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Digital EducationCan technology replace classroom teachers?

Digital technology is becoming increasingly

commonplace in K-12 education, and many

researchers argue that it will save money and

transform schools into more effective institutions.

But other experts contend that the evidence so far is slim on ex-

actly what computers can accomplish in the classroom. The domi-

nance of standardized testing means digital technologies must raise

students test scores to levels administrators and policymakers

deem significant. But computer-based learning may not be well

suited for that task, and further efforts to computerize education

may require schools to shift away from standardized testing,

experts say. Until now, most successful computer-learning initiatives

have required specialized training for teachers. But experts say

developing technology that will be easy for nonspecialists to use

remains a challenge. Meanwhile, despite the debate over theeffectiveness of computerized education, all-online K-12 schools are

proliferating nationwide, and enrollment in online courses is soaring.

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THE ISSUES ..................1003BACKGROUND ..............1010

CHRONOLOGY..............1011

AT ISSUE......................1017

CURRENT SITUATION ......1018

OUTLOOK ....................1019

BIBLIOGRAPHY..............1022

THE NEXT STEP ............1023

THISREPORT

Ten-year-old Mirei Hosono uses an iPad in hisEngl ish-as-a-second-language class at Center GrElementary School in Greenwood, Ind., on Oct. 22011. The school received a $200,000 grantfrom

stateto buy 230 of the devices . Education expertscomputers and otherdigital devices increasingly

taking on roles once filled solelyby teachers.

CQResearcherPublished by CQ Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications,

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CQ Researcher Dec. 2, 2011 www.cqresearcher.com

Volume 21, Number 42 Pages 1001-1024

RECIPIENT OF SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AWARD FOR

EXCELLENCE AMERICAN BARASSOCIATION SILVERGAVELAWARD


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1002 CQ Researcher

THEISSUES

1003 Are computers in schools

improving education? Can computers replaceclassroom teachers? Are computer gameseffective for learning?

BACKGROUND

1010 Digital WorldMany scholars say digitaltechnology will changeconcepts of learning.

1012Tutor, Tool, Tutee

Some experts say studentsshould understand com-puters inner workings.

1015 Connected ComputersThe Internet has increasedpressure on schools to im-prove their technology.

CURRENTSITUATION

1018 Digital ExpansionNew York City is boostingtech spending, cutting jobs.

1019 Scaling UpAppropriate curricula arelacking to ensure produc-tive use of computers.

OUTLOOK

1019 Transformers?Many scholars see a shifttoward personalized,lifetime-learning models.

SIDEBARS ANDGRAPHICS

1004 Views Differ on OnlineCoursesMajority of adults prefer tra-ditional classroom courses.

1005 Digital-Media Use CommonMore than half of 5- to 8-year-olds use computers at

least a few times a week.

1006 Virtual Public SchoolsGaining StudentsStudents excel in some butstruggle in others.

1008 Selective Schools OfferFewest Online CoursesOnline courses are offeredby 82 percent of communitycolleges.

1009 Defining Online LearningOnline courses typically lackface-to-face meetings.

1011 ChronologyKey events since 1963.

1012 Big Hurdles ConfrontLearning TechnologyThe system for developinggood digital tools is fraughtwith pitfalls.

1014 Technology Opens NewDoors to LearningScholars say transformativeideas could bolster student

engagement.

1015 Growth in Online CoursesPredictedFifty percent rise seen.

1017 At IssueShould schools use as muchdigital technology as theycan afford?

FORFURTHERRESEARCH

1021

For More Information

Organizations to contact.

1022 BibliographySelected sources used.

1023 The Next StepAdditional articles.

1023 Citing CQ ResearcherSample bibliography formats.

DIGITAL EDUCATION

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Digital Education

THEISSUES

Students learning to readhave long followed afamiliar routine: They

read a passage of text aloudin class and wait for theteacher to correct their pro-nunciation.

But in the digitized worldof 21st-century education, com-puters are increasingly takingon the teachers role. Com-puters can now hear stu-dents speak, for example, cor-

rect their pronunciation andevaluate their progress overtime, says Michael L. Kamil, aprofessor emeritus at theStanford University School ofEducation. Until recently, com-puters couldnt listen to oralreading and understand it, hesays. But new programs makeit possible.

Such advances are part ofa much bigger movement to

integrate technology into class-rooms, creating what education schol-ars call a blended learning environ-ment. As computers increasinglydominate every realm of business andlife, experts say schools must prepareyoung people not only to use digitaltechnology but also to understand howto program it, how it shapes cultureand behavior and how it can be har-nessed to perform tasks once consid-ered the sole realm of humans.

Yet, while digital devices have be-

come ubiquitous worldwide, debate israging over whether and which technologies have proved their worthas learning tools. Some school systemshave fully embraced technology, forexample by providing every studentwith a laptop computer. But criticsargue that money for such programswould be better spent on teachers.

And in some localities, technology

is threatening teachers very jobs. Incash-strapped Ohio, for example,schools could attain a 50-1 student-teacher ratio more than twice theconventional 20 or so pupils perteacher by combining live teachingwith large amounts of online study,Robert Sommers, director of the Officeof 21st Century Education in the Ohiogovernors office, told the state legis-lature last spring. 1 Similar proposalsare surfacing in many other states.

I teach a class for aspiring schooladministrators, and the first thing I tellthem is that the schools you are intoday are not the schools you are goingto be leading, says James Lerman, di-rector of the Progressive Science Ini-tiative, a program at Kean Universityin Union, N.J., which helps experi-enced teachers become certified toteach math and science. What hap-

pened to the music industryand the publishing industryas the digital revolution turned

their business models upsidedown is just beginning tohappen to schools.

Digital learning has beengetting a boost in localitiesacross the nation this year.For example, Idaho becamethe first state to require high-school students to completetwo or more online coursesto receive a diploma. 2 Anda mere two years after spend-ing $500 million to upgrade

Internet access in its publicschools, New York City an-nounced it will spend thesame amount in 2012 on moretechnical improvements. 3

Many education specialistsare somewhere in the mid-dle on the issue of comput-erized education. Decades ofexperience make clear thatcomputer software can ef-fectively train people to per-

form certain complex tasks,says David Moursund, an emeritus pro-fessor of education at the University ofOregon, at Eugene. Weve known fora long time that computers could takeon part of the task of the humanteacher or tutor, notably by teachingbasic skills such as multiplication orspelling, and do the job as well as theaverage teacher, says Moursund.

