Profiles in Technology
Today's students can learn Russian via satellite from an instructor in another state, plumb the depths of the Mediterranean Sea while sitting in a classroom in rural Maine, tap into a university's library system without leaving their school, or engage in a sophisticated laboratory experiment simulated on a computer screen.
Their teachers can “talk” to colleagues across town or across the state by plugging into a computer network. Administrators can call up financial data or student information at the flick of a switch. And parents can pick up the telephone to receive recorded messages about their children's homework.
More than ever, technology has the potential to reshape instruction and support active learning. Rich examples of such uses abound in hundreds of schools nationwide. In some respects, the vistas appear limitless.
But the high-technology transformation of the schools that many predicted in the early 1980s has not materialized. For most students—and most teachers—the use of technology in education remains elusive.
As John Gibbons, director of the federal Office of Technology Assessment, noted toward the end of the decade: “Schools have acquired computers rapidly ..., but most elements of the instructional process remain the same.”
“This contrasts sharply,” he added, “with other sectors of society, where technology has changed the way business is transacted, medical problems are analyzed, and products are produced.”
Technology, notes Stanley Pogrow, associate professor of education at the University of Arizona, more sarcastically, “is going into schools like driver education; it's another nice piece that we need to be doing to show the community that we're sort of with it.” But the rush to buy equipment has, in many respects, outpaced any careful thinking about its use.
The question now is not whether technology will end up in schools, but how to integrate it with teaching and learning in ways that make sense.
Over 91 percent of all school districts already have at least some computers. The current ratio of students to computers is approximately 20:1.
Videocassette recorders have become commonplace, available in about 94 percent of schools nationwide. Distance-learning projects are underway or being planned in virtually every state. More than 18 percent of school districts have satellite dishes. And tens of thousands of schools are connected to cable.
But if the total number of telephones, faxes, televisions, computers, and other forms of communications technology now available in schools were computed nationwide, claims Shelly Weinstein, president of the EdSat Institute, “for the most part, the school sector would compare to that of a developing nation.”
What equipment exists is distributed unevenly: with technology less available to minority students, those who speak limited English, and children from poor communities.
In the vast majority of schools, there are still not enough computers to make them a central element of instruction. Not all students use computers, notes the 1988 OTA report, Power On: New Tools for Teaching and Learning. And those who do spend an average of little more than one hour per week on the machines, or only 4 percent of their instructional time.
In the absence of solid research, widely disseminated models, and clear guidance, individual states, districts, schools, and teachers are being forced to explore the uses of technology on their own: resulting in a mishmash of largely unrelated activities, often with no clear direction or purpose.
Funds continue to flow without any agreement on whether technology should be used for enrichment or as a core component of instruction; whether it should serve as a tutor or as a tool; whether students need to know about technology for its own sake or as a vehicle for conducting research, computing, and communicating with others.
According to observers, obstacles to the widespread use of technology in schools remain much the same as at the beginning of the 1980s. These include the high costs of purchasing, maintaining, and upgr