July 27, 2008
TECHNOS QUARTERLY Fall 1997 Vol. 6 No. 3
Educators on the Edge: Spreading the Wise Use of Technology
By Sybil S. Eakin
When
25 top educational innovators from four continents gathered this spring to
play show and tell, they brought along a wealth of ideas about scaling up
the impact of technology on students, teachers, school systems, nations—and
the whole global society.
Antoinette Kranning's fifth-grade social studies students logged on to the classroom computer recently and found an anonymous email message: “Help me! I'm lost in cyberspace!” They also discovered a few clues in the unsigned message: the writer was born 400 years ago, he was driven from his home, and he founded the British colony that became the smallest state of the United States.
During
a rainy June week, Kranning told a conference of her educational peers how
she conspired with university graduate students miles away to introduce her
class to a telecommunications project called “Mysteries from History.”
It was the grad students who sent the anonymous message and thereby inspired
students in Kranning's rural Indiana elementary school to spend their recesses
scanning history textbooks, atlases, and encyclopedias to identify their enigmatic
correspondent, who turned out to be clergyman Roger Williams, founder of Rhode
Island.
Kranning was one of 25 pioneering educators from North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia who were brought together at Indiana University's Center for Excellence in Education in Bloomington to present and discuss their exemplary technology projects. Countries represented were Bulgaria (1 participant), Canada (2), Chile (1), Estonia (1), France (1), Ireland (1), Israel (2), Netherlands (2), Russia (2), Scotland (1), Singapore (1), and the United States (10).
Two teachers who use student-constructed databases in their work with Inuit children on Canada's remote Baffin Island exchanged observations with a French professor from Boulogne, who uses computer programs to help immigrant preschoolers learn the national language and discover reading and writing. A fifth-grade science teacher from Russia compared notes with an elementary school principal from Connecticut whose fourth-grade suburban students had completed a joint project on marine biology with students from an urban school. Both projects used computers and communications technology. [For more on the 25 educators and their projects, see “World-Class Innovators,”]
LEARNING FROM ONE ANOTHER
The International Invitational Conference on Technology in K–12 Classrooms
was hosted by the Center for Excellence under the leadership of its director,
Howard D. Mehlinger. The center is a research and development organization
whose mission is to explore appropriate applications of technology in education.
Cosponsors and their representatives at the conference were the Citicorp Foundation,
Daria Sheehan, vice president; United Technologies Corporation, Tierney Temple-Fairchild,
manager of education programs; and Best Practices in Education, Peter Moxhay,
president.
Mehlinger
said that the conference sprang from the belief of the organizers “that
we are still in the early stages of the use of technology in schools, that
we have much to learn from one another, and that valuable experience is not
limited to a single nation or region of the world.”
Best Practices, which works with U.S. teachers to find and adapt effective education methods from other countries, calls this workshop “a first step in a long-term international dialogue on education innovation through technology.” The idea is to bring together expert teachers and technology developers, present new examples of successful applications of technology, and create future partnerships among the participants. The first 25 participants were selected by a committee representing the sponsoring organizations. [For more on the sponsors and their work in technology and education, see “Opening America to the World,”].
After attending presentations of each other's projects, the participants moved into brainstorming sessions organized around six topics of concern to many educators these days—topics they had begun thinking about long before they arrived in Bloomington, since the Center for Excellence had posted the questions on a dedicated part of its Web site, where the participants could introduce themselves and begin the debate:
- How can we best scale up successful technology projects to have the greatest possible impact?
- What can we do to ensure that technology is employed in ways consistent with current knowledge about how children learn?
- What can be done to ensure that technology does not increase inequities in education across various sectors of society?
- How can technology be connected to the general process of school reform?
- What needs to be done to prepare teachers to make optimum use of technology in their classrooms?
- How can we develop assessments that demonstrate the impact technology is having on teaching and learning?
REALIZING SUCCESS
On the first question of how to scale up successful projects, the participants
debated at length, both on line and in person, about how to define a successful
technology project. Various participants argued that a successful project
promotes the mental and social growth of children, moves them toward their
positive life goals, and gives them better opportunities to construct knowledge;
is cost-effective and helps achieve curriculum or other goals for students
without demanding inordinate amounts of time and effort from teachers; is
sustainable over time; is replicable; and attracts commercial investment.
At the conference, the group recognized that these criteria were not all compatible. A program that does a marvelous job of leading students to construct knowledge, for instance, might demand inordinate effort from a teacher and fail to attract commercial support. Furthermore, deciding whether a project is successful according to even a few of the criteria requires better evaluation and assessment than is usually available. It was pointed out that the Internet permits the publication—or at least the promotion—of new projects, and in the global marketplace of ideas, the most successful projects may simply be those that attract the most interest.