The military and the airline indus-try, he notes, both use computer sim-ulations to train people for tough,

high-stakes jobs such as distinguishingbetween incoming missiles and harm-less radar-screen blips, and servicingjet aircraft. With enough money, youcan develop simulation thats quitegood, nearly indistinguishable fromthe real thing, Moursund says. Simi-larly, software programs that tutor stu-dents in subjects such as arithmeticare customizable for any skill level and

BYMARCIACLEMMITT

APPhoto/SanAngeloStandard-T

imes/KimberlyParker

Corina Dill and other low-income middle-school studentsin San Angelo, Texas, participate in a new program on

Oct. 8, 2011, that teaches them to use open-sourcesoftware. The students can take the computers home after

completing three Saturday workshops at Angelo StateUniversity. Debate is raging over whether digital

technologies have proven their worth as learning tools.


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1004 CQ Researcher

thus uniquely helpful in schools, saidJohn Danner, co-founder of Palo Alto,Calif.-based Rocketship Education, whichoperates a network of well-regarded K-5

charter schools in low-income NorthernCalifornia communities. When studentslearn things that are developmentallyappropriate for where each of them are,they learn things much faster than if youteach to the middle, as classroom teach-ers typically must do, he said. 4

Nevertheless, computers can neverreplace the human touch in elemen-tary and high school classrooms, ex-perts say. Teachers do what technolo-gy cant, such as being a live personwho cares about you, says Grover J.

Whitehurst, director of the Brown Cen-ter on Education Policy at the Brook-ings Institution, a centrist think tank inWashington.

Blended models of schooling thatcombine computer-based learning withlive classes seem to be emerging asthe most common model, Whitehurstsays. In fact, as computers increasing-ly take over routine tasks and the In-

ternet provides easy access to unlim-ited streams of information, demandsfor teachers to possess more sophis-ticated conceptual skills will increase,

some analysts say. But education spe-cialists worry that teachers arent re-ceiving adequate training to functionin this new, digitally dominated world.

The teacher of the future helps younavigate the ocean of information thatthe online world provides, says PauloBlikstein, an assistant professor of ed-ucation at Stanford University and di-rector of its Transformative LearningTechnologies Lab. I can go to Wikipediato memorize historical figures names,but I need somebody to talk with me

about power relations and other con-cepts, to help me make sense of thefacts. Teachers will need to know muchmore about learning how to learn,about how to help students makesense of these huge amounts of in-formation, where you need to inter-pret what you see, Blikstein says. Butwere not training teachers to help withthese things. 5

Some digital-technology enthusiastsargue that computer games tailored forlearning could be an education boost-er. But many education-technology

scholars say that, so far, most gamesdeveloped as teaching tools dont ac-tually teach much. 6

Learning claims for games such asthe popular Oregon Trail a simu-lation game developed in the 1970s toteach about pioneer life are overblownand rest on the too-frequent misunder-standing that student motivation guar-antees learning, says Kamil, at StanfordsSchool of Education. For players tolearn from a game, winning and en-joying the game must both depend on

whether the player learns somethingthat the game intends to impart, hesays. If you watch a bunch of boysplay Oregon Trail they spend all theirtime shooting deer, clearly enjoyingthemselves, but not accruing any history-related skills or knowledge.

Too many games can be won byusing non-learning-related strategies suchas repeated blind guessing, Kamil says.They may get kids engaged, but theydont get them engaged in an actual

learning task.Nevertheless, some games do con-tain the seeds of very effective learn-ing, but researchers are only just learn-ing the principles that underlie suchgames, education-technology analysts say.

A game in which a player enterssome virtual world and advancesthrough it by solving challenges thatinvolve uncovering the rules of theplace offer the very highest form oflearning, wrote James Gee, a profes-sor of literacy studies at Arizona State

University. A game in which a playersolves a science mystery, for example,could be a much more fruitful learn-ing experience than an ordinary biol-ogy course in which a student learnsfacts and repeats them on a test. Infact, decades of research have shownthat students taught under such a regime. . . cannot actually apply their knowl-edge to . . . understand the conceptual

DIGITAL EDUCATION

Views Differ on Online Courses

Sixty percent of adults believe online courses do not offer the same

educational value as a traditional classroom courses. More than

half of college presidents say online courses are of equal value.

* Dont know/refused responses not shown.

Source: Paul Taylor, et al., The Digital Revolution and Higher Educa-

tion, Pew Internet & American Life Project, August 2011, pp. 11, 13,

www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2011/PIP-Online-Learning.pdf

Does an online course provide an equal educational value

compared with a course taken in person in a classroom?

60%

010

20

30

40

50

60

70

80%

For profit2-year

private/public

4-year

public

4-year

private

All presidentsAll adults

Yes

No

29%

48%51%

62%

36%

48%50%

34%

66%

45%

54%

(Percentage of

college presidents)


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lay of the land in the area they arelearning, said Gee. 7

By contrast, a computer game canclosely approximate an activity such as

practicing biology in real life, Gee wrote.Biology is not a set of facts but agame certain types of people play by doing certain activities, using par-ticular tools and languages, holdingcertain principles and playing by acertain set of rules, all activities thatgames players do in virtual game worlds.Keep in mind that . . . Full SpectrumWarrior a computer-simulationgame about anti-guerrilla fighting is a game when I buy it off the rackbut serious learning when a soldierplays the professional training ver-sion, Gee wrote. 8

As policymakers and schools strug-gle to keep up with ever-advancingdigital technology, here are some ofthe questions that are being asked:

Are computers in schools im-

proving education?

Hopes have been high for decadesthat computer games, tutoring softwareand other digital technologies could

make students more engaged and ef-fective learners. But with many schoolsnow coming online with high-speedInternet connections, the evidence onlearning outcomes remains mixed.

