Technology in Secure Classrooms

Welcome back to Sunday Morning Coffee, or thanks for sharing your Sunday Morning Coffee with me for the first time. Either way, I’m so happy you’re here.

To talk about one of my favorite topics…education in secure settings.

What classroom in today’s America doesn’t include technology? Ones in prisons, jails, detention centers, and some disciplinary alternative campuses, that’s where. Why is this significant, you may ask? Thanks for asking! I’m so glad someone did, so that I have my blog content for the week, and so that we can lay to rest the arguments against using technology in these classrooms once and for all.

Why is tech important for these forgotten students? Have you applied for a job in the past decade? Applied for insurance? Searched for a job? Tried to apply for a driver’s license, register a new vehicle, change states and need new tags (ok, that one’s really personal for me. I’ll get off that rant now)? Made a doctor’s appointment? Filed a claim of any sort? Ordered your groceries on line? Bought anything from Amazon? Found your soul mate via the internet (Ok. That one may be personal for some of you, so don’t answer)? Bottom line…there’s very little that doesn’t require some aspect of being ‘on line’ nowadays.

Imagine you’ve been incarcerated for 30 years or more. You’ve never seen a smart device (unless your celly smuggles one in, then you want to stay as far away from it as possible). You get to use a desktop computer in the law library, if you’re lucky, but it, of course, isn’t connected to the internet. Then you get to go home. You exit the facility in DOC-issued clothing with $20-$50 in your pocket, and if you’re lucky, family to pick you up. If you aren’t that lucky, you have to figure out your next move on your own. You’re on paper (that’s parole for you lay-readers), and part of your conditions are to get a job as quickly as possible. You went to prison when a cell phone was a block of plastic with push buttons and an antenna. IBM introduced the first ‘smart’ phone that year, at the cool price of $1,100, but you were already in a cool cell, so you missed the whole cell phone revolution. And the world wide web as we now experience it.

Now imagine trying to navigate all of the ‘on-line’ features of our lives, the necessary and not-so-necessary ones, having not experienced the gradual introduction of the skills needed for that navigation. Daunting doesn’t even cover it.

So why do secure settings prohibit the internet for students? No one wants an individual convicted of a crime to be running their drug business via a DOC-approved device from their cell. Or emailing a victim or a victim’s family. Or still heading up their cartel remotely. Or threatening, bribing, or coercing public officials or witnesses…you get the picture. These are all legitimate concerns, and they still happen, even without the state’s consent through contraband, and that’s bad enough without adding that criminal behavior is allowed to continue via an agency’s handing over the tools willingly. I get all that.

So where’s the sweet spot? There are options. As educators, we can prepare our students for life in the 21st century world of technology and still maintain a safe and secure environment. Internet-connected computer labs (desktops or laptops) where student activity is monitored is one solution. Your IT department can track where everyone is or has gone. In one program my team implemented, each student was paired with a doctoral student from MIT, and via Zoom, the ‘inside’ students were monitored by an ‘outside’ student (read about that here if you want). There are also secure solutions that mimic the internet but work more like an intranet, or a VPN, so that students are navigating content but not on the internet. I've been using the APDS tablets in various settings since 2014, and we’ve never once had a student hack their way out. No one’s ever used their tablet as a weapon, either, just in case you’re making THAT argument in your head.

But what we were able to do with those tablets is teach people how to fill out on-line forms, take college classes, earn their GED, obtain industry certifications, learn all kinds of skills like how to use drop-down boxes, type in a text box, click, drag, etc. We taught them how to message (their teachers and attorneys, not each other), how to use a virtual classroom platform, and what the on-line etiquette is for both. We let them be creators and posted their work. We let them meet thought leaders across the world through live discussion forums. We used Project Based Learning to allow our students to solve community problems, doing the research via their device then presenting their project to community leaders. We used the tablets in a flipped-classroom model and for blended learning. We took students on virtual field trips. We connected special education students with their service providers and allowed them to join their classroom virtually when they found themselves in restricted housing. We published our own podcast and digitized our newspaper.

All without any breaches of security.

If you want to read about some of these activities, you can find an article here and a NPR broadcast here.

If you want to check out APDS, you can do that here. I’m biased, you should know, because they’ve been excellent partners (responsive, creative, knowledgeable), and they’re the only solution I’ve found that provides absolutely secure access at no cost to students. Other companies charge the inmate by the minute to use a device. APDS is also education-based. They’re a public-benefit company that serves incarcerated students with passion. I’ve used them in juvenile and adult settings, all with great success, and I continue to work for and with them when I can.

The use of smart boards is another technology tool that can be used with very little security risk. Once, I connected incarcerated students to a classroom at Oxford University (yes, the one in England), where a professor from UCLA led both classrooms in a poetry workshop while Oxford students played in a string quartet as background music. We did that via a smart board. Here’s what that looked like.

The possibilities are only limited by our imaginations as teachers, and as leaders in correctional institutions, we have to broaden our minds and open our doors to technology without using the “safety and security” mantra as a way to keep people further bound from life in the free world. We reduce recidivism with each tool we give folks to be successful once they leave us.

You know the sales-pitch is coming, but seriously…this is the work I live for. :) If you want ideas or need help connecting to people with ideas, or want someone to design, implement, and launch ideas, I’m your girl. Contact me and my team here.

Enjoy your morning beverage my friends. It’s cold and rainy here in the Mid-Atlantic. I just got home from a few days in Vermont, enjoying the beginning of fall foliage leaf-peeping. It’s a beautiful world, isn’t it?

Tallyho!