I’m posting this email with permission from Kip Austin Hinton, who reports many years of experience with dozens of computer programs using both Macintosh and Windows systems.
your blog … relates in a roundabout way to my ethnographic work: i was recording meetings and events on a tablet (compaq). i did use it for some presentations in educational settings, but mostly i was taking notes – in as discrete a way as possible. unfortunately, my impression (and that of others with the project) is that the tablet is still often seen as invasive or intimidating by the groups we worked with. they largely come from low socioeconomic backgrounds, and some members have aversions to academia and research in general. in my mind, this is understandable, as academics have not always looked out for their best interest.
in fact, i need to update that — because i just recently left the project, related to uncertainty about whether the data, which on the surface appears to be used in a beneficial way, will be used in was which the participants are fully cognizant of and benefiting from. it’s quite complicated, of course, but i am looking at ethnography from a hippocratic stance, of first do no harm. i want to be certain, as i’ve read so many damaging ethnographies.
working on that project put me in constant contact with parents and teachers who are disenchanted with the TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills link added), and made me aware of the way esoteric issues like testing instrument validity play out in real life. the TAKS was not written to fit the assessment uses it is being put to. the TAKS was not norm-referenced to the population currently taking it. TAKS questinos are not, according to psychometric Standards, appropriately evaluated prior to release.
any one of these problems technically renders the results invalid. that all three exist (not to mention the cultural bias, which is possibly more damaging but scientifically more difficult to prove, and lack of consideration of high-level critical thinking, which studies show is more important to college success than recounting information is) has, in my mind, pushed this test over the edge. perhaps my logic in this is unclear to others, but to me there is no other way out but to abandon the test.
Kip separately urges teachers and others to oppose TAKS, I presume at least until changes indicated above are made.
It’s good to learn of these observations about people’s reactions when a Tablet PC was used to collect ethnographic data. Kip says what others (including me when I worked as an ethnographer) have noted about recording devices, whether electronic or paper and pencil. They do intrude into daily life, and in some way influence what an observer can note.
Perhaps Kip will share more of how these technical methods relate to observations about uses of standardized testing among people observed. Such details instruct educators about changes we may encounter with students and parents from differing cultural backgrounds when we introduce advanced technology into an educational setting.