For elementary-school students,decades of research demonstrate thatwe can develop computer programsthat teach kids to do more mundanethings such as add, subtract andmultiply better than the averageclassroom teacher can, says Moursundof the University of Oregon.

Computers strength as skills instruc-tors lies partly in data-gathering anddata-analysis abilities that humans cantmatch, says Moursund. For example, tolearn to type on a keyboard, a pro-gram can time how long you touch akey, tally mistakes, note your fast andslow fingers and adjust the task in realtime to provide additional exercise foran individuals weak spots. A human

tutor cant possibly adjust so much andthus is less efficient, he says.

If you asked me to bet on whetherpicking an elementary teacher at ran-

dom or a million-dollar piece of soft-ware would produce better learning out-comes for 30 young kids learning anessential basic skill such as adding orrecognizing how different combinationsof letters sound, Id pick the software,says Brookings Whitehurst.

But technology is often put into class-rooms with little technical support andthus is seldom as effective as it mightbe, says Paul Resta, director of the Learn-ing Technology Center at the Universi-ty of Texas, Austin. If a teacher has

technical problems [with operating asoftware program] more than once andcant get a quick remedy from an in-formation-tech specialist, which manyschools dont have, guess whats goingto become of that software after that?I call it the dark-screen phenomenon.

Some research on computer-basedlearning initiatives shows small or nolearning gains.

In a 2009 study for the Texas stategovernment, analysts at a nonprofit re-search group found that a pilot pro-ject that immersed some high-need

middle schools in technology by pro-viding a wireless computer for everyteacher and student increased partici-pants ability to use technology andmodestly improved math scores, espe-cially among higher-achieving students.But the technology didnt improve stu-dents ability to direct their own learn-ing, apparently worsened their school-attendance rates and had no apparenteffect on reading-test scores. 9

In the technology-intensive KyreneSchool District in Chandler, Ariz., class-

rooms have numerous laptop com-puters with Internet access and inter-active software that provide a widevariety of instructional opportunities:drills in every subject, individual-studyprograms and multimedia projectsthat help students create blogs andsocial-networking profiles for booksthey read in class. But according toone key benchmark standardized

Digital-Media Use Common Among Young

Fifty-one percent of 5- to 8-year-olds use computers at least several

times a week. Only 10 percent have never used a computer (left).

More than half of children 5 to 8 years old have used a smartphone,iPad or other kind of mobile device at least once (right).

* Percentages do not add to 100 because of rounding.

Source: Zero to Eight: Childrens Media Use in America, Common Sense Media,

Fall 2011, p. 9, www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/zeroto

eightfinal2011.pdf

Computer use among5- to 8-year-olds

Mobile media useby age group*

10%

39%

52%

0

10

20

30

40

50

60%

5- to 8-year-olds

2- to 4-year-olds

0- to 1-year-olds

Once a day

12%Severaltimes aweek

29%

Once a week

17%

Less thanonce a week

22%

Never 10%

Several timesa day

10%


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1006 CQ Researcher

test scores the technology hasnthelped learning. Since 2005, the dis-tricts math and reading scores haveremained stagnant, even as scoresstatewide have risen. 10

The results baffle local school lead-ers. My gut is telling me weve hadgrowth. But we have to have somemeasure that is valid, and we donthave that, said Kyrene school Super-intendent David K. Schauer. 11

In a review of high school mathprograms that blend customized tu-toring software with in-class lessons,both developed by researchers fromPittsburghs Carnegie-Mellon Universi-ty, the U.S. Department of Educationfound that the programs had no dis-cernible effect on students math-testscores. 12 The widely used and high-ly regarded Cognitive Tutor software,

developed by Pittsburgh-based CarnegieLearning Inc., a startup created by cog-nitive and computer scientists, alsocame up short in other federal analy-ses. Carnegie Learning was recentlybought by Apollo Group Inc., theowners of the online, for-profit Uni-versity of Phoenix. 13

Can computers replace classroom

teachers?

In search of budget savings, somepublic officials are touting onlinelearning and so-called blended class-es that use both computer-based andin-person instruction as potential meansof saving money on teacher salaries.However, some technology expertssay getting rid of teachers is a mis-take. Instead, they say, school districtsshould be helping students navigate

the digital world by searching out thebest learning technology and hiringmore teachers who are well trained inusing it.

Still, financial strains and demandsfor better performance by schools meanthat schools must and ultimatelywill replace some teaching slotswith digital technologies, says Christo-pher Dede, a Harvard University pro-fessor of learning technologies. A per-

fect storm of trends is driving towardthat outcome, he says.

Because of permanent financialproblems in K-12 education, Dedewrote, student-teacher ratios are climb-ing to levels unworkable for even thebest conventional instruction. We can-not solve this problem by the personalheroism of individual teachers, onwhom schools have largely relied up

DIGITAL EDUCATION

Online K-12 schools are spreading across the country,but controversy is simmering over how well they per-form and whether all students should be eligible to

attend them.As of 2010, at least 27 states had at least one entirely full-

time, publicly funded online school, including high schools andschools serving pre-kindergarteners through 12th grade. Whileenrollment numbers are hard to find, researchers estimate thatmore than 150,000 K-12 students nationwide attended virtualschools full time in the 2009-2010 school year. 1

Online-only schools originally were set up to accommodatestudents facing illness, pregnancy, bullying or some other issue,

but they have since begun to accommodate those who, for what-ever reason, wish not to attend a brick-and-mortar institution.

But about two dozen states prohibit students whose school-ing is tax-supported from taking all their courses online andinsist that publicly funded schools include some live instruc-tion, according to researchers at the National Education PolicyCenter at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The number of students taking online courses has soaredat many state-run virtual schools. At the Florida Virtual School,established in 1997, attendance rose 39 percent in the 2009-2010school year and another 22 percent in 2010-11. At New Mexi-cos IDEAL (Innovative Digital Education and Learning) school,established in 2008, the number of courses rose 37 percent in2009-2010 and 85 percent in 2010-11. 2

Some all-online schools are established by individual schooldistricts and others by states. Some are available only to stu-dents living in certain school districts, while others are opento out-of-state students. Most, however, draw taxpayer fundingaccording to much the same per-student formula used for tra-ditional schools. Yet most virtual schools though not all are operated by private companies. 3

While online schooling is a growing phenomenon, some re-searchers say it is not appropriate for students to attend virtu-al schools full time that is, without taking at least someclasses in a traditional classroom setting.

