Laptop project needs support

Educational technology can be one of the most equalizing forces in schools today, opening up a world of learning for students regardless of their physical location or financial status. Laptop computers or tablets with Internet access are standard equipment in many of the nation’s best elementary and high schools, offering students a distinct advantage when they head to college, where technological aptitude is essential.

If Hawaii is serious about meeting its educational goals — and having 55 percent of working adults hold a two- or four-year college degree by 2025 is an important one — policymakers must recognize the fundamental role technology plays in 21st century schools.

So it is disheartening that the state Senate has deleted $600,000 in funding requested by the Department of Education to boost teacher training as part of a laptop pilot program at eight Hawaii public schools. The House included the funding in its budget draft, only to see it disappear on the Senate side, so we hope the money will be restored as the chambers resolve their budget differences.

The dollar amount requested is a pittance in the Senate’s $12.1 billion budget, which makes the deletion all the more troubling. Cutting this minor amount could be interpreted as a lack of support for the technology initiative overall. At the very least, it signals a failure to recognize the importance of supporting a rigorous pilot project that soundly assesses the pros and cons of issuing digital devices to students.

The money requested by the DOE would be used to sustain the pilot program that began last year, when some 6,700 students and teachers were issued MacBook Air laptops as the first wave in the DOE’s one-to-one digital device initiative, known as Access Learning. The results of the pilot will help determine how the DOE moves ahead with technological initiatives at other public schools, so the pilot program must be robust.

Technological tools may change over time, with cheaper tablets a potential alternative to laptops, for example, but the basic professional development and student engagement issues remain the same. This pilot will answer many questions, allowing future expansion to be more efficient.

Already, the department has learned that more teacher training is necessary, and would use most of the additional funding for direct training at the school level to integrate the technology into the classrooms and for technical support services.

High-quality teacher training is a key component, as any school with a successful one-to-one program can attest. Today’s children are "digital natives," born into a globally connected world. Most teachers are immigrants in this interactive universe, and need proper training to guide youngsters to fully utilize tools that can ignite their curiosity and intellect in ways unimaginable even a decade ago.

Teachers at the eight pilot schools have rated the laptops "highly effective" for creating assignments, planning instruction and presenting and integrating lessons. At six of the schools, most of the students are from low-income families, so the schools’ technological resources help make up for disadvantages at home.

The promise of this pilot program simply must not be discounted. We shouldn’t nickel-and- dime an initiative that may come to define Hawaii’s schools of the future.