Rationale and Target Group
Rationale
A key competency goal for North Carolina (NC) students according to the NC Department of Public Instruction is to ensure that learners demonstrate knowledge and skills in the use of the computer and other technologies. Among some of the objectives to meet that goal are the following:
- All students should "practice and refine knowledge and skills in keyboarding, word processing, desktop publishing, spreadsheets, databases, multimedia and telecommunications in preparing classroom assignments and projects."
- Students should also be able to select and use appropriate technology tools to efficiently collect, analyze, and display data. (www.dpi.state.nc.us,2008)
In addtion, among some of the local school board's recommendations were:
- Explore new technologies that promote learning.
- Explore an atmosphere of technological collaboration that enhances and supports learning opportunities.
Teachers felt as though they were not meeting both the State and local guidelines for teaching computer applications. According to one computer applications teacher, more than 50% of the class were performing at a failing level. The teachers felt one of the main reasons that students were performing so poorly was due to the high level of computer activity that was outside the scope of the class. Teachers noticed that many students' were engaging in behavior that prevented them from paying attention and learning the material required to pass the test.
Individual class data
The racial makeup of the class being studied is as follows:
60% African American
30% Hispanic
10% White
The socioeconomic makeup of the class mirrors that of the school. Almost half of the students are from low-income households. Although this program is designed to keep students on task, a majority of the students do not have computers in their homes. The challenge for these students is to ensure they will be able to learn the computer applications concepts without having access to computers outside of the time spent in school.
Target Audience
The target audience for this project was for all those who are teaching or taking the computer classes for the high schools in the school district. This is a pilot program for the technology department to see how this would work for all computer labs located in the high schools. There are six high schools and each one has at least three computer labs. Two of the other high schools are located in affluent neighborhoods and approximatley five computer labs exist in their schools. One may expect there to be a higher probability of affluent students penetrating filters and engaging in authorized use of administrative rights due to their greater opportunity for exposure to technology. However, this behavior proved to be a persistent problem even in the school where this research is taking place, which serves a significant lower income population.
Other factors considered for the target population are students who might be engaged in other distracting activities such as listening to an MP3 player or talking outloud in class. These activities were taken into consideration for this project.