Observers noted that by many of the participants' suggested criteria, each project presented at the conference could be considered successful. But by the criteria of exportability and adaptability the most successful projects in the short run were likely to be those that turned familiar and readily available technology to innovative new uses.
As
Moxhay of Best Practices said, “It's not the software itself but the
idea behind it that is likely to be adopted first.” He noted that many
of the language-based programs presented at the conference used existing components
to create a tool that people could put together with knowledge they already
have. But with the math programs, “we're just taking the first baby steps.
We need a scripting language that would provide a tool for teaching basic
numerical literacy to very young children and then would carry them all the
way through sophisticated geometry.” Both Moxhay and Mehlinger pointed
to projects such as Harry McMahon's Bubble Dialogue and Rachel Cohen's on
preschool literacy that put commonly available software to new and highly
suggestive uses.
HELPING CHILDREN LEARN
The second question, of employing technology in ways consistent with current
knowledge about how children learn, provoked lively discussion. At first it
appeared that current knowledge about learning varied by country. The participants
eventually concluded, however, that the learning theories developed by thinkers
on the front lines of school reform everywhere were “constructivist”—characterized
by the assumption that learning is a process not of passive reception but
of discovery, assimilation, and construction of knowledge—and that technology
used in the classroom should support this process.
In
fact, virtually every project presented at the conference used technology
to help students construct what they learned. Elena Afrina told about how
she and her colleagues introduce fifth-grade students in Moscow to the fundamentals
of scientific research in the technology-based integrated science course they
developed. With the help of computer programs, these children learn such basic
experimental techniques as measuring and weighing—they create their own
instruments for doing this, then go on to research and use data, graph results,
and create reports and presentations.
Bebe
Shternberg of Tel Aviv showed videotapes of two Israeli ninth graders, who
had always been slow at math, trying to solve a problem that required them
to formulate an algebraic equation. They couldn't do it with paper and pencil,
but with the help of a computer graphing program, “Visualizing Mathematics,”
that presented an immediate image of the graph of any equation they created,
they were led to discuss, debate, hypothesize, and ultimately type in the
correctly formulated equation and solve the problem.
ACHIEVING EQUITY
How to distribute the benefits of technology equitably among all classrooms—the
third question taken up at the conference—was seen to be as much a problem
for Chile as for Russia, for Scotland as for the United States. The participants
learned that each country has its own policies. Some forbid commercial donations
of equipment or software, while others encourage and depend on the support
of private business.
Several
participants described projects that were designed to spread the benefits
of technology equitably within a school or throughout a system. Gail Copland,
of Paisley, Scotland, reported that her government has national guidelines
for learning through the use of information technology. She described how
she developed a plan for the 600 students in her school to meet the standard
despite the limitations of a Victorian building with only one electric outlet
in each classroom and very few computers, all of them antique.
Lucio
Rehbein, director of Project Links in Chile, described his government's program
to add learning resources, especially educational computing equipment, to
every school in the country. By 2000, all secondary schools and 50 percent
of the primary schools will be covered. And Canada's “Computer Supported
Intentional Learning Environment” (CSILE) program, described by Sandy
McAuley, a teacher and program consultant on remote Baffin Island, Northwest
Territories, has similarly brought new learning opportunities to Inuit children
and support to their teachers. The program not only has sped up the children's
acquisition of English but also has helped them to test hypotheses and theories
about the history of their own people and to deal with such community crises
as suicide. [For more on the CSILE program as used in the United States by
Schools for Thought, see Betty Revercomb, “Jacob's Tale Given a New Twist,”
page 34 of TECHNOS Quarterly, 6:3.]
TRIGGERING REFORM
In considering question 4, concerning school reform, the participants agreed
that modern technology can be a fundamental vehicle for changing classroom
management, teaching, and learning. Virtually every presenter emphasized that
using a technology project requires the teacher to undergo a transformation
from “sage on the stage to guide on the side.” Collaborative learning,
inquiry, and discovery were the bases of most of the presenters' projects,
which require students to formulate questions and hypotheses, search for information
to answer and test these questions, and generate reasoned answers to the problems
they have set for themselves.
The potential of technology to trigger reform and improvement in schools is a key issue for conference cosponsor Citicorp Foundation. Sheehan, the foundation's vice president, explained: “A recent focus of the foundation's support has been technology in K–12 education. We see technology as an element that can trigger school reform.” She pointed out that when technology is used in classrooms, it often changes the dynamics: “The teacher's role changes, and students become more responsible.” In visiting wired classrooms, she said, “we've seen turned-on kids and cooperative learning. We've seen how technology can encourage reading and writing.” And, she added, there are “a whole lot of residual benefits.”
