. Apple plans to introduce a new eMate early next year that will run on a modified version of the Macintosh operating system, says Mike Lorion, Apple's vice president for education sales. By switching to the Macintosh platform, the next eMate will be able to offer features -- such as color and built-in Ethernet network compatibility -- that would have been difficult to engineer into the Newton platform, Lorion says.

Meanwhile, many schools continue to use their current eMates, which now enjoy the curious distinction of being simultaneously cutting-edge and obsolete. Says Mantua Elementary School's Sara Skerker: "We'll stick with the eMates we have. The eMate continues to be the best solution for us."

At first, they were in it for the laptops. Then the sixth-graders at Peterson School in Kalispell, Mont., became fascinated by the plight of the endangered bull trout.

The students, led by their teacher Barb Andersen, launched an internet informationsite on the native Montana fish that is now entered in an international competition. They entered the site in the environmental awareness category, in which the top prize is eight laptop computers.

In order to meet the deadline for the International Schools CyberFair '98, the students gathered the information and designed the web site in just a month. They worked during their vacation and four days a week at the end. The students received a great deal of help from community members they interviewed, including the technical expertise of school board member Eve Dixon, says Andersen.

Each student wrote a paragraph to be included in the report, "Small Fish in a Big Pond." Visitors to the web site can access "Everything You Wanted to Know about the Bull Trout," "Trouble in Paradise," and "Fun Stuff." Topics include Montana game fish, spawning, the food chain of Flathead Lake, the impact of mysis shrimp on the fish population, several games, a glossary, an explanation of the Endangered Species Act, and photos of Flathead Lake from the space shuttles, compliments of local Internet enthusiast James Conner.

The results of the CyberFair competition were due mid-May. Regardless of the outcome, the web site has given the students a many-faceted education, says Andersen. Besides taking in the scientific facts about the fish, the students also learned computer skills, cooperation, and "tremendous conflict-management skills," she says.

Study shows how to find technology dollars

Hire a talented grant writer. Design a model school to showcase technology learning. Schedule parent information nights. Create a community foundation to support school technology.

Those are just a few of the approaches districts might consider as they hunt for money to start and maintain technology programs, according to a study released by the federal General Accounting Office (GAO). The report -- School Technology: Five School Districts' Experiences in Funding Technology Programs (text and PDF versions available online) -- outlines how five districts have managed to find money to pay for technology programs despite considerable financial difficulties.

In Seattle, for instance, voters supported a special tax hike to jumpstart the school district's technology plan, but rejected a second increase that would have paid for the next phase of the plan five years later. Now, district officials are wondering how they'll find the money to maintain the program in the long run.

Aggressively pursuing grants surely helps, the report says. Manchester, N.H., and Seattle won competitive five-year federal Challenge Grants for $2.8 million and $7 million, respectively.

Grant writing is time-consuming, though. Manchester created a team to work on the Challenge Grant proposal, the report says. The technology director and one other member of the team had to "drop everything else" they were doing to complete the proposal in four weeks. Another technology director cited in the report said she would have needed a full month of uninterrupted work to develop a good proposal for one lucrative grant. As a consequence, she did not apply for the grant.

Districts are also hard pressed to sell technology to their communities in the form of technology bond issues, which have the potential to infuse huge amounts of cash into technology programs. It's a difficult task, the report says, but it can be done, even in cost-conscious communities.

To sell technology to its community, the Roswell Independent School District in New Mexico created a model school to demonstrate the use of technology in classrooms. According to the GAO report, school officials said this model school helped convince voters to pass a bond issue to pay for technology in all schools.

Who says American students can't produce high-quality work? A New Mexico high school student's project on counterfeit money was so good that her phony bills were accepted at local businesses.

The 18-year-old Hobbs High School student created fake $1, $10, and $20 bills by scanning real money into her home computer and making a printout on regular-grade paper. She mounted her homemade bills next to real money and challenged other students in her government class to tell the difference. She also handed out sample bills to her classmates.

And that's when the trouble began. Ten fake $20 bills have shown up at local businesses -- including one co-owned by the wife of Hobbs' police chief. Police identified several teenage boys involved in passing the counterfeit bills, says Police Capt. Mark Fritts, but the U.S. Secret Service -- the agency responsible for investigating counterfeiting -- was not interested in prosecuting them. Instead, the Secret Service plans to send a representative to Hobbs to talk about the seriousness of making -- and passing -- funny money.

Making copies of currency is illegal, Fritts says. "The girl should not have done it, but I don't think she knew it was illegal to do," he says, "and I don't think she knew these people would go out and pass them."

Reproduced with permission from the June 1998 issue of Electronic School. Copyright © 1998, National School Boards Association. This article may be saved to disk, printed out for individual use, or reproduced in quantities of less than 100 copies for academic use only, provided this copyright notice remains intact on each copy. This article may not be otherwise transmitted or reproduced without the consent of the Publisher. For more information, contact Magazines Coordinator Jo Surette, (703) 838-6739.

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