Online-only education provides a helpful haven for some,

however, says James Lerman, director of the Progressive Sci-ence Initiative, a program at Kean University in Union, N.J.,that helps experienced teachers become certified to teachmath and science. For example, when the Florida VirtualSchool opened, it was for kids who had problems goingto regular school, such as being pregnant, having failed be-fore, being disaffected or having to work, he says. Forthose students, he says, virtual schools may provide wel-come shelter from a hostile climate they might face in atraditional school.

But whether large numbers of students would benefitfrom all-virtual education and whether online schools produceacademic-achievement results equal to those of traditional schoolsremain in hot dispute.

Virtual Public Schools Gaining StudentsStudents excel in some but struggle in others.


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to now to succeed in difficult condi-tions. Instead, Dede added, adminis-trators must find technology-basedstrategies effective for classroom teach-ing and learning with large numbersof pupils. 14

But, he adds, so far few technolo-gies have been up to the task. Whilemany computer-based learning pro-grams require well-trained, intenselycommitted teachers to be effective,

large-scale educational improvementrequires more, Dede wrote. He urgededucation researchers to double theirefforts to create learning technologiesthat will work even in the worst ofcircumstances, including in schools withscant resources and many ill-preparedteachers, since those are conditionsmany students face. 15

Experience outside of education

proves this is achievable, Dede wrote.All other professions are successfullytransforming to affordable models thatuse technology to empower typical pro-fessionals to be effective, so theres noreason technology cant be developedto help average teachers spur strongstudent learning, too, he wrote. 16

We may be at a transition pointat which we can offload some teach-ers responsibilities onto software, to

free teachers to do other tasks, suchas working with students on specialprojects, says Brookings Whitehurst. Atleast a few college-level institutions, no-tably the private, nonprofit Salt LakeCity-based Western Governors Univer-sity, seem to have mastered the knackof delivering low-cost computer-basededucation that works, so there seemsno reason that good technology-based

approaches cant be developed for K-12 as well, he says.

Demands to improve student learn-ing perhaps using technology fall heaviest on the lowest-performingschools, most of which enroll manydisadvantaged students. Yet, in theseschools its particularly unlikely thattechnology could replace staff, saysStanfords Blikstein. This is the criti-cal part of the story. These kids need

so much help to be brought up tospeed. I dont think this kind of tech-nology could replace a teacher.

At the college level, where computer-based courses have taken a stronger hold,nearly 64 percent of public-universityfaculty who have taught both onlineand traditional courses said in a 2009survey that it took somewhat more ora lot more effort to teach online than

In a 2007 study of both full- and part-time online stu-dents, the nonpartisan Florida TaxWatch research group foundthat Florida Virtual School students consistently outperformedtheir public school counterparts on reading and math instate achievement tests. The school earned high marks forboth student achievement and cost-effectiveness, said thegroup. 4

Studies in some other states have found problems, though.A 2011 study of Pennsylvanias virtual schools by Stanford

Universitys Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO)found that in both reading and math achievement students atall eight online schools performed significantly worse than

their counterparts at brick-and-mortar institutions.5

In a 2006 audit of online schools in Colorado, state analystsfound that in the aggregate, online students performed poor-ly on state achievement exams, were about four to six timesmore likely to repeat a grade than students statewide and hada dropout rate between three and six times higher than thestatewide rate. 6

High dropout rates in the range of 50 percent or greater are common among online schools, but thats not surpris-ing, says Paul Kim, chief technology officer of Stanford Uni-

versitys School of Education. Why? They joined the onlineschool because they hated regular school, and the online schoolturned out to be just like it in stressing standardized testingand rote memorization, for example, he says.

In addition, while teachers in virtual schools communicateindividually with students via email, chat programs and otherInternet-based modes, in general online schools dont give stu-dents the support they need to learn from computer-basedmaterial on their own, Kim says. Unlike students in tradition-al schools, those who learn online must pace themselvesthrough their studies. And to succeed, they need skills of self-regulation and self-assessment, he says. A lot of this is notsupported in the online school.

Marcia Clemmitt

1 Gene V. Glass and Kevin G. Welner, Online K-12 Schooling in the U.S.:Uncertain Private Ventures in Need of Public Regulation, National Educa-tion Policy Center, University of Colorado Boulder, October 2011, http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/NEPC-VirtSchool-1-PB-Glass-Welner.pdf.2 Keeping Pace with K-12 Online Learning: An Annual Review of Policyand Practice, Evergreen Education Group, 2011, p. 30, http://kpk12.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/EEG_KeepingPace2011-lr.pdf.3 Ibid. See also Glass and Welner, op. cit.4 Final Report: A Comprehensive Assessment of Florida Virtual School,Florida TaxWatch, www.inacol.org/research/docs/FLVS_Final_Final_Report%2810-15-07%29.pdf.5 Charter School Performance in Pennsylvania, CREDO, Stanford University,

April 2011, http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/PA%20State%20Report_20110404_FINAL.pdf.6 Online Education/Department of Education Performance Audit, State Auditor,State of Colorado, November 2006, www.cde.state.co.us/onlinelearning/download/2006%20Report%20of%20the%20State%20Auditor.pdf.


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1008 CQ Researcher

in person. Nearly 85 percent said it takesmore effort to develop online coursesthan regular ones. 17

Making good use of digital tech-

nology requires substantial change inhow teachers view their roles. It comesback to authority and control, saysChristine Greenhow, an assistant pro-fessor in the School of Education andInformation Studies at the University ofMaryland, College Park. If you seeyour job as pouring knowledge intothe minds of students who are emptyvessels, that doesnt mesh with thetechnology revolution, she says. Todaysstudents have cell phones, laptops andother devices on which they can re-

search anything and everything on theirown, she says.