TEACHING THE TEACHERS
Question 5, on training teachers to use technology—as well as overcoming
their initial resistance to its use—covers a universal problem. Many
participants described successful initiatives that have helped educators integrate
technology into their classrooms and use it effectively and even imaginatively.
Temple-Fairchild, of United Technologies, called this topic the crux of the
issue, adding that “it was great learning about the different strategies
used all over the globe to train teachers.”
Rehbein
said that in Chile he has seen trained teachers progress from acceptance to
adaptation to innovation. In Orlando, Florida, Chris Carey takes Rover, her
special portable computer, into the district's classrooms to train both teachers
and their students to use computers and software. Together, teachers and students
move on to apply what they have learned to classroom projects. Several participants
underlined the importance of first determining which of a teacher's responsibilities
or tasks the technology could support and then showing how it can make these
tasks easier or more efficient.
ASSESSING CHANGES
Agreement was general that assessment—the subject of question 6—is
still the weakest link in technology implementation. Many participants stated
that good technology-based programs can fundamentally change the way students
learn and think but that few instruments are available to measure this impact.
They agreed that qualitative assessments are more appropriate for measuring
the impact of technology than the more common quantitative tests of achievement.
A
few participants presented projects in which technology is used as part of
the assessment of learning. Julia Husen, a teacher of high school Russian
in Illinois, developed a program in which her students are videotaped speaking
spontaneously while using the vocabulary and grammar they have learned. Students
use the tapes to assess their own fluency, and the teacher views them to gauge
progress and achievement.
AU REVOIR AND GOODBYE
On the fourth day of the five-day conference, the Center for Excellence was
opened by invitation to some 100 technology-using educators from Indiana who
had the unique opportunity of meeting the 25 participants, viewing their presentations,
and participating in the discussions. The next morning the participants gathered
to develop a final consensus on the discussion topics. Then they took leave
of each other to return to their respective countries, but not without exchanging
email and URL addresses and making plans to keep in touch.
World-Class Innovators
Among many innovative projects exhibited at this spring's International Invitational Conference on Technology in K–12 Classrooms were Bubble Dialogue from Ireland, Project Links from Chile, a preschool literacy program from France, and an integrated science curriculum from Russia.
Harry McMahon, head of the School of Education at the University of Ulster, presented Bubble Dialogue, a project that he invented with William O'Neill. The concept is simple. First, with HyperCard and other multimedia software, users scan graphics, such as children's drawings, photographs, and book illustrations, into the program. Then they add bubbles, or empty comic strip balloons, into which they can insert spoken or written dialogue.
The program creates a natural distancing effect, because it is the depicted character, not the user, who does the talking or thinking. This ambiance thus permits the exploration of controversial topics. Teachers or therapists can set up the program to be as directed or as open-ended as they think appropriate, and they can discuss the kinds of words and thoughts that would be best to include.
McMahon said he and his partner have given the program to many persons around the world who have approached them with ideas for its application. He said the applications fall into three main categories: the development of literacy, constructivist learning, and personal and social development and therapy. It can be used to help resolve civil conflicts like those between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland and Jews and Palestinians in Israel.
Lucio Rehbein, director of Project Links (Proyecto Enlaces) at the Educational Computing Center, University of La Frontera, presented an account of his “unique experiment” aimed at bringing greater equity to Chile's schools. Project Links began in 1993 as a pilot program to install communications hardware and software in 12 schools in Chile's sparsely populated southern region and to train teachers to use them. The pilot was so successful that the government adopted it as a national program, with similar projects at six other universities. The project now links 1,300 schools, with 900 to be added in the next two years. “Our program is a Trojan horse,” Rehbein told the conference. “It slips into schools and forces them to become more adaptable and flexible, to adopt modern school reforms.”
Rachel
Cohen discussed her project in preschool literacy, which began with classes
among poor, non-French-speaking immigrant children in Paris. Cohen, who believes
that “no child is to be considered as a candidate for school failure
or illiteracy, provided the right environment and education are offered at
a very young age,” worked with computer scientists, psychologists, and
classroom teachers to create software that permits these children to discover
reading and writing and to learn French.
Elena Afrina, a teacher of science at a junior-senior high school in Moscow, told the conference about the integrated science curriculum she developed for students in fifth grade and up. It makes creative use of a variety of technologies to encourage students to understand and use fundamental techniques of scientific research.
