Collaborative Learning as a Benefit of Both Systems

Technology should only exist in a district if it provides the opportunity to better educate students. Any choice a district makes should focus on this ethical basis. Students spend more waking time with educators than with any other humans, so the connections they make with their teachers are critical to their learning. Technology can extend the influence and power of collaboration between the educator and the educated if implemented properly.

Open Communication Between Students and Educators
Modern computer technology had its origin in labs. Students would leave a traditional classroom and travel on what was effectively a "technology field trip" to a set of computers in a lab setting. As the hardware decreased in price, improved in capacity, and decreased in physical size, public school districts distributed more and more computers to classrooms, decentralizing the focus from a lab into an actual classroom. The progression of technology in education has reached the point that public school districts can now deliver instructional technology at a one-to-one level. Having gone from something students "do" (that is, "doing technology"), this tool can now be embedded in learning, can facilitate learning, rather than being an end to itself. As Bryan Weinert, a public school technology director, says in an article by Jennifer E. Chase in District Administration (2012), his school now has a tool "that is invisible and gets out of the way to allow students and teachers to focus on learning and collaborating" (p. 22). This empowerment elevates instruction and permits educators to reinvent how they teach. No longer must a student type up a paper in isolation (even the isolation of a lab). "Google Docs lets teams share one document and edit the draft in real time...teachers can offer real-time feedback by logging into the shared paper, all from each student and teacher's individual Chromebook that they have access to at all times" (p. 24). As an English teacher from 1988-1992 and 2000-2013, I have seen nothing transform student learning and collaboration more than when, five years ago, my sophomore Composition class discovered this exciting and powerful ability. If someone had walked by my computer lab five years ago and seen the students at the computers, one would have seen their excitement and energy and thought they were all playing some exciting new video game when, in fact, they were for the first time in their lives providing real-time peer feedback and receiving input from me as their English teacher. Prior to this, my students found peer-editing a drudgery to be endured. Now the possibilities of one-to-one technology can take this to another level altogether, extending this power outside of the lab.

Level Playing Field for Low-Income Students
Some districts that utilize a traditional lab structure for technology have attempted a "bring your own device" (or BYOD) program. Any district can declare it is using a BYOD initiative, but should it? This presents an ethical dilemma, and the temptation to just use BYOD as a solution clearly presents a seemingly easy and enticing choice. A public school in Irving Texas has discovered, as reported in an Electronic Education Report (2013), that this method puts the district into a situation such that it "loses uniformity of implementation and has to deal with issues of virus protection and device security" in a more onerous way than they would if they simply used a one-to-one system (Irving, p. 2). Furthermore, what of students from low-income families in public school districts who cannot afford any device, much less an educationally appropriate one? BYOD serves to widen the technological divide between the affluent students and the poor students, not a very ethical situation for a public school that is meant to serve the needs of all its students and provide them an equal and fair opportunity for education. A standard, district-approved device in the hands of all students levels the educational playing field and diminishes the advantages a wealthy student--who has a plethora of technology at home--has over a poor student--who may have no access to technology outside of what the public school district provides.

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Chase, J. E. (2012). Chromebooks help raise bar. District Administration, 48(10), 22-24.

Irving one-to-one implementation changes over time. (2013). Electronic Education Report, 20(3), 1-3.