CPE Warehouse – Business
Microcomputers in Business– CPE T ask 1 Assignment
This task is based on reading selection A,
"No Test Tubes? Questions Arise On Virtual High School Science" By Sam Dillon, and selection B
"Slow to reboot Schools running out of funds to upgrade computers", by Kay Lazar Globe Staff - Emily Sweeney of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Click to see:
Reading Selection A
Reading Selection B
Writing Assignment:
write about the challenges created by technology in education
Microcomputers in Business - Reading Selection A
No Test Tubes? Questions Arise On Virtual High School Science
By Sam Dillon
When the Internet was just beginning to shake up American education, a chemistry professor photographed thousands of test tubes holding molecular solutions and, working with video game designers, created a simulated laboratorythat allowed students to mix chemicals in virtual beakers and watch the
reactions.
In the years since, that virtual chemistry laboratory -- as well as other simulations allowing students to dissect virtual animals or to peer into tidalpools in search of virtual anemone -- has become a widely used science teachingtool. The virtual chemistry laboratory alone has some 150,000 students seated at
computer terminals around the country to try experiments that would be too costly or dangerous to do at their local high schools. ''Some kids figure out how to blow things up in half an hour,'' said the professor, Brian F. Woodfield of Brigham Young University.
Now, however, a dispute with potentially far-reaching consequences has flaredover how far the Internet can go in displacing the brick-and-mortar laboratory.Prompted by skeptical university professors, the College Board, one of the most powerful organizations in American education, is questioning whether Internet-based laboratories are an acceptable substitute for the hands-on culturing of gels and peering through microscopes that have long been essential ingredients of American laboratory science.
As part of a broader audit of the thousands of high school courses that display its Advanced Placement trademark, the board has recruited panels of university professors and experts in Internet-based learning to scrutinize the quality of online laboratories used in Web-based A.P. science courses.
''Professors are saying that simulations can be really good, that they use them to supplement their own lab work, but that they'd be concerned about giving credit to students who have never had any experience in a hands-on lab,'' said Trevor Packer, the board's executive director for Advanced Placement. ''You
could have students going straight into second-year college science courses without ever having used a Bunsen burner.''
Internet-based educators are seeking to convince the board, and the public, that their virtual laboratories are educationally sound, pointing out that their students earn high scores on the A.P. exams. They also say online laboratories are often the only way advanced science can be taught in isolated rural schools or impoverished urban ones. Online schooling, which was all but nonexistent at the elementary and secondary level a decade ago, is today one of the fastest-growing educational sectors, with some half-million course enrollments nationwide.
Twenty-five states operate public, Internet-based schools like the Florida Virtual School, the nation's largest, which has some 40,000 students. Virtual High School, a nonprofit school based in Maynard, Mass., has 7,600 students from 30 states and many countries. Susan Patrick, a former Department of Education
official who is president of the North American Council for Online Learning, estimated that 60,000 public school students were enrolled in some online science course.
John Watson, an education consultant who wrote a report last year documenting virtual education's growth, said online schools had faced lawsuits over financing and resistance by local school boards but nothing as daunting as the College Board.
''This challenge threatens the advance of online education at the national level in a way that I don't think there are precedents for,'' Mr. Watson said.
The board signaled a tough position this year.
''Members of the College Board insist that college-level laboratory science courses not be labeled 'A.P.' without a physical lab,'' the board said in a letter sent to online schools in April. ''Online science courses can only be labeled 'A.P.' if the online provider'' can ensure ''that students have a guided, hands-on (not virtual) laboratory experience.''
But after an outcry by online schools, the board issued an apology in June, acknowledging that ''there may be new developments'' in online learning that could merit its endorsement.
Mr. Packer of the College Board said in an interview that the board had setup three five-member composed of biology, chemistry and physics professors and online educators, which are to meet in New York next month to review the online laboratories offered by Internet-based schools for A.P.
courses.
The board's rulings will determine whether high schools can apply the A.P.
designation to online science courses starting next fall on the transcripts of
students applying to colleges, Mr. Packer said.
In recent conversations with college science professors, the board has
encountered considerable skepticism that virtual laboratories can replace
hands-on experience, he said.