Here is a complete list of the 25 participants and the projects they exhibited at the International Conference on Technology in K–12 Classrooms, along with their email addresses:
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Elena Afrina An integrated introductory science course using computers, electronic mail, and teleconferencing. Olga Agapova ChemQuest, a two-semester high school chemistry curriculum, uses the computer to reconceptualize the learning environment. Karen Bailey A fourth-grade science field study project using videoconferencing and multimedia presentations. David Becker Models are devised for overcoming the Internet language problem in a non-English-speaking country. Chris Carey In a three-phase program, teachers with little technological savvy are shown how to infuse technology into their curricula. Nicole Cirillo “The Chelsea Bank” workplace simulation developed by Classroom, Inc., uses computers to put students in business decision-making roles. Rachel Cohen Computers are the tools of choice in this program to bring literacy to all young children in France. Gail Copland To improve educational quality, this school uses a variety of new technologies that are accessible to all pupils. Edward Friedman Applications of the Internet in science education, including collaborative projects, online public data resources, and specialized data from research centers. Frans van Galen A computer-based subtraction-addition curriculum using the “realistic math” approach, Holland's version of constructivism. Dwight Harris A project-based learning program for grades 3-5 using content-free software and older students as teachers. Julia Husen Through video assessment, both students and teachers evaluate students' progress in learning to speak Russian. Antoinette Kranning Fifth-grade social studies students link to a university technology class in a “Mysteries from History” learning program. |
Sandy McAuley Inuit students in the Arctic expand their learning resources using “Computer Supported Intentional Learning Environment” (CSILE) software. Harry McMahon A simple and fun computer-based tool called Bubble Dialogue has worldwide applications. Ong Lay Hong The Student's and Teacher's Workbench includes multimedia components to help teachers prepare and students learn a content-rich science curriculum. Mihkel Pilv “Miksike,” an interdisplinary study program for elementary students roughly translated “Why 'n' Not,” is integrated with Web technology. Lucio Rehbein Chile puts computer labs and email connections in an increasing number of schools and provides teacher training and technical support. Betty Revercomb The Schools for Thought model developed at Vanderbilt University uses technology to transform classrooms into learning communities. [See Revercomb's article, “Jacob's Tale Given a New Twist: Community and Purpose,” page 34.]Valerii Ryzhik Using the TI-92 graphing calculator and the computer program Derive, students learn not only about the roots of equations but also about the roots of thinking. Jenny Sendova In Geomland, a computer environment lab, teachers encourage students to behave like working mathematicians. Beba Shternberg An examination of the changes computers have caused in a mathematics curriculum. Philip van Tienhoven Dutch students in grades 10-12 take a virtual trip to Paris on the Internet. Elizabeth Tumblin Inuit students in the Arctic expand their learning resources using “Computer Supported Intentional Learning Environment” (CSILE) software. Alex Ushakov ChemQuest, a two-semester high school chemistry curriculum uses the computer to reconceptualize the learning environment. |
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In Rachel Cohen's classroom in Boulogne, three- to five-year-old immigrant
children learn to read, write, and speak French thanks to software Cohen developed.
Sybil Eakin is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Bloomington, Indiana.
Opening America to the World
Globalization of trade, finance, national economies, media, mass culture, and political ideas is a widely recognized fact of life at the end of the 20th century. Many observers would claim, however, that the way teachers teach and students learn in the United States remains a strictly local enterprise, untouched by the fast-shrinking world beyond the nation's borders.
But not any longer, if a small not-for-profit organization in Portland, Maine, called Best Practices in Education (BPE) has its way. A cosponsor of the International Conference on Technology in K–12 Classrooms, BPE was founded in 1995 to find effective educational methods from other countries to adapt and apply in U.S. schools. Since then it has helped teachers in Arkansas, Denver, and New York learn from those in Western Australia, Russia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, and the Netherlands.
Best Practices in Education has received support from Intel Foundation to create special Web pages with detailed descriptions of the practices of the 25 participants in the conference on classroom use of technology. The pages, to be completed this fall, will be accessible at www.bestpraceduc.org.
A LACK OF RIGOR
BPE's president, Peter Moxhay, was trained in theoretical particle physics,
visited Russia and studied the language, and has high respect for Russian
physicists and Russian teaching methods. He says that U.S. education excels
in certain areas—“in biology, for example, we're not to be touched
anywhere”—but that few American students in the hard sciences and
math are exposed to the rigorous intellectual discipline that characterizes
the teaching of the subjects in Russia.
With another admirer of things Russian, John Kiser, president of Kiser Research, Inc., and chairman of the William and Mary Greve Foundation, Moxhay organized a workshop at Columbia University in 1994 for Russian and U.S. math teachers. The following year, when BPE was incorporated with Greve Foundation support, Moxhay became its president.
