Improved Integration 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 connection they make with their teachers is critical to their learning. Technology can extend the influence and power of collaboration between the educator and the educated if implemented properly.

Cheaper Unit Costs
While money should not be the only factor in a public school district making an ethical decision about technology, it is a contributing one since part of a district's commission is to be a wise steward of taxpayer dollars. Jennifer E. Chase, a contributing writer to District Administration (2012), reports that "the market research firm International Data Corporation released a study quantifying the educational and economic benefits of using Chromebooks in the classroom" in districts that ditched the traditional lab model and found that it lowered "the per-device cost of ownership for these schools by $935 over three years" (p. 24). These dollars saved could then be spent on building infrastructure, staff salaries, and improved curriculum.

More Time and Space for Teaching
While the lab setting may not vanish completely from public schools, the number of them can certainly be reduced since the need for them will lessen. In the public school district in which I work as technology coordinator in Ladue, Missouri, an entire lab is being closed down and repurposed for educational use because the building in which it resides is going one-to-one, and the lab space is no longer needed. In Chase's article mentioned above, she also points out that International Data Corporation found that implementing a one-to-one solution "[i]ncrease[d] teaching and administration time by 82 percent" (p. 24). When a public school district finds a way that it can provide more time and space for educational purposes, it has an ethical duty to seize that opportunity.

Transforming Learning
Public school districts are notoriously slow and hesitant when it comes to responding to needs for change; however, they have an ethical duty to commit to change when it best serves the needs of their students. No matter what a district does, its students will increasingly be challenged to make good use of technology. As Evgeny Kaganer (2014) and fellow educators found in their intensive research of one-to-one-capable technology, "[m]arket penetration of post-PC devices (such as smartphones and tablets) is expected to dwarf traditional desktop and laptop computers by a factor of four by 2016, transforming consumer behavior and expectations and reshaping industries and business models along the way...educational institutions... must proactively prepare for the upcoming shift" (p. 75). If a district sticks with a past model that does not fit its students' future, it fails them. A public school district has an opportunity to provide students with a model for how to do this best.

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

Kaganer, E., Giordano, G. A., Brion, S., & Tortoriello, M. (2013). Media tablets for mobile learning. Communications Of The ACM, 56(11), 68-75. doi:10.1145/2500494