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Double Click: Threat or Promise?
Technology in Education by John Merrow

HISTORY'S FAILURE: EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY
THE TEACHERS ARE THE STUDENTS
THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

The new technology represents the greatest threat to organized education ever. At the same time, it represents and offers an almost indescribable potential for learning. By "new technology," l mean massive and instant availability of information in different forms: text, video, pictures, and sound. It is available digitally through powerful networks, and powerful computers can interact with the content. As LuYen Chou, an educator and developer of interactive technologies, says, "This change is just as dramatic as the invention of the printing press, and maybe as important as the invention of written language back in the fifth century B.C. in Greece."

Why do I say that technology is a threat? Because it creates the opportunity for cheating - widespread dishonesty in an unparalleled way. Most people know how easy it is now for a student to download something from somewhere else and say: "This is my work." In fact, 77 percent of high-school students say they now use the Internet to research school assignments. Unless teachers work closely with their students, they will not recognize their work, and high school teachers who are responsible for between 120 and 180 students every day cannot possibly know their students or their students' work well enough to be certain of its source.

The other major threat comes from the values driving technology; that is, if technology is used to make schooling more efficient and cheaper, then we're going to drive people away from learning. If technology is harnessed to try to produce a single measure of learning that is both reliable and valid, we'll end up with even more machine-scored exams, and we'll narrow the curriculum to teach only that which can easily be tested.

As to technology's potential, let me give you an example. Say I'm a history teacher, and my class is studying the Civil War. I could say to my class of 20 students: "OK, each one of you is responsible for the life of a single soldier in the Civil War." As a student you could pick - let's just make up a name - Jonathan Logan from the Hartford 108th Regiment. Your job would be to become in effect the world's foremost expert on the life and experiences of Jonathan Logan and the 108th in Hartford. As a teacher, my job could be to keep track of you, to orchestrate the tapestry, to make sure you and every other student in the class sees the whole Civil War. As students dig up information on the Web, it is very difficult to cheat because each student is doing original work - no one else has ever done a life history of Jonathan Logan. They are creating knowledge and may discover stuff that Stephen Ambrose or David McCullough doesn't know. And they're going to keep digging and pushing, because this kind of learning builds up their creative muscles, so to speak.

The technology will allow students to produce multimedia reports. They might find photos, surviving descendants of that family - who knows what else? Perhaps they will discover that Jonathan's brother paid someone to serve in his stead; information will make them curious about that practice. So they will dig into that part of our history, learning more and more. They are no longer mere students but fledgling historians.

LuYen Chou believes the new technology can turn "students" into "scholars." "Scholars don't start with a story. They start with a piece of evidence, or pieces of evidence, from the past or from science or from natural phenomena. And like detectives, they try to create a story that unites those pieces of evidence or data in a compelling way." That, he points out, is the exact opposite of what schools ask students to do. "Textbooks simply tell a story, and then teachers test kids on whether they've learned the story."

The paradigm of school and its accepted practices have to adapt and change, if technology is to reach its potential. While a teacher can be responsible for 120 students, she cannot work closely with 120 scholars. Put another way, technology has already enriched the curriculum and ended the domination of the textbook...but educators haven't caught on to the change, and their time is running out.

HISTORY'S FAILURE: EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY

Technology has been promising to revolutionize education for years, but none of those promises have been kept. Thomas Edison's motion picture projector was introduced in 1896 with the promise that it would make school so attractive that "a big army with swords and guns couldn't keep boys and girls out of it." That didn't happen. Then came "radio schools of the air" in the 1930s. Enthusiasts predicted this new technology would soon "be as common in the classroom as the blackboard." Wrong again.

In the 1950s it was television's turn to promise a revolution in the way children learn. But that promise was also broken.

Earlier educational technologies failed because they were designed to change schools, and schools are among our most change-resistant organizations. Computers and the rest of today's high speed technology, however, were not designed for schools; they've come along and changed everything else - and so schools don't have much choice in the matter, if they are going to be significant in our lives.

Students using computers can design cities, compose their own music, or browse through a library in Japan or London. Not only can students learn more, but by using the computer, they can also create their own knowledge (like my history student learning all about Jonathan Logan). Quite naturally, they will take ownership of what they create and become more interested, more motivated learners.

Most students, unfortunately, don't get to do all those exciting things in school, but that's not because schools don't have computers - they have more than four million of them. Many of the computers in schools are outdated, incapable of running today's complex computer programs. And even the schools that are now buying more powerful machines often don't allow their students to take full advantage of the technology, because the kids know more about it than the adults in the building do. As Linda Roherts, Ed.M.'63, who served as technology advisor to U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley, notes: "Kids come to school today very much in tune with computers, video, the electronic games. They know that world."

Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., chairman and CEO of IBM, is a man with a stake in computer use in schools. IBM has done research showing that the two groups of people who adapt most easily to technology and the Internet are those under 30 and those over 60. "Unfortunately," Gerstner says, "most teachers are in between, so we've got to help them. We owe them an effort to upgrade their skills, to get them comfortable with integrating the technology into what they do in the classroom."

