Yesterday I blogged about allowing my students to fiddle around with my new iPad. One additional insight I had as I watched them play around with the remarkable device was that, like it or not, seeing the ease with which all of them were able to navigate a tablet computer cemented for me the idea that giving our students tablets trumps outfitting them with printed books for many, many, many reasons.

In fact, to cite the reasons why it makes sense to convert to digital texts in the world of academics strikes me as an argument not even worth making. Remaining anchored to paper, however, is an argument I’d like to hear.

Because I am not sure how, on balance, the comparison is even close.

If money wasn’t the option – or rather, if you looked at the degree of actual savings we’d be able to incur should we measure everything based on a cycle of ten years ROI (return on investment) versus solely the first year’s expenditure of making the initial technological purchase – a tablet that has access to the web which is pre-loaded with class curriculums and software for productivity (i.e. MS Office or another version thereof) seems to be able to dominate the way we currently do things much like the way a high-end laptop computer dominates having twenty filing cabinets full of paper divided by tabs as a system for keeping track of all my work.

From speed to sharing, depth to complexity, multiple perspectives to the latest current thought on a subject matter, what can be done is beyond remarkable with tablets in a student’s hands… and what we can’t do, and what we are not doing, and how we are almost being short-sighted like Wall Street by focusing only on the next quarter instead of our long term growth (can you say year-to-year bubble tests?), well… I may be late to the party/bandwagon but I just got my iPad last Friday so cut me some slack.

The device has let me see the light. Theoretically, I had heard the arguments. But seeing my iPad in the hands of my students really re-shaped my thinking.

And no, printed books are not dead. That’s not what I am saying. What I am saying is that we can do school better. (i.e. I am talking about replacing the notebooks, the physical books, the memos, the physical tests, and so on.) We have the tools to do it better.

And we have them now.

But are we willing to pay for it? Impossible, right?

I say we cancel all the bubble tests for the next 3 – 5 years and use all that money to make all our schools one-to-one laptops/tablets.

I am absolutely convinced public education in the United States of America would be immensely better served by this idea. And if we can’t convert all of them, let’s start with 50%.

Or 25%?

At some point, we are going to begin. After all, the only way to eat an elephant is to start with a first bite.

One day we will have made the leap. And we’ll be better institutions because of it. Let’s start now by using the money we are virtually peeing away with tests everyone agrees are inferior measurements of students aptitude and instead, go right for the goal of actually improving student achievement by providing them with cutting edge tools for the classroom.

After all that’s the “alleged” purpose of the tests anyway: to help us better educate our kids, right?

Better tools do that better than weak tests.

And the sound the rest of the world would hear would be that of America’s students roaring with excitement about the possibilities of what can happen inside a school house.

Our country must make the leap!

For anyone who says that class size does not matter, I say to them…

Well, this is a civil conversation so I’ll bite my tongue. But come on, in the rush to hoist the notion of “teacher quality” to the top of the educational flagpole, we are allowing ourselves to pretend truthful things are not really truths.

And one truthful thing is that class size does matter. A lot.

Here’s an article from the Los Angeles Times about how some classes at Fairfax High School have 50 students crammed into classrooms built for 30. When kids sit on the floor, on filing cabinets, and the such, is anyone really going to say that “teacher quality” trumps all other factors when it comes to successfully educating students? My second period class this year has 43 kids while I only have 34 desks. (I do have some chairs however and right now, no one is sitting on the floor.) But am I the same teacher I am in my 8th period class where there are only 29 students on the roster?

The answer is, I try to be but no, it saddens me that I am not. I believe I am a better teacher in the class where there are less students.

Why? (Like you have to ask.) Because at a certain point the volume becomes unmanageable to individualize and attend to the unique needs of all students. With 29 it’s hard. With 35 it’s threshold. With 43, it’s approaching ludicrous. I get spread too thin and they get less and less and less of me. And with 50, as they cite in the article mentioned above where kids are sitting on the floor, let’s be honest, those kids are being short-changed.

And so is the teacher. And so is the school. And so is the community. And so is our country. Do kids have to sit on the floor for us to recognize that we are heading towards rock bottom?