Electronic School: E-Wire, January 2001

Paper, texts, and notebooks have vanished from some classrooms in Maryland and Kentucky as students make way for the next wave in educational technology: personal, handheld computers.

There are no books and few notebooks in Stephanie Sorrell's language-arts class at Eminence Middle School in Eminence, Ky. Instead, her seventh-graders take notes, write papers, get homework, and read books on personal digital assistants (PDAs) -- digital tablets the size of their hands.

"We've realized these could do a lot more than we ever thought possible," Sorrell said. "The kids are so motivated to work this way."

At River Hill High School in Clarksville, Md., 15 ninth-graders use PDAs for everything from class assignments to contacting their teacher. The devices have Internet access, dictionaries, and fully searchable versions of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Will PDAs replace textbooks? Not anytime soon, according to Robert McClintock, director of the Institute for Learning Technologies at Columbia University's Teachers College. He said PDAs are not yet advanced enough to have a big effect in the classroom. For example, he said, their screens are too small for students to craft in-depth reports.

"The direction is very important," McClintock said. "But we're not quite there as far as the technology is concerned."

Still, experiments with this "cutting-edge" technology are occurring across the nation, said Linda G. Roberts, director of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Education Technology. She noted that programs like the one in Clarksville are being tested in Chicago, New York, and Pennsylvania.

"The power of a [PDA] in a student's hand today is more than the power of a room full of computers 20 years ago," Roberts said. "And it's nothing short of amazing."

The pilot program at Eminence Middle School started last year, when the Ohio Valley Educational Cooperative in Shelbyville, Ky., got a grant to buy digital assistants for Hispanic students, who could use them to download Spanish-language materials.

Sorrell thought the program would be good for everybody, and -- with the devices going for $200 each -- the grant could buy them for all the seventh-graders.

In Clarksville, handheld devices were donated to River Hill High School by a local company called Mindsurf. The units are loaded with software that integrates the wireless computers into the curriculum. Mindsurf Vice President David Long said a similarly equipped unit would sell for about $600, while basic models begin at about $150.

Rick Robb, the River Hill English instructor who is leading the classroom project, has found it easy to adapt to the tiny computers. A former computer systems analyst, he created a web page on which students can view their grades and assignments, including Edgar Allan Poe's short story, "The Cask of Amontillado."

Robb e-mails students, and they can send instant messages to him and each other after school. Students can draft compositions, research history papers at the mall or on the school bus, and participate in group projects at home in their pajamas.

"I really feel we're rewriting education with this," Robb said. "We're tearing down the walls of the classroom."

A national backlash against commercialism in public schools is having a sobering effect on technology plans for thousands of schools that signed up to receive free Internet-equipped computer labs from California-based ZapMe! Corp.

In exchange, the schools agreed to use the computers at least four hours a day and allow the company to feature advertising targeted at schoolchildren on the ZapMe! "netspace." The company also monitored students' web browsing habits -- by gender, grade level, and school zip code, but not by student name.

But in November -- after seeing its stock plummet from a high of $13.75 a share to just more than $2 -- ZapMe! announced it was getting out of the education market because of increasing opposition to commercialism in public schools. Participating schools might have to return the computers or pay the company a fee to keep them.

"We accepted the commercial advertising because it wasn't obtrusive and you can't get on the Internet without seeing some form of advertising anyway," said Michael Pitroff, director of technology instruction for the Baltimore City Public Schools. Fifty-nine Baltimore schools are faced with the possibility of paying for the ZapMe! computers or losing them. "We've been pretty happy with it, but I'm not sure that we have the extra money in our budget to start paying fees. That changes everything."

"It's really sad for me," said ZapMe! founder and CEO Lance Mortensen, who says he hopes to avoid having to bill the 2,000 schools that are already part of the network. "At the end of the day, the real losers here are the students, the teachers, and the parents."

But anti-commercialism advocates don't agree and have criticized the company for using its access to schools to gather demographic data about students and using that data to sell advertising. Nancy Willard, a research associate at the Center for Advanced Technology in Education at the University of Oregon in Eugene, has taken ZapMe! to task for this tactic.

In an article in the November 2000 issue of American School Board Journal, Willard said it was "unconscionable" for school districts to enter an agreement in which a company would have the opportunity to develop a market profile of schoolchildren. However, ZapMe! officials said they never attempted to develop individual profiles of students -- rather, they gathered aggregate data about students.

School districts have long hired private firms to manage services such as bus transportation and food services. But now, schools are being solicited by a wider array of corporate interests trying to capitalize on schools' need for funds. A report released this past fall by the Center for the Analysis of Commercialism in Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said commercialism in schools -- ranging from ZapMe!'s arrangement to school districts' exclusive contracts with soda companies -- has nearly quadrupled in the past decade.

"I think school boards are beginning to recognize it," said Jennifer Morales, the center's assistant director, "and say that maybe they want to set limits."

Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History recently returned 10 volumes to the American Museum of Natural History in New York -- 92 years late. It seems a researcher from the New York museum took the books with him when he accepted a job at the Field Museum in 1908 and forgot to send them back. Field Museum officials were sorry to lose the valuable volumes, which include texts on medicine and natural history. But the books will be digitized and put on the Internet, said the museum's librarian, Ben Williams. "It will be easier for scholars ... to grab them off the Internet than it would have been to walk down the hall and pull them off the library shelf," he said.

A federal commission studying online child protection has suggested that an independent research bureau be created to review Internet filtering software and that law-enforcement agencies push for more prosecutions of porn sites that attract children. The commission has also called for establishing a special kid-friendly zone on the Internet.

The commission has studied a variety of recommendations for keeping children safe when they are online without infringing on privacy and free-speech concerns. But "there is no magic bullet," said Donald Telage, chairman of the Commission on Child Online Protection and former president of Network Solutions, Inc.

An independent research bureau to review Internet filtering software is necessary, Telage said, because the companies that make such software are secretive about their lists of banned web sites and how they go about scanning for objectionable material. An independent review of the products, he said, would heighten competition among those companies and help expose false claims made by the companies.

In addition, the commission recommends that federal, state, and local governments boost funding for law-enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute Internet sites that are potentially harmful to minors.

Stepping up the pace of prosecutions would have a chilling effect on purveyors of pornography, argues Donna Rice Hughes, an anti-porn activist who gained notoriety for her relationship with 1988 presidential candidate Gary Hart. "One of the reasons we have such enormous abuse in the obscenity area is that [pornographers] know they're not going to be prosecuted," she said. "Some very well-placed prosecutions could send a loud, clear message that there is some risk associated with this."

The commission was established under the Child Online Protection Act, which has been roundly lambasted by the courts. In June, a federal court upheld an injunction against the law, calling it too restrictive, confusing, and impossible to enforce.

Looking for guidance on the delicate issue of protecting kids' privacy online without trampling their rights? Two online resources can help:

For some lucky students in New Mexico, there'll be no more waking at the break of dawn, catching a bus, and trudging from classroom to classroom. These kids will attend class in their pajamas and click their way through Shakespeare and quadratic equations.

The state Department of Education has developed a virtual school that will offer classes over the Internet. So far, 100 students have signed up for the school, which was scheduled to open this month and offer Advanced Placement (AP) courses to high school students.

The online school can offer equitable learning to students across the state, according to program manager Sharon Dogruel. "We're looking at a way to enhance our education system and address many problems our schools are facing," she said.

The AP classes will be given through Apex Learning, Inc., an online-learning service provider. The program is funded through the Advanced Placement Initiative, a federal grant program that allows states and school districts to offer more challenging classes. At press time, the school's web site was not yet live.

According to Steven Sanchez, New Mexico's director of curriculum, instruction, and learning technology, the state will contact high school counselors to recruit students for the online classes. It is also recruiting online instructors.

If the new virtual school does well, courses will also be offered for students who live in rural areas or who have dropped out and need only a few credits to graduate. The state's goal is to offer courses to students in grades K-12 as well as to teachers for professional development.

"I just see it as a really nice way of extending this notion of learning opportunities across the state," Sanchez said.

Linking communities and school boards

In a project slated to begin early this year, parents in selected communities will gain unprecedented access to school boards. The National School Boards Foundation (NSBF)

has teamed with the America Online (AOL) Foundation to link communities and school boards through technology. The new program, called "Xchange: Strengthening Schools Through Board Discussions," will allow communities to have greater participation in school board decisions.

"The school board is a unique connection between communities and the public schools," said Paula Singer, chair of NSBF's board of trustees and president of the Contract Educational Services division at Sylvan Learning Systems Inc. "The school board's role as a link and a leader in the community is more essential today than ever before, and online technologies can help make involvement easier for already overworked parents."

Xchange is expected to be launched this month with a $400,000 grant from the AOL Foundation. The program will be piloted by five school districts that were chosen for their use of technology and community outreach efforts. The five school districts are Blue Valley USD 229 in Overland Park, Kan.; Calscasieu Parish School System in Lake Charles, La.; Greendale School District in Greendale, Wis.; Pittsburgh Public Schools in Pittsburgh, Pa.; and Solon Community Schools in Solon, Iowa.

The pilot districts will have an opportunity to create virtual communities through the use of tools developed by the Learning Network. Each district will have an Xchange web site that will feature e-mail, electronic newsletters, and online discussions about school board issues. By the time the program ends in spring 2002, the sponsors hope to have a blueprint that communities nationwide can use to develop similar programs

"This new two-year partnership will help all of us learn how to use the Internet to help parents, teachers, and school boards better communicate," said Steve Case, America Online CEO and chairman.

While congressmen on Capitol Hill are calling for the end of violent video games, student Eric Seaton has found a creative way to make good use of the games.

Seaton, 17, uses video-game-style backgrounds to create virtual props and scenery for school plays. A student at St. Andrews-Sewanee, an Episcopal boarding school in Sewanee, Tenn., Seaton has programmed five scenes for a drama called "The Visitor." Once the scenes are programmed, they are projected on an 8-foot by 10-foot screen at the back of the stage.