But educators at several prominent online schools pointed to their students
' high scores on A.P. exams.
On the 2005 administration of the A.P. biology exam, for instance, 61
percent of students nationwide earned a qualifying score of three or above on
the A.P.'s five-point system. Yet 71 percent of students who took A.P. biology
online through the Florida Virtual School, and 80 percent of students who took
it from the Virtual High School, earned a three or higher on that test.
''The proof is in the pudding,'' said Pam Birtolo, chief learning officer
at the Florida Virtual School.
Still, there is tremendous variety. A 2005 guidebook, ''Finding an Online
High School,'' compiled by Vincent Kiernan, a senior writer at The Chronicle of
Higher Education, lists 113 Internet-based secondary schools, 32 of which
offered at least one A.P. science course. Online curricula are anything but
standardized, and new approaches to online laboratories are emerging at a
dizzying pace, said Kemi Jona, a computer science professor at Northwestern
University.
''It's not a one-size-fits-all landscape,'' Dr. Jona said.
The science courses offered by some online high schools draw on multiple
Internet sites that provide data, then lead students through an analysis. At one
site, for instance, operated by the University of Arizona, students collect data
from the cells of an onion root and use it to calculate the duration of each
phase in the cells' division.
Chemistry and other science courses at many Internet-based high schools
include laboratories often characterized as ''kitchen science,'' in which
students use household materials -- ice, cooking oil, glass jars -- to carry out
experiments.
'' 'Make sure we have potatoes in the house,' my daughter told me before
her last lab,'' in which students studied osmosis, said Mayuri Shah, whose
daughter Sonia is taking A.P. biology from the Florida Virtual School. Sonia,
16, enrolled in the online course because her high school in Lecanto, Fla.,
north of Tampa, does not offer it.
That is one of the most common reasons students sign up for online classes,
said Ms. Patrick, the North American Council for Online Learning president.
''Thousands of schools in rural areas don't have science labs, but they
have kids who want to go to college and need that science inquiry experience,''
she said. ''Virtual science labs are their only option.''
ConVal High School in Peterborough, N.H., offers more than a dozen science
courses, but zoology is not among them. So Katherine Lantz, a junior, is
studying it online.
One recent evening she was at home, moving through a virtual pig dissection
screen by screen. One image showed a pig kidney, outlined by pulsing yellow
dots.
''Whoa, that's kind of gross!'' Katherine said. She clicked her mouse,
causing a virtual scalpel to lay the pig's kidney open, its internal regions
highlighted by blinking labels.
''Its nice to have it enlarged because if we were dissecting this in my
school lab this would be hard to see,'' Katherine said. ''I learn a lot online
-- as much as I would attending a physical class.''
But Earl W. Fleck, the biology professor who created the virtual pig
dissection, believes otherwise. Dr. Fleck began working on the virtual
dissection in 1997 to help his students at Whitman College in Walla Walla,
Wash., review for tests and to offer a substitute for those who, for ethical
reasons, objected to working with once-living specimens.
Dr. Fleck, who is now provost at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, said
students worldwide found the virtual dissection useful. But he called it '
'markedly inferior'' to performing a real dissection.
''You don't get the look and the feel and the smell,'' he said.
Everything but the Formaldehyde
Online high schools use Internet sites to offer students, working at their
computers, a feel for science laboratories and experimentation.
This virtual pig dissection, created by a biology professor at Whitman College
who wanted to help his students review for tests, has become a popular online
laboratory:
www.whitman.edu/biology/vpd/
The College Board recommends 12 laboratories for its Advanced Placement biology
course. The Virtual High School, based in Maynard, Mass., which offers A.P.
biology, draws on several Web sites to present students with data they can use
for analysis, including this one used for A.P. biology lab No. 3, which explores
mitosis and meiosis in cells:
www.biology.arizona.edu/cell--bio/activities/cell--cycle/cell--cycle.html
Florida Virtual School's marine science course includes a virtual exploration of
a rocky shore. Other activities focus on tracking sea turtle migration and
examining oil spills:
www.flvs.net/products--services/2005--showcase--flvs/science/marine/lessons/02--
04.htm
An online school for academically talented students run by Northwestern
University offers an A.P. chemistry course that draws on this simulated
chemistry laboratory:
www.latenitelabs.com/
Brigham Young University has also created a virtual chemistry laboratory:
chemlab.byu.edu/Tour.php
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
Reading Assignment B
Slow to reboot schools running out of funds to upgrade computers
Kay Lazar Globe Staff - Emily Sweeney of the Globe staff contributed to this report
Haverhill high school students finally received new science textbooks this year, the first in more than a decade. But all of the books rely on material from CDs that can't be run on the school's aging computers.
