Area schools hope to avoid others' mistakes in rolling out technology

Tens of thousands of local students will receive taxpayer-funded laptops or tablets this month as the Houston and Clear Creek school districts join the national movement toward digital education.

School leaders say dispatching the devices can help bridge the gap between rich and poor families and lead to more engaging instruction, though some recent trials elsewhere were plagued with problems.

As the nation's seventh-largest school system, HISD will be closely watched as it becomes the latest big-city district to experiment with giving students personal technology devices to use in class and at home.

By the end of January, the Houston Independent School District plans to have distributed laptops to roughly 18,000 students at a quarter of its high schools. At the same time, Clear Creek ISD expects to deploy about 6,000 tablets to all its ninth- and 10th-graders. Both districts intend to dispatch many more devices over the next few years.

"This project is not going to go without bumps," said Lenny Schad, HISD's chief technology officer. "But I'm confident when those bumps do occur, we're going to be able to react very quickly and move forward."

Late last year, Fort Bend ISD scrapped its $16 million Apple iPad program after an audit found the online curriculum the district purchased from another vendor was poor and teachers rarely used the devices. The Los Angeles school district recently slowed its rollout of iPads amid several blunders, including students bypassing security settings. And Guilford County Schools in North Carolina delayed plans after equipment problems, including cracked screens on tablets from the company Amplify.

Schad, who has talked to his counterparts around the nation, said other districts have stumbled because they rushed the rollout and focused more on the devices than on training teachers.

Laptops over tablets

He also said HISD's choice of a laptop over a tablet should make it harder for students to breach security settings, and he thinks the built-in keyboards are better for high school work than touch-screen devices.

In Clear Creek, chief technology officer Kevin Schwartz said district officials chose Dell Latitude 10 tablets in part because they are portable and operate more like laptops than some competitors. A student committee also gave the device rave reviews, he said.

Research into whether personal technology programs - typically called one-to-one initiatives - lead to improved student achievement has yielded mixed results. While some districts and states started giving devices to students on a small scale more than a decade ago, few of those efforts have survived, largely for budget reasons.

But as cell phones and computers have become ubiquitous, technology experts say schools need to take public education more into the digital age.

"It is irresponsible for any school district not to be moving to creating 21st century learning environments. I think it's criminal," said Leslie Wilson, who co-directed Michigan's $40 million school laptop program in the early 2000s. "But it's also criminal to go about doing that without doing it right."

Moving into digital age

Andrew Ayala, a sophomore at Clear Brook High School, said he was excited to use a tablet to do Internet research and take notes during debate club. He also looked forward to carrying fewer heavy textbooks as publishers go digital.

"We have technology in our hands available to use anytime we want," Ayala said after receiving his tablet last week.

Another Clear Brook sophomore, Wilhelmina Smith, voiced concern that taxpayers had to pay for the tablets when many students have their own devices.

Clear Creek voters approved the technology plan as part of a bond referendum last May. By the fall of 2015, the district expects to dispatch about 30,000 tablets to students in grades 4 through 12. The cost per device, including software, a case and extended warranty, is $541, according to the district.

HISD officials say leasing the HP laptops is cheaper, at about $260 for the device and software, excluding the case.

In both districts, the students ultimately have to return the devices.

So far, HISD has funded its laptop program with federal dollars designated for low-income students as well as professional development. For this school year, the district has budgeted more than $8.1 million for the devices, teacher training and other expenses. By January 2016, HISD plans to dispatch nearly 65,000 laptops to all its high school students.

HISD Superintendent Terry Grier has said he eventually would like to give devices to younger students as well.

In the Houston area, Klein ISD is ahead of the pack, having first experimented with giving personal devices to students in 2006. Now, students at all five of the district's high schools have HP convertible tablets.

"There's still paper being used, but it's less paper and more digital," said Susan Borg, Klein's associate superintendent for instruction.

To save money, some districts such as Katy ISD ask students to bring their own devices. That approach requires teachers to adapt their lessons to work with various cellphones, tablets and laptops.

In HISD, the all-girls campus, Young Women's College Preparatory Academy, has been able to give students laptops for the last three school years thanks to a grant.

Principal Delesa O'Dell-Thomas said few problems have arisen. The wireless internet service rarely goes down, and only a handful of the laptops have been lost or stolen. She points to her school's above-average test scores as proof the technology has improved learning.

"It's a lot more interactive," 11th-grader Jennifer Molina said about using the laptop. "You get a lot more involved, rather than reading a boring textbook. You can work at your own pace."

During a recent pre-calculus class, Molina donned headphones to watch a video lesson on her laptop about finding the slope of a line. Other students clicked through a series of different math problems. They still showed their work on paper, but the online program allowed them to ask for hints or play tutorial videos. Teacher Heather York walked around helping students.

York said it took a few months to figure out how to adapt her teaching, but she said the online resources let her cater to advanced students as well as those who are struggling.

"I'm not tied to the board," she said. "I'm moving around the classroom."