Through
its program “Initiatives in Math, Science, and Literacy,” BPE has
continued the U.S.-Russian cross-fertilization process. At the Arkansas School
of Mathematics and Sciences, which was founded a few years ago with help from
Hillary Rodham Clinton, BPE has underwritten new geometry and physics courses
fusing the best of the two countries' approaches. Some features of the geometry
course have been picked up by Little Rock Central High School and the Arkansas
Department of Education. In Denver, BPE helped develop software for use in
a literacy program in pre-kindergarten through second-grade classes. The project,
“Tools of the Mind,” is based on the work of Russian psychologist
Lev Vygotsky and grew out of an Internet exchange between U.S. and Russian
psychology professors.
DISCOVERY GRANTS
BPE also makes Discovery grants of $2,500 to individual U.S. teachers who
have identified promising teaching practices in other countries and want to
evaluate or adapt them for use in their own classrooms. The program has enabled
a Maine teacher to examine why Scandinavian countries teach foreign languages
so effectively. One reason, it turned out, is that they use an approach developed
in Western Australia. It also allowed a Bronx high school teacher to spend
a week in the Czech Republic observing seniors undergoing an oral exam to
demonstrate their proficiency in four subjects—a concept the teacher
adapted for her school. A New York primary grade teacher was sent to the Netherlands
to learn about new ways of teaching math.
Each of the BPE-supported initiatives has triggered a ripple effect, and Moxhay believes the same will happen with the international conference at Indiana University. Teachers across the country will be able to consult BPE's Web site to learn about the 25 premier teachers and their practices, as well as about the Discovery grants.
Moxhay admits that he was a late convert to belief in the efficacy of using high technology in education. “I came into it not as a geek and enthusiast but as a skeptic,” he says. But he soon realized that technology provides the most practical medium for the international exchange that his organization encourages: “It's ideal for collaboration. In addition, it has the appeal of the new—it focuses people's attention. And it's linked with reforms and open to new ideas. It's a conduit for new directions in teaching.”
THE COSPONSORS
Howard D. Mehlinger, director of the Center for Excellence in Education (CEE),
which hosted the conference, founded the nonprofit Mid-America Center, Inc.
(MAC), 25 years ago to encourage a more global perspective among students.
In recent years MAC has also focused on broadening educators' perspectives
through an international sharing of ideas and practices. When Mehlinger and
Moxhay realized that the goals of MAC and BPE meshed nicely, they decided
to organize the international conference in collaboration with CEE.
Tierney Temple-Fairchild, Ph.D., manager of education programs for conference cosponsor United Technologies Corporation (UTC), says that UTC “has a presence in education through our sponsorship of the Globe Program for Junior Achievement International, which supports exchanges among students around the world to learn and practice international trade.” She feels that conferences such as the one at CEE “help all of us think out of our boxes” and see common problems in new and creative ways.
Cosponsor Citicorp Foundation's vice president Daria Sheehan says it's “good business” for Citicorp to support the conference: “Because technology is so much a part of our lives today and in the future, it's important that students have opportunities to use it intelligently—to find, use, and synthesize information and to communicate ideas.”
As for Best Practices, its goals for 1997, in addition to sponsoring the summer conference, have included reducing its reliance on the Greve Foundation by gaining financial support from other foundations and corporations. “What we can hope for now is to raise some eyebrows and open people up to the possibilities,” Moxhay says. “We can provide a few good examples and set the stage for changes that can occur over a generation. It's a start.”
Best Practices' board chairman, John W. Rosenblum, head of the Jepson School for Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond, says: “It's a simple idea—but an exciting and powerful idea.” All it requires, he suggests, is an open mind—“what BPE is doing reflects what business has learned. It's thinking outside the box of traditional definitions” of how teachers exchange ideas.
Collaboration often has been limited by school budgets and a perception that cultural differences make transferring ideas from one country to another too complicated—a notion Rosenblum says is outdated. “There are so many examples where businesses have learned that there wasn't a lot of adaptation required and that it's easy to accomplish,” Rosenblum says. “In business it works, and in the world of education it can work. The concept is powerful enough in its potential to try it.”
Peter
Moxhay, president of BPE.
“U.S. education excels in certain areas, but few American students in the hard sciences and math are exposed to the rigorous intellectual discipline that characterizes the teaching of the subjects in Russia.”
“What we can hope for now is to raise some eyebrows and open people up to the possibilities.”
—Peter Moxhay
Computer illustration by Brenda Grannan, Grannan Graphic Design L.T.D.