Hidden Costs of Carts - Opportunity Costs
Opportunity Costs should be considered when comparing a classroom cart model to take-home model. These are the loss of potential gain incurred when choosing one option over another. In this case, keeping devices in carts and not allowing students to take them home results in loss in learning opportunities, socioeconomic equity opportunities, parent engagement opportunities, and system change opportunities.
Students who have their own device with them have additional learning opportunities. Class opportunities include just-in-time learning, student classroom roles (see Alan November’s article on The Digital Learning Farm), and collaborative work on field trips. Students can work in other school settings, such as the library, cafeteria, or in after school program settings. Learning opportunities when there is a substitute teacher can be enhanced if students are familiar with online practice, such as using a Google classroom set up by the teacher. Students can also have more learning opportunities outside the school day. If access is available at home, a flipped classroom model is possible, and resources remain available for students when school is closed for snow or other reasons.
What is the value of enhancing parent engagement?
The challenges of socioeconomic equity (the Homework Gap) are made more obvious when students have their own device. It may be the only device that the family has, and the school should work with the town or community spaces to determine ways to provide access to help mitigate lack of access. The corollary challenge of poor parent engagement with some families is an opportunity that can be ameliorated with a home device. EL families may use the device to communicate with relatives back home. Parent portals can be an opportunity for students to engage their parents in discussions about school information and activities. School programs such as parent engagement evenings and parent universities can bring parents in as part of the device roll-out plan, and can provide opportunities for parents to learn more about how to use these tools. We had a program that provided each parent who completed a class with a device that we had scheduled for decommissioning - still functional - and this was a popular option for parents.
System change opportunities abound when students have their own device, and are enhanced when the teachers also have the same device. Involving students in decision-making processes and solutions around management and expectations is a great opportunity. Other implementations include student-managed help desks, new student mentoring, and parent training support. Having students and teachers using the same device will provide the teacher with plenty of immediately available help if needed.
Having everyone in the same learning space can accelerate educational growth!
Educational leaders can take advantage of the ubiquity of the devices to align curriculum and professional development in support of the faculty. Many schools have teachers who use Google classrooms to manage student learning and provide additional resources for their kids. In some schools this process spreads organically across teams, with positive developments such as an aligned set of standards for student PBGRs for seventh and eighth grade English. This can be done intentionally, and having teams of teachers work on these tasks in a common environment can increase their capacity with the system. Sharing of ideas, planning for work that crosses curricular boundaries, developing student resources, and easy conversion of these resources so students have access are all benefits that can result from an intentional approach, if everyone has access to the same system tools.
One school day for a student costs as much as their chromebook for a year…
Quantifying opportunity costs is a process described in the Value of Investment tools available at CoSN. The time it takes to develop quantifiable measures of these opportunities can allow districts to evaluate success and make program adjustments over time. As a quick example of how much impact these can have, I would note that the average per day cost of a Vermont Student’s education based on the state funding is $100, which is the same as the cost of a chromebook for that student amortized over three years. Creating the opportunity for students to learn across the school year greatly outweighs the device costs.