"Video games have been bashed lately, but I want people to change their views on how video games act on children," said Seaton.

One video game that has influenced Seaton is Quake III Arena, which became notorious as the game played frequently by the killers at Columbine High School. Seaton was inspired by the game's maps, or grids on the computer screen, which he uses as the foundation to design walls, floors, ceilings, and furniture for the school stage. "The maps in the game are exquisite," he said. "I'm trying to emulate them the best way I know how."

Seaton is especially proud of one "room" he built: a Gothic cathedral with pews covered in red velvet, brass chandeliers, and a wall made of skulls.

The school play will be interactive, like a video game. The audience will see the play through the eyes of various cast members at different times, seeing the scenery from the point of view of the characters. When the actor turns right, the audience will see what's to the actor's right -- similar to the changing point of view in a video game.

"For us, it's developing a whole new way of looking at theater," said Tim Hillman, drama teacher at St. Andrews-Sewanee. Hillman said that Seaton's ability to find a constructive way to use violent video games might change the public's negative view of the games.

"Suddenly you take the guns out, and you have remarkable technology," he said. "It gives the students a positive way to use this talent."

If you could ask people around the world one question, what would you ask about? Religion? Education? Marriage? Dreams?

The Planet Project--an unprecedented worldwide poll--asked about these topics and more beginning in November, when volunteer pollsters fanned out around the globe to find out what just about everyone thinks about just about everything. Millions of people were expected to participate in the poll -- either online or in person--as pollsters equipped with handheld computers and a variety of transmitting devices surveyed such diverse populations as Inuits living north of the Arctic Circle and Huli Wigmen in Papua New Guinea.

For the student component of the project, called Student Underground, an international panel of 20 students posed such questions as, "Have you ever fought in a war?" and "Do girls go to school in your country?"

The poll results will be posted on the Planet Project web site and made available for research. Meanwhile, in the midst of the poll, participants could get instant feedback. A few unofficial preliminary findings:

• Has technology made your life better or worse? Worldwide, 86 percent answered "better"--but 12 percent said it depends on what day you ask.

ED picks top technology programs

Seven school technology programs out of a total of 134 programs submitted have been designated exemplary or promising by the U.S. Department of Education's Educational Technology Expert Panel.

The winners included everything from a project to improve high school physics instruction to an atmospheric and environmental sciences program for middle school students. The entries were judged on educational significance, evidence of effectiveness, and usefulness to others.

Two programs were designated "exemplary": Challenge 2000 Multimedia Project, sponsored by Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, in San Jose, Calif.; and Generation www.Y, sponsored by the Olympia (Wash.) School District.

The multimedia project "infuses K-12 classrooms with a model of project-based learning supported by multimedia," the panel said. The Generation www.Y program pairs each student with a teacher, and together they design a curriculum-building project that incorporates technology for the teacher's classroom.

These days, your new computer is outdated by the time you get it home -- making a vast glut of obsolete computer equipment all but inevitable. Some environmentalists see the problem as one of the biggest solid waste issues to emerge in decades.

Now Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM Corp. is kicking off a program aimed specifically at individual consumers and small business owners, two sizable groups of computer users that up to now have struggled to find ways to rid themselves of unwanted computer hardware.

For a fee of $29.99, which includes shipping costs, IBM will accept all manner of PC parts through its IBM PC Recycling Service. Consumers can sign up for IBM's program when they buy a computer or by contacting IBM.

"There has been an increase in the amount of computer equipment that is either obsolete or that no one wants,'' said Wayne Balta, IBM's director of corporate environmental affairs.

Indeed, a recent study by the National Safety Council's Environmental Health Center estimated that 20.6 million personal computers became obsolete in the U.S. in 1998, but only 11 percent, or 2.3 million of those PCs, were recycled. Moreover, the NSC estimates that 315 million additional computers will become outdated by 2004.

For years, most of the unwanted personal computer equipment in this country has gathered dust in attics and garages. On a larger scale, the industry's solution has been to ship many of the unwanted and environmentally dangerous parts to China, where weak environmental laws allow for a cheap but hazardous method of disposal.

With the volume of obsolete equipment in the U.S. rapidly growing, environmentalists are becoming increasingly concerned that more and more of the parts -- all of them laced with toxic chemicals -- will accidentally wind up in public landfills not suited to the disposal of contaminated materials. Or worse, the equipment could wind up in illegal dumps.

While the outside shell of a computer monitor and hard drive usually can be used again, most of the inner parts must be replaced because they're worn out or outdated. And it's those inner parts that contain most of the hazardous materials, including lead, mercury, and cadmium.

Balta said IBM's service will allow the equipment to be either recycled "in an environmentally responsible way,'' or donated to a worthy cause if the equipment still works. Usable equipment will be donated to computer-needy organizations, such as job training and family services centers, through a nonprofit organization called Gifts in Kind International.