Which Promotes More Frequent Use: High Computer Density in Labs or Convenience of Classroom Location? How many computers in a classroom provide sufficient convenience and independence for teachers that those advantages outweigh the value of the larger number of computers in a
shared computer lab? Under which condition is frequent computer use more likely to take place—where there are many computers available in a lab or where there are a reasonable number in a classroom? Table 5 provides
some interesting contrasts. It shows that for secondary computer-assigning teachers in particular, both for teachers of academic subjects and other subjects that don't require computer use, a higher proportion of teachers
with five or more computers in their room give frequent computer assignments than those whose students use computer labs with 15 or more computers in them—three times as many computers.
FIGURE 5: FREQUENT COMPUTER USE OCCURS MORE OFTEN
WITH 5-8 COMPUTERS IN A CLASSROOM THAN WITH 15-30 IN A COMPUTER LAB
(DATA FOR SECONDARY ACADEMIC TEACHERS)
TABLE 5: PERCENT OF COMPUTER-ASSIGNING TEACHERS WHO
ASSIGN COMPUTER WORK FREQUENTLY, BY SUBJECT & LEVEL,
BY NUMBER OF COMPUTERS IN CLASSROOM AND LAB
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Thus, secondary teachers with just five or six computers in their classroom are much more likely to use computers on a regular basis than are teachers of the same subjects who make use of computer labs with substantially more computers in them but who have few, if any, computers in their own room. This may seem counter-intuitive since being in a lab with three times as many computers as these classrooms would seem to give individual students more opportunities to use computers. However, it seems that the computer's value in most secondary classes is not for concentrated whole-class use on a scheduled basis, but as a resource available for particular groups of students when needed to find, analyze, or communicate information.
This analysis does not take into account the economies that centralized placement of computers involve. In other words, if all of a school's two dozen academic subject-matter teachers had five computers in their classrooms instead of sharing 30 computers in a computer lab, four times as many computers in total would be required. Instead, what we are examining is the relative likelihood that students will receive a substantial computer experience during instructional time. If centralized placement of computers does not result in students getting a substantial experience with using computers to pursue academic goals, such aggregation may not be efficient. We found that particularly in secondary schools with their short-duration class periods, students are much more likely to have a frequent computer experience when it occurs primarily in the teacher's own classroom in which a 1:4 ratio of computers to students prevails.
COMPUTER PLATFORMS USED BY STUDENTS
During most the 1990's, American schools followed the pattern of American businesses and families of moving more of students' computer work onto computers running the Windows operating system. This pattern was not uniform, however, and certain types of teachers have their students use computers with the Apple Macintosh operating system. Although the two operating systems have strong similarities, they do differ in the number of discrete instructional products available, in the learning time required to become expert in their use, and in other ways.
Table 6 and Figure 6 shows the primary computer platform employed by the computer-assigning teachers in the study. Windows' dominance is clearest among secondary computer education teachers, business education teachers, and vocational education teachers—the groups that are most likely to assign computer work to students frequently and who have access to higher ratios of computers to students. Macintosh computers are used by almost three-quarters of fine arts teachers, and that platform also dominates the arrangements where students of "miscellaneous-subjects" academic teachers use computers in secondary schools. Among elementary school teachers, those who teach specialized programs, rather than a self-contained class, are more likely than are other elementary computer-assigning teachers to have their students use Macintosh computers.
FIGURE 6: PLATFORM USED BY STUDENTS
IN ROOM(S) WHERE THEY USUALLY USE COMPUTERS
TABLE 6: PERCENT OF COMPUTER-ASSIGNING TEACHERS WHOSE
STUDENTS USE EACH COMPUTER OPERATING SYSTEM
PLATFORM IN THE SCHOOL ROOM WHERE THEY USE COMPUTERS
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