Eventually, computer-teaching sys-tems will diagnose students learningproblems on the spot, based on datacollected from the students interactionwith the software, then design appro-priate interventions. Those interven-tions might include calling for a liveteacher, many of whom, in the future,

may act more like coaches who ad-dress particular problems that learn-ing software has identified, predictsPaul Kim, chief technology officer at

Stanfords School of Education.Tomorrows teachers will have toboth tailor instruction more individual-ly and deal with deeper, more con-ceptual learning, many analysts say. Forexample, one challenge, especially atupper grade levels, is to come up withquestions for which Wikipedia wontsupply good answers, says Stanfordeducation Professor Daniel Schwartz.

Within a few decades, teachers maybe sharply divided into an elite classof professionals who are savvy at both

technology and teaching and a sec-ond, less-prestigious group who actmore or less as babysitters, managingstudents in classrooms, wrote White-hurst. A teacher will be either . . . anexpert on the design and delivery ofinstruction through technology or . . .the equivalent of a hall monitor or atutor for struggling students, with com-mensurate salaries. 18

Are computer games effective for

learning?

From computer games earliest de-velopment, in the 1950s and 60s, it was

clear that they motivated players tocommit time and energy to conquer-ing their challenges to a degree thatschool lessons seldom do. This discov-ery, together with computers ability tohold massive amounts of text, picturesand sound, encouraged developmentof games especially tailored for learn-ing. However, not every game that hasacademic content and motivates stu-dents to play it actually provides alearning experience, some scholars say.

In many current games, players, alone

or in groups, enter virtual worlds such as Yellowstone National Park, inthe game WolfQuest or real-worldsites that they visit while accessing addeddigital information about the place viatechnology such as smartphones. Theidea is to explore the real or virtual placeand solve problems there, explains anew report on games and learning bythe National Research Council (NRC), afederal agency staffed by scholarly re-searchers. 19 In the well-regarded game

River City, developed by Harvards Dede,for example, players explore a highlydetailed simulation of a 19th-centuryAmerican city to uncover and solve apublic-health crisis. 20

The NRC said games that challengestudents to solve complicated prob-lems in rule-based virtual worlds havethe potential to kick-start the kind ofinquiry- and project-based scientific learn-ing that many education theorists havesought for decades. Such games canhelp students visualize, explore and for-

mulate scientific explanations for scien-tific phenomena that they wouldntotherwise be able to observe and ma-nipulate, the NRC said. The games alsotend to spark high levels of engage-ment, encourage repetition and practiceand motivate learners with challengesand rapid feedback, it said. 21

Still, many researchers say theyreless interested in figuring out how to

DIGITAL EDUCATION

Selective Schools Offer Fewest Online Courses

Eighty-two percent of community college presidents say their institu-

tions offer online courses, slightly more than their counterparts at

research universities and noticeably more than presidents at liberal

arts colleges. Similarly, 86 percent of presidents at the least selective

schools say they have online classes, more than those at more selec-

tive institutions. Education experts say online offerings vary depend-

ing on the educational mission of each school.

Source: Paul Taylor, et al., The Digital Revolution and Higher Education, Pew

Internet & American Life Project, August 2011, p. 6, www.pewinternet.org/~/media/

/Files/Reports/2011/PIP-Online-Learning.pdf

Percentages of Colleges Offering Online Classes

Type of school Selectivity of school

0

2040

60

80

100%

Liberal artscolleges

Researchuniversities

Communitycolleges

0

2040

60

80

100%

Mostselective

Moderatelyselective

Leastselective

82% 79%61%

86% 80%

51%


9/24


increase the supply of educational com-puter games than in discovering theprinciples that fuel enthusiasm andhard work by students.

I dont think we should make schoolinto a game, says Barry Fishman, anassociate professor of learning tech-nologies at the University of Michigan.My objective is to find out why peo-ple work so hard at games and thenfigure out how the same principlesmight be applied to many kinds oflearning situations.

Hoping to find out why his 6-year-old son enjoyed computer games somuch, Gee says he failed many timesat the first game he tried, one he picked

randomly from a store shelf: The NewAdventures of the Time Machine. Hesays he had to engage in a virtual re-search project via the Internet to learnsome things I needed to know to play.Gee grew amazed that lots of youngpeople pay lots of money to get thisdifficult experience and realized thatthis was just the problem our schoolsface: How do you get someone to learnsomething long, hard and complex andyet enjoy it? 22

Research is revealing underlyingprinciples of effective learning games,says Eric Klopfer, an associate profes-sor of education at the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology (MIT). Suchgames allow for many different solu-tions to the problems and questionsthey pose; encourage both collabora-tion with other players and indepen-dent action on the part of players; setup novel problems for players to solveand provide feedback to help playersadvance, he says. A compelling nar-

rative and characters to identify withalso are important, he says.

But many games dont operate onthose principles, and some dont teachmuch, or anything, of value, critics say.

In trivial games, you solve a prob-lem and then get a reward, but thelearning and the other aspects of thegame arent connected, so that thegame only provides some traditional

drill-type instruction rather than deeplearning, says Klopfer. In the popularMathBlaster game, for example, play-ers earn opportunities to participate inan outer-space adventure video gameby giving the right answers to mathquestions, but the questions arent con-

ceptually connected to the games story.Adding elements of play or contest

to all learning activities, including rotememorization, is what some educationtheorists call for when they suggestgamifying everything. But thats ashallow use of game principles andan approach that may even be inferi-or to more traditional educational meth-ods, Klopfer suggests.

In fact, not all researchers find thatgames are useful at motivating and en-gaging students. In a 2007 study basedon student surveys and interviews,Nicola Whitton, a research fellow ineducational-games technology at Man-chester Metropolitan University in Eng-

land, found that a large proportionof students do not find games moti-vational at all and that there is noevidence of a relationship between anindividuals motivation to play gamesrecreationally and his or her motiva-tion to use games for learning. 23

Serious attempts to develop highlyeffective learning games are in theirinfancy, experts say.

