Hidden Costs of Carts - Resource Costs
There are resource costs to consider when comparing a cart model to a take home model. These may have minimal impact (e.g., classroom space) or they may represent a significant cost (management costs). These costs should be considered when deciding when to move from a classroom cart model to a take-home device model. There are also opportunity costs, which are discussed in the next post on the hidden costs of carts.
The greatest cost by far is the cost of managing the devices. In a classroom cart model someone needs to check to be sure the devices are plugged in and charging, ensure there are enough working devices ready for the next school day, and if there is damage follow procedures to get the devices repaired. In cases where this is left to the classroom teacher, it may add between five and ten minutes daily, or between 1 and 2% of the contracted time. This may not seem like much, but for a salary of $50K it is between $500 and $1000 per year. For a school with 500 students and 25 classrooms, the cost would be $37.5K to $75K over a three year period, and the purchase cost for the chromebooks would be $150K. This method is adding 25-50% to the overall cost of ownership!
There are other costs incurred by the teacher management model. Not all teachers will have the motivation, knowledge, or investment in keeping the devices up to par in the carts. This may show up in several ways:
Devices may tend to stay in the carts, being too much trouble to use. On the plus side, since there is little use, there will not be much damage.
Support from other personnel may be required, such as tech support or integration specialists. Since integration specialists are typically on teacher contracts, this has a doubly negative effect since it doesn’t save costs and it also prevents them from doing integration.
Teacher morale may suffer, and antipathy towards technology may increase when teachers are expected to manage the devices. Additional training may not help, as in most schools there are already too many initiatives for teacher professional development.
An alternative to the teacher-managed cart model is to have a student or students manage the cart, and report back to the teacher. This will help students to develop responsibility. However, there will be the same challenges for quality of this task varying from student to student. There may also be some inequity in teacher expectations of students, resulting in assignment of the task to only specific students. Finally, although the cost of labor is less, it seems that this step is not productive - if students can effectively manage a cartload of devices, they should be able to each manage their own device.
Another cost evident in the classroom cart model is to instructional time - the time for students to queue up, retrieve a device, and get to work. This may be as long as five minutes or more before the students are all actively engaged with work, and may require the same amount of time to return them to the cart. In a self-contained classroom, this may provide the teacher with a well-deserved breather. However, having their own device at their desk will allow students to get started more quickly,
The loss of instructional time may also discourage some teachers from using devices, or only have students use them for specific tasks. An early study on one-to-one impact in schools cited one school where the devices were used daily, but only for a 1 hour writing block. Naturally writing improved, but an opportunity was missed. This may also be a more common issue where the students move from classroom to classroom, such as in a high school.
The last major cost to consider is the “Not my problem” cost, a result of multiple students using a device. As a result, devices suffer more damage, and if a device doesn’t work a student just chooses another one. Repair, theft, and damage to devices can be mitigated by instituting systemic student “ownership” of devices. This can be implemented in either the cart or take-home model. Careful incident tracking and analysis by tech support can be used to reduce overall loss from damage to a small percent (1-2%). For more on that, see Taking Advantage of Student Ownership.