This will not be easy, a computer instructor told me. "In my school, teachers' fears of and unwillingness to experiment with technology were the biggest roadblocks. Most of the teachers, who were between 30 and 45, simply refused to come to clinics or let me into their classes. They had learned methods of teaching over the years and weren't interested in changing."

I've sat in on computer training workshops for teachers and watched them discover the power of technology, with youthful exuberance and palpable joy. Unfortunately, the leader of the workshop told me, they tend to go back to their classrooms and try to lecture kids on what they've learned, instead of allowing kids the same joys of discovery.

Retraining will be a major challenge, it is clear. It's not obvious that the current professional development system is up to the task. If many teachers are afraid or if they believe that their current teaching is good enough, our students are in trouble.

We know that most teachers who have computers aren't using them well. And many teachers don't know as much about computers as their students. Teaching in a wired classroom shouldn't look exactly like teaching 75 years ago.

THE TEACHERS ARE THE STUDENTS

Unfortunately, most schools provide little in the way of help for teachers who are unfamiliar with computers. Fewer than half report having a basic computer class available for teachers. This seems to me to be irresponsible behavior on the part of school boards. Here's an opportunity for boards to set genuine standards and help teachers overcome whatever doubts and fears they may have about technology.

However, formal training isn't essential if teachers see themselves as learners. Jill Livoti had almost no exposure to computers when she was hired to teach at a middle school in Columbia, South Carolina. Her wise principal told her not to be afraid to say, "I need help, I don't know." He said, "Relax and let the kids show you."

Livoti is proud to relate what then happened. "When we started on our first computer project, I announced to the children,'l'm not all that familiar with this, so if you have some ideas, please come to me, and we will work something out."'

Her students reacted just as the principal predicted. "They love the fact that I don't know too much about it, because they love to teach me, and it's fun for me because they really are good teachers. Some kids aren't as strong on the computer as others, and it helps when they see that I'm learning too. It's not as intimidating for them."

Livoti was comfortable with the idea of teacher-as-learner. "I think it's important for children to know that a teacher doesn't know everything," she says. "With technology changing and knowledge expanding, teachers have to understand that there is absolutely nothing wrong with not knowing. What's sinful is not seeking to know or not caring."

Giving up control may be the first step. Yvonne Andres, a teacher in San Diego, expresses it this way: "What I do, really, is model for them. So when we have a new piece of hardware or software, we attack it together. They watch me learn, and they learn problem-solving and troubleshooting skills. Sometimes they learn it first and then teach me, and that's great."

These teachers are modeling excellence. They are unafraid of acknowledging their knowledge gaps, willing to ask for help, and willing to learn. Their behavior undoubtedly contributes to a climate of intellectual safety.

What's more, young people enjoy being challenged, particularly when the work is meaningful. One middle-school student compared two of his classes: "It's sort of like going from the future to the Stone Age. We have all these computers in this class, and it's really fun, because you get to explore on the computers; you know what you're doing half the time, the other half you're just exploring. But when the bell rings, we're back in the Stone Age. You just sit there and work in a book for 30 or 40 minutes, and you're just so bored of it that you want to scream and leave."

THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

Schools with lots of poor children are likely to use technology to control students. "Free or reduced-price lunch" is a common proxy for poverty, and in schools with 71 percent or more students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch, drill is the favored application (35 percent). However, in schools with less than I I percent on free or reduced-price lunch, "research using the Internet" is the most common use of computers (39 percent).

Many schools in poor neighborhoods have computer laboratories equipped with drill-and-practice tutorial programs called integrated learning systems. Students sit in front of these computers and follow the programmed routine, typing in answers to problems like 12 + 4 - 2 =?.

Critics call this the "drill-and-kill" approach, and it would be hard to find a student who would disagree.

But go to many suburban schools and you will see students controlling the technology. They will be on the Internet, or they'll be creating databases and manipulating spreadsheets and computer-aided design (CAD) programs all of which allow them to create. They are able to express themselves and their thoughts and share that information with each other.

On the books, the per pupil spending for technology may be equal, but the programs and their impact couldn't be more different. In other words, middle-class students, who probably have access to technology at home, are given the opportunity to use in ways that will make them controllers of their lives.

Poor children, probably without computers at home, are being denied that power in the one place that could provide it, school. Practices like these serve to divide our society. They also contradict our American idea that public education is the great equalizer, the road to advancement.

An obstacle to using technology in optimum ways is the existing education system's basic structure. Teachers are required to cover so many years, or so many battles, or so many literary genres, and so on. But, at least for older students, mastery of one area kindles the desire to know more. Racing through history or literature (or almost any subject) at a breakneck pace leaves no time for questions and smothers curiosity.

"Deeper" is also more interesting, especially if there's a skilled teacher helping kids make choices. What's more, it is not written in stone that the school year has to be divided into semester - which are a bureaucratic artifact for the convenience of adults. A school could, for example, have a three-week-long class in some specific issue that students would dig into intensely. Again, the technology would offer great opportunities for specialized study.

Today, employers in high-tech industries are looking for people with an appetite for learning and an inner-core sensibility that allows them to find and process facts faster in sophisticated, more efficient ways. Not someone who knows a lot of facts but individuals who know how to dig ever deeper and deeper and turn facts into a coherent story. If our public schools don't produce these individuals, who will?