uters. 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 upgrading equipment; the lack of adequate software that dovetails with teachers' curricular needs; the absence of assessments that reflect the complex thinking skills encouraged in technology-rich environments; and the dearth of teacher training.
The OTA study reported that only one-third of K-12 teachers have had even 10 hours of computer training, and much of this has focused on learning about computers, rather than learning how to teach with them. A recent survey of education majors indicated that less than one-third perceived themselves to be prepared to teach with computers. Yet half the states do not require or recommend preparation in technology for their new teacher-education graduates.
“If you go to teacher-education programs around this country,” says Linda Roberts, project director for the OTA's technology studies, “what you find is a faculty and a curriculum that has, at best, given lip service to thinking about technology as a resource.”
But according to James Mecklenburger, president of the Mecklenburger Group, a private consulting firm, the problems with the educational use of technology “are far more political than technological; far more human than electronic.”
In essence, educators have yet to rethink a vision of learning in which technology plays a vital role.
“We haven't built a powerful pedagogy around the use of the technology,” says Pogrow of Arizona. “We haven't done the hard work of designing whole new types of learning environments in a systematic way.”
Contrary to early predictions that technology would somehow replace teachers, research has found that only the most skilled and sophisticated practitioners are able to integrate technology successfully in their classrooms. Indeed, the initial introduction of technology in schools can make the work of teachers harder and more time-consuming.
But it can also be tremendously rewarding. According to Karen Sheingold, research director in the division of applied-measurement research at the Educational Testing Service, technology can change what tea