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Article Critique 1

Heather Hagood

Georgia Southern University

Frit 7237: Evaluation of Educational Needs and Programs

Dr. Charles Hodges

September 13, 2020

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Article

Grant, M.M., Ross, S.M., Wang, W., & Potter, A. (2005). Computers on wheels (COWS): An
alternative to ‘each one has one’. British Journal of Educational Technology, 36(6),
1017-1034. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2005.00571.x

Article Summary

This article focused on an elementary school where the fifth-grade teachers shared two
carts of laptops between themselves to offer technology to be integrated into the classroom.
Teachers were observed to have shifted their roles towards facilitators and classroom instruction
towards student-centered activities with a focus on collaboration and project-based learning.
The study focused on several elements of how technology impacted instruction including
classroom practices, the degree of each type of technology use, and student engagement during
assignments. Focus groups were used to gauge both students’ and teachers’ perceptions of
benefits and hurdles of computers in the classroom, and overall technology skills to use the
computers and software programs. The results of the study showed meaningful uses of
technology in the classroom during observations and increased positive perspectives from both
teachers and students alike to the benefits of integrating technology into lessons.

Article Critique

The study was very well organized and touched on many key elements for data collection.
The tables in the report neatly and concisely displayed the data obtained from the observations
on instructional strategies, computer activities, and student activities. I felt like the different
data points collected were all relevant and necessary to truly understand how the introduction to
computers in a classroom really impacted academic lessons. The breakdown for both
instructional strategies, computer activities, and student activities during the lesson gave a good
picture of what the classrooms looked like during the observations. Covering all four academic
classes was also helpful, as while certain elements of technology use overlap, many unique
usages also exist for each core subject. I believe that observing both computer and
non-computer related activities is very important to see how teachers balance using technology
when it is not one-to-one. If you are trying to collect the data for how computers impact
instruction, data had to be collected for what activities did not use a computer as well.

The study also did a good job of identifying many of the hurdles faced by integrating
technology in the classroom and shortcomings of the study itself. Internet connectivity issues,
software breakdowns, and broken laptops are just a few of the main problems that the groups
constantly faced. The focus group of the students is where I found some of the most impactful
data from the study about the impact of computers. I believe the students had the most honest
answer of the computers helped the average performing students that try the most, but your
high achievers and your students who put forth no effort received little to no benefit from the
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computers. Many times teachers find themselves pressured to use computers regardless if it
truly is the best tool for certain lessons and sometimes can make learning the concept
unnecessarily difficult. For example, the science lesson of building a flower was more difficult on
the computer with the available program than the original hands-on activity. One of the
strengths of this study was also the training of the observers to try and have a more uniform
response across the observation points, many of which are subjective to the observer. The
researchers acknowledged that this was one of the shortcomings of the observation method and
tried to mitigate any unintentional bias that would skew the results.

While the study did a fairly good job of collecting relevant information necessary to
answer the questions posed with the impact of technology in the classroom, I thought there was
plenty of room for improvement. I wish they would have had a control class of students who did
not participate in any of the computer activities but had the same teachers for instruction. This
would have created a measurable side by side comparison for performance to see how only the
introduction of computers would have impacted performance. The data should also have
included more baseline data to try to be able to figure out how technology changed classroom
instruction and performance. The study should have started at least the year before computers
were introduced to see what the lessons consisted of and test scores from students at the end of
the year. This should have then been followed up by the next year of computers introduced into
the classroom and how that impacted the strategies and activities in class as well as student
performance on the state tests.

Another area that I wish they included was data that was not included outside the
observations. All of the classroom observations were pre-arranged and held at the end of the
school year. This causes what I call the “dog and pony show” where teachers plan a specific
lesson geared towards what we know the visitors will be looking for and does not truly reflect
what everyday instruction looks like. The researchers did not address this possibility and made
the assumption that this was a normal day of instruction. Data was also not collected on how
much instructional time was given over towards teaching basic computer skills and managing
student distractions throughout the year. The paper touched on this topic to acknowledge it was
there, but I would like to know how much time was lost having to handle these issues instead of
focused on the content the students are required to learn according to district standards.

Wrap-Up

While I work in a district that is one-to-one technology, many of the hurdles faced with
technology exist that have nothing to do with the student to technology ratio. This article helps
highlight many of the ways that technology can help bring lessons to life and enrich the
experience for students as well as some of the downfalls. I often find that very little support is
provided to teachers on either software training or hardware issues and often falls to the
teachers to figure it out themselves. This article will make me reflect on my own classroom
practices more to evaluate if I am truly using technology in a meaningful way that actually
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impacts student learning and how I can improve. Even fifteen years after this article was
published many points are still very relevant today and something we face in the classroom,
especially with the big push towards remote learning schools have been forced to adapt to in
response to Covid-19.