Capital Region schools’ success with tech varies

Some teachers in the Capital Region are Smart Board rock stars, using them to bring video and animation into every lesson.

But others have used the LED projector as a hanger for classroom decorations, leaving the screen to collect dust.

Technology in the classrooms has had a rocky start in the Capital Region, and as districts now prepare to spend millions in state funds for new tech, a debate is brewing on how to best use it — if at all.

“There is no evidence that using a Smart Board makes a teacher more effective,” said Schenectady schools Superintendent Laurence Spring.

He added that he doesn’t plan to require all teachers to use any particular piece of technology.

“I would need pretty compelling evidence [of effectiveness] to say, ‘Everybody has to do this,’ ” he said.

He called technology a “tool” — just like chalkboards, mnemonics or games.

He would rather plan technology-related classes to prepare students for the future.

“If you’re teaching them the principles of coding and they learn two or three languages, they’ll probably be well-armed for whatever new languages are in the future,” he said.

Other districts are eagerly adding technology to their classrooms.

In Scotia-Glenville, students are able to check out and read books electronically.

At the middle school library, they can design prototypes on a computer and then build models. They can even use robotics software to make their designs move.

But the district has struggled with some new technology. A program designed to help students who were struggling with math was given mixed reviews by teachers in their annual report. They said they weren’t sure why some students fared well with the software and some didn’t, and suggested some teachers might have been able to implement the software more effectively than others.

Now many districts are adding instructors to teach the teachers how to use technology.

The Schalmont Central School District has taken that preparation time to a new level. District leaders are buying chromebooks — a type of laptop — for every ninth-grader next year. But first, they’re spending this year training the teachers and the eighth-graders.

By next year, they hope the students will know how to use the many programs on their laptops and the teachers will have developed lesson plans incorporating those programs.

When officials began considering new technology, they decided advance planning was the key, Schalmont schools Superintendent Carol Pallas said.

They started by considering what they wanted to accomplish, rather than picking out devices. The idea is to make sure the technology gets used. She particularly didn’t want the tech to end up being ignored like some Smart Boards.

“We’ve seen them sit in the rooms, we’ve seen them become glorified projectors, we’ve seen people hanging things off them,” Pallas said, adding that she didn’t want to “choose technology, put it in the classroom and say we’ll figure it out afterward.”

With the training this year, she wants every teacher using the chromebooks next year.

“It really seemed [in the past] those who liked technology used it, and the kids lucky enough to be in those classrooms got that experience,” she said. “We’re really hoping for a standardization across the district.”

But still, some teachers are offering experiences far beyond the others.

Two Schalmont math teachers are recording their lessons and broadcasting them on a YouTube channel. Students watch the lessons at home and then do their “homework” during class, where they can get help from the teachers.

Those who don’t have Internet access at home get the lessons on DVD.

The goal is to offer individualized help to every student who needs it, during every class.

“After a 30-minute lecture, they might get to six students,” said John George, the teacher who is training other teachers and students for next year’s technology. “Now the teacher’s actually able to get to the students.”

On the YouTube channel, students from other districts have left comments thanking the teachers because they finally understand the lesson.

George thinks the videos work better than a classroom lecture because students can replay them repeatedly, pause when needed, and fast-forward to the parts they don’t understand.

Next year, teachers could use a program on the chromebooks to create five-question quizzes to use during class. Students would take the quiz halfway through a lesson, and the program would instantly tell the teacher how many students got each question right.

“That’s very powerful,” George said. “The teacher can say, ‘Let’s see, looks like you’re still struggling with fractions.’ ”

In Schenectady, Spring said, some teachers use a similar device, called a clicker, for instant feedback. The idea was that teachers would know right away if their lesson had confused most of the students, and could reteach it.

But it didn’t work out that way, he said.

“To load all the questions onto the clickers so the kids could answer them was much more time-consuming,” he said. “So people didn’t use it and they gathered dust.”

His takeaway: Let teachers use technology as a tool — or skip it if they have other tools they prefer.

“As powerful as those clickers could be, I think it’s a losing battle to say we want that in every classroom,” he said.

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