It’s Green Light Time for Tablet and other mobile PC learners to cross the street to more online learning. It’s time for Tableteers and other entrepreneurial educators to demonstrate how high tech can save districts money and increase student learning per dollar spent.
In each past economic turndown, some people have figured out how to take advantage with new technologies of circumstances others see as difficult. Today’s economic status appears made to order for innovative people to initiate expanded Internet Tablet PC learning.
A case to the point: Teachers in at least one California public school district received a memo today announcing that they will not receive salary payments owed starting this month, January. The district has run out of money and has not received a loan to bridge receipt of state allotments owed to the district.
I expect that some teachers and their unions will debate about whether or not to teach with no pay or for payment with script. Oh my.
At the same time, some of these teachers have privately constructed, maintained, and offered learning content websites to supplement their classroom instruction for their students.
Teachers with websites can form a virtual school for the district and offer it to their districts for costs less than teaches’ salaries.
Their students and others who find these sites can continue learning relevant course content regardless of how districts and teacher unions decide how schooling will proceed for the remainder of the year.
Is this equitable to all students? Probably not, but neither is deliberately holding back learners who have access to mobile and online learning content.
It’s doable and the time ideal for local learners to request more publically supported online school content learning, including for mobile as well as desktop learning.
Kudos to teachers, whether or not as Tableteers, who prepared to support their students with daily electronic access to school content. You lead learners to where school districts will likely have to go, if public school budgets continue limited into the near future.
How would you use the existing economic situation, including now pay for some teachers, to advance student learning, if not with Tablet and other mobile PCs?