Defining Online Learning

Traditional academic courses typically use no online technology

and deliver content through face-to-face interactions between

instructors and students. In contrast, online courses deliver at least80 percent of content through the Internet. Other courses may use

the Internet to complement traditional in-person meetings.

Source: I. Elaine Allen and Jeff Seaman, Class Differences: Online Education in

the United States, 2010, Sloan Consortium, November 2010, p. 5, sloan

consortium.org/publications/survey/pdf/class_differences.pdf

How Different Types of Courses Use Online Technology

Proportion of content Course

delivered online type Description

No online technology used.

0% Traditional Content is delivered orally or

in writing.

Uses Web-based technology tofacilitate face-to-face interactions.

1%-29% Web Often uses course-management

facilitated system or Web pages to post

syllabi and assignments.

Substantial portion of content

30%-79% Blended/ delivered online. Typically uses

hybrid online discussions and has a

reduced number of in-person

meetings.

Most content is delivered online;

80+% Online course typically lacks face-to-

face meetings.


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1010 CQ Researcher

DIGITAL EDUCATION

One barrier is that gamers and ed-ucators are very different cultures, andyou need to get them together tohave a real shot at figuring out how

the principles of the two disciplinesmay intersect, says Stanfords Schwartz.The two sides often resist such cross-disciplinary discussions, he says.

Furthermore, the effectiveness ofany education technology, includinggames, depends on a combination ofthe technology and thecontext in which its de-livered, which includesschool and classroomconditions, teacher skillsand more, says MITs

Klopfer. Generally, for agame to succeed as alearning tool, a teacheror a community of peo-ple must be available tosupport and help play-ers navigate it, he says.

Currently, teachersoften dont use games tooptimize learning and inmany cases aren tequipped to do so, the

NRC said. In the RiverCity game, for example,players are supposed toexplore the town, thenformulate and test origi-nal hypotheses aboutwhats causing diseasethere. But some teach-ers have asked studentsto use the curriculum tosimply confirm correctanswers that the teach-ers provided in advance,

essentially canceling outthe opportunity for in-tellectual initiative, theNRC said. Behind teach-ers misuse of the game lie lack of time,pressure to prepare for high-stakes stan-dardized tests and a lack of the deep-content knowledge and effective teach-ing strategies suitable for inquiry-basedlearning, the group said. 24

BACKGROUND

A Digital World

T he Information Age is only decadesold. But many scholars argue that,eventually, digital technology willchange everything, including concepts

of learning, as surely as the greatestupheavals in history have done. 25

We can liken this age to the ageof the invention of the printing press,and I dont think thats an exaggera-tion, says Kean Universitys Lerman.

Especially in these early days, how-ever, theres more than one waythings can change, he says.

Technology can be employed to do

old things in new ways, Lerman says.For example, he says, teachers can learnto give more effective lectures, and stu-dents can learn from master teacherstheyll never meet if outstanding lecturesare archived on YouTube. However, dig-ital technology also can encourage

doing new things to trans-form education into thestudent-driven, lifelong en-terprise that many scholarssee as the wave of the fu-ture, Lerman says.

Experts say that manycharacteristics of the In-formation Age will trans-form schools and learning,and each raises importantquestions about the futureof education.

For example, in the Ageof Information, everythingcan be customized, and thelast frontier is education,says Stanfords Blikstein.

One need only pick up anAmerican pre-calculus, bi-ology or history textbookto see that the number ofpossible subjects of studyis huge and beyond theability of any one studentor class to cover, evenwithin a single discipline.Rather than trying to cramin as many as possible, asschools tend to do today,future schools with exten-

sive access to online andother computer-learningtechnologies can allow stu-dents to pursue subjects of

special interest. Apart from the verybasic things such as reading andbasic math you should learn thingsthat relate to your life and community,with one student studying trigonometry

Continued on p. 1012

Mike Kerr, principal of the KIPP Empower Academy in LosAngeles, said kindergarteners par ticipated in an exper iment last

year with blended learning, which uses both computers and

classroom teachers. Results from the trial year were so promisingthat school administrators decided to continue using computers

in kindergarten. The charter school serves minority andlow-income students in impoverished south Los Angeles.

GettyImages/McClatchyTribune/JonathanAlcorn


11/24


Chronology1960sMore schoolshave computers, but most areused for record-keeping, other

administrative purposes.

1963Vocational Education Act providesfunds for school technology. . . .Two Dartmouth College scholarscreate the simple BASIC program-ming language, mainly for studentuse. . . . Scientists at IBM andStanford University develop pro-grammed-learning materials forgrade-school math and reading.

1966IBM introduces computer adaptedto run instructional programs.

1967MIT scientist Seymour Papert in-vents LOGO drawing language toexpand programming and logictraining in grade schools.

1970s-1980sMore schools adopt tutoringsoftware and require program-ming classes; firms begin sellingeducational software.

1974Oregon Trail computer game, de-signed to teach about pioneer life,is introduced.

1975

Twenty-three percent of schoolsuse computers in the classroom.

1984Apples Macintosh computer is intro-duced and quickly gains popularity,especially in elementary schools.

1987Students in National GeographicsKidsNet program collect local data

on acid rain and water pollutionand email their findings to schoolsand scientists around the country.

1990s Schools use CD-ROMs, videodiscs and the Web toprovide multimedia materials.

1991Students in 72 countries participatein KidsNet.

1994President Bill Clintons Educationsecretary, Richard Riley, convenesfirst White House conference on ex-panding computer-based education.

1996Telecommunications Act of 1996requires telecom companies to dis-count their services for schools.

1997Florida Virtual School, the first stateonline school, is founded.

2000sEnrollment incomputer-science and program-ming classes drops, but school

social-media use expands.

2000Maine Gov. Angus King, an Indepen-dent, announces that the state willprovide laptops to all middle-schoolstudents and for teacher training incomputer-based education.

2005MIT architecture Professor NicholasNegroponte forms One Laptop PerChild program to develop low-costcomputers for distribution to chil-dren in developing countries andother low-income areas.

