Web Site Accessibility Blog

An Arizona school is replacing textbooks with laptops in order to implement an Internet and electronic-based curriculum. Apparently, this is to keep teachers from “marching through the textbooks”. Is this the actual solution to the problem? I mean, there are very bad teachers and very good teachers – is the change of book to computer going to suddenly make a bad teacher a good teacher?

My own perceived hesitations aside – this is a great step for accessibility in the classroom. All students will have access to electronic documents and curriculum, and additional software could be loaded onto the student’s machines that require assistive technology. Not bad from that angle. This solves many problems in access and availability.

However, the cost of the laptops is $850 each, contrasted to the cost of textbooks between $500 and $600. One of my favorite cultural commentators is Neil Postman. In his book, “Building Bridges to the 18th Century,” he makes the comment that school systems all over the country are spending millions of dollars on placing computers into the classrooms. However, “there certainly does not exist any compelling evidence that any manifestation of computer technology can do for children what good, well-paid, unburdened teachers can do. So where is the outcry from teachers?”

He makes an excellent point. Everyone cheers when schools spend massive amounts of money on computers, but what if that same money were used to attract quality, well-paid teachers into the schools? What if that money were used as incentive to retain teachers whose students consistently perform well and show improvement? Instead, teachers applaud the purchasing of technology, and poor salaries and layoffs are pervasive.

Back to the Arizona plan. The most concerning thing to read is the superintendent’s statement that he’s not altogether sure how the transition will take place. Now that’s scary. Make a drastic change in curriculum with no clear direction or plan in place.

Which wraps this all up in a pretty little bow. There needs to be a clear goal in order to know if you have attained it. I constantly see this in the web marketing business. Most sites are not designed with a clear purpose. Therefore, there is no clear way to measure success, because success was not defined from the start.