July 20, 2008
TECHNOS QUARTERLY Spring 2001 Vol. 10 No. 1
Colloquium:
A Technology Backlash? It's Time for a Mid-Course Review
by Laurence Peters
A
recent report titled “Fool’s Gold: A Critical Look at Computers
in Childhood,” authored by the College Park, Maryland–based Alliance
for Childhood, calls for a nationwide halt to the introduction of computers
in elementary classrooms and in early childhood programs—with the exception
of computers to aid children with learning disabilities. Endorsed by 82 education
experts, including Larry Cuban of Stanford University and Diane Ravitch, former
assistant secretary of education, the report should give the educational technology
advocates pause. It comes at a time when others are questioning the escalating
costs of educational technology and wondering out loud what difference it
is making to student achievement.
It is unclear whether this means that a backlash against further spending on technology will occur once people realize that the new faster networks that schools are purchasing with the help of the $2.5 billion dollar E-Rate program will continue to draw resources to support and maintain. Today’s mix of technology skeptics—including the early childhood specialists who feel that sensitive brain and social development may be inhibited by an over-reliance on the use of computers—who signed onto the “Fool’s Gold” report are likely to be joined in future years by taxpayers who understand that the appetite for more sophisticated hardware and software may be outrunning the schools’ capacity to manage it effectively. They, like others, are reading the reports about the relative neglect of professional development for teachers and are perplexed as to why educational experts are decrying the availability of high-quality electronic curricula.
Technology boosters will need to keep in mind at least three critical factors that prevent an increasingly skeptical group of academics and education experts from fully embracing their optimistic visions for school improvement. First, much educational software is poor to mediocre, particularly as you go up the grade levels. Second, schools are still not investing anywhere near the recommended 30 percent of their budgets in professional development. A third troubling issue concerns the fact that so much equipment is broken at any one time and there is so little capacity (unlike in the business sector) to repair the equipment in a timely fashion, without resorting to student help or donated teacher time.
It may well be time for the industry vendors to leave the cocoons of their trade shows where the bright, shiny visions of the 21st-Century classroom are on display and visit some of the less glamorous 20th-Century classroom realities. These are the classrooms where teachers are daily faced with uncomfortable choices: Who is allowed to spend time on the four computers in the room? When a computer breaks down, as it invariably does, am I going to continue to moan and groan to my principal? or will I take time away from preparing for my next class to troubleshoot it?
We never seem to arrive at a time in educational technology where we can take a look at where we are and assess what we need to do. As each year new budgets are prepared and new compromises made between purchasing the latest state-of-the-art equipment and making sure what we have works—there seems less opportunity to become proactive. The voices raised in the “Fool’s Gold” report require something different than our normal laissez-faire set of attitudes. We cannot afford to let the market sort out the problem in this instance. To break the treadmill thinking, I suggest we need a national conversation that goes on in at least three distinct but inter-related levels: national, state, and community.
- National Level. A representative group of state governors, their
technology advisors, and federal officials focus on the role of research.
The question is not just whether the investment in laptops for all students
or fiber-optic cable makes a difference in student test scores—we should
also ask, how does the computer or application in question make a difference
in student learning? And can that value be represented in either quantitative
or qualitative terms?
- State Level. A governor takes the initiative to establish a state
technology advisory group charged with coming up with a sustainable model
for school technology. The governor would, of course, have argued that the
current patchwork of funding using everything from lottery and bond proceeds
combined with annual appropriations is leading toward chaos. In looking
for a more sustainable model, one consistent with the multimillion dollar
investments needed to deliver wider bandwidth for high-speed voice, video,
and data applications, the governor’s advisors might want to examine
the lessons to be drawn from various digital or “smart communities.”
The advisory group might be charged with thinking about what sort of incentives
the state could offer to businesses to help create such communities.
- Community Level. A neutral body—a local education or children’s group, affiliated perhaps with a university—convenes a technology advisory group and asks to hear from key parties in the technology discussion. School administrators, teachers, parents, vendors, and telecommunication companies could discuss the situation and offer suggestions to improve it. All the data could be displayed on what percentage of the school budget goes to technology and how those costs are divided up among hardware, software, networking, and professional development. Then, a serious discussion about two issues, accountability and sustainability, must take place. How can we tell what is working and therefore what is worth spending funds on? and what is not working and what we need to do about it?
Make It Work
The most likely way such a set of conversations might begin is if a particular state initiates the discussion, perhaps developing some incentives for its school districts to think of a bold new way that they can make these costly technology investments really work for all students. Or maybe the pretext is the call for action around the digital divide, an issue that goes to the heart of the difference between our laissez-faire philosophy and a more planful approach.
In the last analysis, those who talk about “Fool’s Gold” require more of an answer than the typical one—that technology represents the future we all will have to live and that the other side represents a Luddite response. We have to admit that the future is still very much up for grabs and that our schools cannot invent that future by themselves. They need a supportive and informed public to help them—and an urgent set of new conversations is needed before a wider backlash sets in.
Illustration by Dan Cooper for TECHNOS.
Click here to access “Bridging the New Digital Divide: Lessons from Across the Atlantic” by Laurence Peters from TECHNOS Quarterly Vol. 9, No. 2.