2007MIT developers introduce onlineScratch community as an after-school hobby destination, where

children and teens can create gamesand multimedia using the Scratchprogramming language. . . . FirstOne Laptop Per Child computers goto children in Uruguay, Peru andBirmingham, Ala. . . . Collegecomputer-science enrollment dropsto half its 2000 level.

2009College Board drops one of its twoAdvanced Placement tests in com-puter science.

2010With online-course enrollments re-portedly growing 30 percent peryear, Wyoming appoints its firststate director of distance learning.. . . San Francisco Flex Schoolsopen as Californias first publicschools to offer a blend of tradi-tional and online courses. . . .Connecticut authorizes onlinecourses to fulfill high school grad-

uation requirements.

2011New Florida law allows charterschools and individual school dis-tricts to offer online instruction andpermits elementary-school studentsto study full time at Florida VirtualSchool. . . . Idaho becomes firststate to require students to com-plete two or more online coursesas a graduation requirement. . . .Computer Science Education Act

introduced in the House and Sen-ate to bring more programmingand computer-problem-solvingclasses to K-12 schools. . . . NewYork City announces new invest-ments in school technology whilelaying off teachers and cancelingschool construction projects. . . .Young Scratch hobbyists haveposted more than 2 million mediaprojects online.


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1012 CQ Researcher

and another studying statistics, for ex-ample, Blikstein says.

Furthermore, with digital devices ubiq-uitous, were emerging into the era ofstudent as content creator, says Ler-man. That has profound implicationsfor almost everything we do in schools.How, he asks, does one assess learn-ing when students create their own pro-

jects? What, Lerman continues, is therole of a teacher, if not as the sole ex-pert dispenser of validated knowledge?

As much of the worlds informationmoves online, learning facts becomes lessimportant than knowing how to find anduse them. Should we require studentsto regurgitate facts theyve assimilated fromclasses, or should we allow students toaccess on a test any information they

want and use it to analyze a problemand propose a solution? asks Lerman. Inbusiness, wed call that collaboration. Inschool, we call it cheating.

Tutor, Tool, Tutee

E lectronic computers were inventedin the early 1940s and used as earlyas 1943 for a wartime educational pur-pose as flight simulators whose mockaircraft controls responded to pilots ac-tions the same way controls on realplanes did. In the 1960s computers en-tered K-12 classrooms after software wasdeveloped to lead students step-by-stepthrough a process such as long division.

Soon the number of computers inschools began rising. In 1963, just 1 per-

cent of high schools used computers forinstruction. By 1975, 55 percent had com-puters, though only 23 percent usedthem primarily for learning. The rest usedthem for administrative purposes. 26

Robert P. Taylor, a professor at Co-lumbia University Teachers College inNew York City, identified three wayscomputers can aid learning. 27

First, step-by-step instructional soft-

ware can tutor students in some sub-jects. In 1963, computer giant IBM part-nered with Stanfords Institute forMathematical Studies in the Social Sci-ences to develop programmed-learningsoftware for elementary schools, jointlycreated by computer scientists and learn-ing experts. In 1966, IBM introduced itsModel 1500 computer, especially de-signed to run instructional programming.

DIGITAL EDUCATION

Continued from p. 1010

Good digital tools can improve learning, but the systemfor developing them is riddled with pitfalls, technolo-gy analysts say.

For one thing, creating effective educational technology takestime, but software and hardware can become obsolete nearlyovernight, says Michael L. Kamil, a professor emeritus at theStanford University School of Education. Technologys short shelflife has doomed numerous projects, he says.

We developed a game for Nintendo that became uselesswhen a new version of the popular device hit the market,Kamil says. Glitches in new technology often can be fixed, butthat usually entails delays and more financing, which educa-

tion researchers may not have, he says.In some cases, fast-moving technology has doomed educa-

tional materials irrecoverably. In the mid-1990s, for example,many CD-ROMs were developed based on solid educationalprinciples. But as content migrated to the Internet, CD-ROMswere quickly left behind, and you couldnt fix them for useas online media, Kamil says.

The size and clout of a developer also play a big role ina technologys success or failure. Digital technology developedby small companies and academic researchers may be suitableand effective in the classroom, but it can have a hard timecompeting with products offered by large companies. Giantslike Dell and Apple have successfully placed digital technolo-gies in schools because they are adept at doing business in

the fast-moving technology world and generally dont delay

product rollout to test its educational effectiveness, says BarryFishman, an associate professor of learning technologies at theUniversity of Michigan.

I dont fault Dell or Apple. Their job is to sell, he says.But some things widely sold to schools are adapted from the[corporate] board room, and arent necessarily very helpful toschools, he says.

A case in point is the expensive digital whiteboard thatdisplays, records and stores information and graphics and hasreplaced traditional whiteboards in many schools, Fishmansays. Only about 5 percent of teachers are doing anythinginteresting with them, making their high cost largely a waste,

he says.Evaluation standards pose another challenge. The U.S. De-

partment of Education analyzes learning technologies and postson its What Works website conclusions about whether andhow well they work. But the standards for evaluation, whichare borrowed from medical research, dont give technologies afair shake, many researchers say.

Steven M. Ross, director of Johns Hopkins Universitys Cen-ter for Research and Reform in Education, says the clinical-trial evaluation model, used to gauge whether a particular tech-nology is effective in the classroom, is problematic. The modeldemands that a learning methodology produce better resultsthan traditional instructional methods before it can be deemeda success. But that standard is unreasonable for computer-based

learning tools, Ross says.

Big Hurdles Confront Learning-Technology DevelopersYou cant just have big companies, or youll have no revolution.


13/24


The computer had unusual-for-the-timefeatures such as audio capability and alight pen that allowed users to writeon the computer screen.

Second, Taylor wrote, a computer canserve as a tool, such as a calculator orword processor. In fact, he said, outsideof schools, tool-mode computing is pop-ularly seen as synonymous with com-puter use, period.28(Nevertheless, schools

often have ignored the potential useful-ness of digital tools such as database andspreadsheet software for homework and

vocational training, instead expecting stu-dents to learn such programs on theirown, says Stanfords Kamil.)