In Holbrook, some classrooms still have decade-old computers that can take up to 10 minutes to boot up.
In Natick, a growing number of students are bringing their own laptops to class, because the district does not have enough modern machines to run the latest software. And in Boston, it is teachers who are bringing their own laptops to school to sidestep the system's unreliable equipment.
A decade after schools across the state pushed to get computers into classrooms, many districts are limping along the information superhighway. Their machines are obsolete, or the wiring and other infrastructure in their buildings are. Other districts have modernized equipment but lack the specialists to train teachers to use the latest technology and show them how to weave it into everyday lessons. And the legion of personal laptops showing up in schools is creating nightmares for technology directors, who worry about computer viruses spreading to their buildings' secure networks.
With tight budgets, impending teacher layoffs, and voter resistance to tax increases, many communities face dim prospects for keeping pace with rapidly changing technology.
New data from the state Department of Education show that 80 school districts, roughly a quarter of those in Massachusetts, are not meeting the state's recommended goal of providing one high-capacity computer for every five students. Some, like Haverhill and Randolph, have about 17 students sharing each high-capacity machine, which is defined by the state as one capable of running most software. Boston, on the other hand, meets the state recommendation.
"I am spending most of my time Band-Aiding everything," said Michael Donovan, Saugus' lone information manager, who is in charge of keeping 700 computers running.
In Saugus, there are roughly seven students sharing each of the district's high-capacity computers, no staff to train teachers to use the technology, and no money to improve that equation.
For a generation of students who grew up on video games, mp3 players, and cellphones, that's a major frustration. Specialists worry that students are being held back because their teachers are not adequately trained to use the technology. "The good majority of teachers who are getting close to retirement don't know how to use the technology," Donovan said.
"These kids live on computers," added Mike Gilbert, field director for information and technology at the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. "Their ability to write, to form good sentences and grammar, appears to be enhanced by the computer."
A report released last April by the state Department of Education showed that
53 percent of teachers statewide were ranked in the early or developing stages of technology literacy, while 56 percent of eighth-graders had "mastered all or nearly all" basic technology standards set by the state.
State Education Commissioner David Driscoll said he worries that in a fast-paced world, even schools that are making a little progress can fall behind.
"It's not a question of schools and districts making progress," he said.
"It's a matter of schools and districts not making as much progress as there should be."
With budget constraints the largest hurdle, school technology specialists say they are leveraging every offer of free equipment or discounts.
For example, they liberally use free software, apply for grants, rely on parent organizations for fund-raisers, and seek corporate donations. Most specialists said that to keep their schools' technology current, they aim for policies that replace computers about every five years. But often, they said, the district can't afford to fund that timetable, so schools are stuck with older computers that are very slow or cannot run many current programs. State data show 40 percent of districts reported last year that they did not have a replacement policy.
A decade ago, when most schools started acquiring computers, corporations such as Microsoft and Apple often provided discounts or donations, Gilbert said.
Since then, the cost of most equipment and software has declined. While Microsoft and Apple still provide some materials, the more expensive challenge for schools is funding the maintenance of the equipment, software, and training, which companies are less likely to pay for, he said.
In Georgetown, a suburb of 7,800 people north of Boston where state data show that 10 students are sharing each high-capacity computer, the PTA recently purchased 59 refurbished, slower computers for kindergarten and first grade classrooms. PTA President Lisa Woodford, 36, who has children in the third and fifth grades, said the district is doing the best it can with limited funds.
Still, she said, her family bought state-of-the-art computers for their children at home.
"We live in a computer-generated world in terms of jobs," Woodford said.