Computer Program for Schools Translates Into Fun--and Profit

When each 21-minute session in the computer room at Capri Elementary School ends, the children groan in disappointment.

Loudly. Collectively.

It’s not quite rebellion, but it’s not the kind of thing you expect to hear in elementary school classrooms when a lesson ends.

The groans are music to Cecil Hannan’s ears. Hannan, chief executive officer of a fledgling corporation, is testing an instructional computer program at Capri and two other elementary schools in Coronado and Vista. And he believes the children’s dismay means his multimillion-dollar project is on the right track.

Of course, there is other evidence. The Capri school’s computer lab has been visited by educators from the Virgin Islands; Washington, D.C.; Texas; Missouri, and communities in California, to name just a few.

Hannan, who said he spent five years and about $6 million developing the $36,000 software system, believes he will have 40 of them installed in schools around the country when classes begin in September. That number will increase to 100 by January and 1,000 in two years, he predicted.

The San Diego Unified School District, for example, is leasing two of his systems for city elementary schools. Schools in Chicago, New York, Seattle and Texas will use his computer system beginning this fall, Hannan said.

His privately-held firm, Education Systems Technology Corp., is now worth $12 million, Hannan said. In two years, it will be worth $100 million, he predicted.

“With a little bit of luck, I’m going to make a lot of money,” said the former vice chancellor for the San Diego Community College District. “But that’s not my primary motive. My primary motive is to help kids learn.”

Teachers believe that the ESTC system may do that too, thoughsome experts in the field warn not to expect too much from computer-assisted instruction systems like Hannan’s.

The ESTC system divides the reading and math curricula for kindergarten through sixth-graders into small units, teaching and reviewing each concept with splashy graphics, much repetition and endless praise.

Students must demonstrate mastery of a concept before the computer will allow them to go on to a new one. Printouts allow lab technicians--paid by ESTC--to monitor each student’s progress.

In addition to keyboard communication with the computer, students listen on headphones to computer-generated commands--in- cluding short tunes of congratulation when they choose a correct answer--and talk to the unit through a microphone. They can also move images on the screen with a “mouse.”

The result is a highly individualized instructional method that can be tailored to students’ learning speeds and needs--creating, in effect, an electronic one-room schoolhouse.

During a single day at Capri, the software was used by Spanish-speaking, gifted, communicatively handicapped and average students. While a student on Terminal 6 practiced telling time, one on Terminal 8 was counting sheep and cows.

“It’s personal. It’s interactive. They feel they’re directing it, and (they) do,” Hannan said. “You poke the buttons and it does something. And they get the music, the graphics.”

“They like being able to manipulate the computer,” agreed Sheila Johnson, who teaches communicatively handicapped students at Capri. “They like hearing and seeing their names (which are spelled out on the computer screen when students arrive at the lab.) And they love the success they get.”

The programs are designed to supplement instruction students receive from teachers--not replace the teachers. People still provide the best teaching, Hannan and other educators believe, offering human contact that computers cannot.

Sue Coyle, the principal at Capri, said that in the year that her fifth-grade students have been using the system, their reading and math scores on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills have increased an average of nine points on each test.

Coyle is quick to note that there is no way to determine how much of the increase is attributable to the computer system, but she is sure it has contributed.

“I really like what it’s doing for the kids,” she said, standing in the computer lab where her charges were hard at work before the bright screens of most of the 32 terminals.

Pointing to one of the students, she said: “This kid’s going to be on task for 21 minutes. He’s not slowing down. He’s not speeding up. He’s not daydreaming. And that’s very important.”

Hannan believes his system will be especially useful for students who have difficulty learning, and troubled students who might be prone to dropping out. A similar, much older system named Plato is used in the Sweetwater Union High School District in an experimental project that is luring dropouts there back to school.

“There is no reward for being the class clown,” Hannan said. “There is no reward for failing to learn.”

A vice chancellor for the San Diego Community College District for eight years, Hannan founded ESTC with Mesa College English teacher Burl Hogins. He said he has been working on the idea for about five years, although the Sorrento Valley-based corporation founded with the help of venture capitalists is about 18 months old.

Hannan and Hogins wrote the initial curriculum, then hired experts to review it. Then, one hundred teachers they hired divided the curriculum into individual lessons. Screen designers and artists then prepared the millions of frames seen by students on their computer screens.

Although the men may have spent more time and money developing their system than other manufacturers and the system appears to have generated rapidly-growing interest, such computer-assisted instruction projects are not new or unique.

According to Bernie Dodge, associate professor of educational technology at San Diego State University, about a dozen major companies and hundreds of small manufacturers are producing similar products. Computer-assisted instruction is about 20 years old, he said.

Research shows that computer-assisted instruction is no better and no worse for students than receiving the same kind of training from an equally capable teacher, Dodge and other experts said.

“It’s no better than the same teacher who designed the program teaching the same lesson,” said James Rybolt, mathematics technology specialist at the state Teacher Education and Computer Center for San Diego and Imperial Counties. “. . . If a teacher has better instructional ability than the person who designed the program, then it’s not going to be better.”

These kinds of “programs have appealed to administrators who are looking for a quick fix and want a one-time expenditure that will solve the problem” of public demand for better test scores, Dodge said.

At a cost of $36,000 to lease the ESTC system, plus about $70,000 to buy the hardware, the package is fairly costly for a school district the size of the Encinitas Union School District, where the Capri school is located, Rybolt said. Another drawback is that the system does not involve teachers very often, because ESTC provides lab technicians to help students, he said.

But Dodge and Colin MacKinnon, coordinator of computer education programs at United States International University, worry most of all that school systems are becoming locked into using such systems as “electronic workbooks” for drill and practice, instead of teaching students to use computers as learning tools. The future of computer-assisted instruction, they said, will be the latter.

ECST and comparable systems are “going to be a third of what goes on with educational technology,” Dodge said. “It’s an important third. It’s training. It’s mastering measurable skills that can be identified. The other two-thirds is using the computer as a tool to explore the outside world.”

“I would invest,” MacKinnon said. “But I wouldn’t make it a long-term investment. I think you’re going to see it wane.”

Hannan, who said his program does teach higher order thinking skills, sees an expanded future for his product. He plans to begin writing programs for junior high and high school students.

“We’re having a direct impact on children,” he said. “I haven’t had that direct impact since I left the classroom. I can go into those labs and see the lights come on in their eyes, and that’s very rewarding.

“If you can do what you want to do in life and make some money at it, that’s a happy way to go.”