Finally, Taylor wrote, a student canlearn to program a computer to donew tasks, effectively acting as the ma-chines tutor.

Because you cant teach what youdont understand, the human tutor the programmer will learn what heor she is trying to teach the computer,wrote Taylor. Furthermore, learnersgain new insights into their own think-ing through learning to program. 29

This argument that studentsshould learn the inner workings ofcomputers and learn to teach, or pro-

gram them proved persuasive. Inthe 1970s and 80s, many schools in-stalled computer labs and requiredevery high school student to take aprogramming course, the aim being toteach thinking skills and prepare youngpeople for computer-science careers.

Special programming languages weredeveloped for beginners. Many highschool courses used BASIC, invented in

1964, which featured short programs andsimple-to-understand error messages. Inthe early days, the classes seemed suc-cessful. Student programmers have taughtcomputers to tutor younger students inarithmetic operations, to drill students onFrench verb endings, to play Monopoly,to calculate loan interest, . . . draw mapsand to generate animated pictures,Taylor wrote in 1980. 30

LOGO, a language created in 1967to extend the supposed benefits ofprogramming to elementary-school stu-dents, allowed students to move a cur-sor called a Turtle around ascreen to draw simple pictures.

A child gradually learns the differentprogramming commands expressedin words and numbers typed on a key-board that move the Turtle around

If you use technology in a tutorial program and the kidsdo just as well as they do with a live tutor or teacher, hesays, then the technology is freeing up a teacher to under-take other teaching tasks that only a human can perform. That,he says, means the technology is a useful addition to a schoolsrepertoire of learning strategies.

Money is yet another challenge for educational-technology cre-ators. The research and development needed to produce a goodpiece of educational software can cost millions of dollars, notesGrover J. Whitehurst, director of the Brown Center on EducationPolicy at the Brookings Institution, a centrist think tank in Wash-ington. Where do you get the venture capital to support it? he

asks. Would-be investors are hesitant because they know schoolsmay not buy if they have to spend $500 a student, Whitehurstsays. The federal government could bolster technology develop-ment by providing a guaranteed market, such as the worldwidenetwork of schools that serve children of Defense Departmentpersonnel, for some products, he suggests.

Then there is a real, although largely unintended, bias to-ward big software developers. The Department of Educationgenerally throws out the findings of small research studies onlearning technologies on the grounds that they dont provideenough evidence to warrant a conclusion, says Daniel Schwartz,a Stanford University professor of education. But the only de-

velopers who can pay for the big clinical trials that the de-partment considers gold-standard evidence are the big, estab-

lished, heavily capitalized companies, he says.

The big question is, how do you make it possible to dis-seminate and test educational technology so that small play-ers with innovative ideas can gather sufficient data on theirproducts, Schwartz says. You cant just have big companies,or youll have no revolution, just bookkeeping.

Schwartz envisions a continual-improvement system in whichthe government establishes an infrastructure to help academicresearchers test their technologies-in-development in a fewschools. Because digital products such as learning software canbe continuously tinkered with, I can put something out andkeep collecting data over time about how it works and mineuser feedback for problems and suggested changes, Schwartz

says. Teachers could post commentaries on how things workand how to use them, he says.

Perhaps the biggest barrier to developing innovative tech-nology is the current student-assessment system, which relieson standardized tests that mainly gauge rote-memorization skills,many researchers say. What gets tested is what gets taught,says James Lerman, director of the Progressive Science Initia-tive, a program at Kean University in Union, N.J., that helpsexperienced teachers become certified to teach math and sci-ence. With testing focused on old-fashioned rote learning andignoring technology use altogether, Lerman and others say, thechances that innovative digital-learning tools will be developedand widely used are greatly diminished.

Marcia Clemmitt


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1014 CQ Researcher

the screen to draw a picture, wrote LOGOinventor Seymour Papert, an MIT math-ematician. The challenge of drawing onthe screen by typing out a series of pro-gramming commands is engagingenough to carry children through thelengthy process of ferreting out how towrite LOGO programs to create any de-sign that they envision, said Papert. 31

Ultimately, the process can changethe way they learn everything, by en-couraging habits such as exploring newsituations to figure out the rules bywhich they operate and accepting mis-takes as inevitable consequences of ex-ploration that are correctable with pa-tience and logic, Papert said. 32

Research has failed, however, to pro-

duce evidence that problem-solving skillsused in programming classes transfer toother types of learning or even to laterprogramming work, wrote Roy D. Pea,director of Stanfords Center for Inno-vations in Learning. Children who stud-ied programming engaged in very littlepreplanning when they worked onnew programs, he said. Rather than using

DIGITAL EDUCATION

The digital revolution, with its staggering number of inex-pensive new tools and capabilities, eventually will changethe way students learn, many education scholars say.

Handheld GPS-equipped cell phones can enhance scienceor history field trips and more, says Barry Fishman, an associ-ate professor of learning technologies at the University of Michi-gan. Teachers can set up applications or apps thatallow students phones to point out interesting information orpose puzzles to be solved at certain locations. For example,University of Michigan undergraduates have been introducedto the schools complex library system via such interactive walk-throughs. Thats a possibly transformative idea that could lead

to more student engagement, Fishman says.Websites multimedia features can help students travel virtually

around the globe by posting live and archived videos, photographs,sound recordings, text, chat logs and more, and inviting visitorsto interact with the material and each other, says Aaron Doering,an associate professor of curriculum and instruction at the Uni-

versity of Minnesota. Through his adventure learning website, GoNorth! (www.polarhusky.com), students can follow along as heand a team of environmental researchers explore oil drilling andglobal warming in the Canadian Arctic, in real time and in archives.What brings people back is that there is a narrative of the jour-ney that individuals can connect to. We feed the students all themedia and interviews we do.

The Web allows everybody, including kids, to publish their

work and find an audience, so students can share their ownscientific adventures, says Doering. In a new project, hes en-couraging classes to document local environmental conditionsand share them in what could become a student-generatedknowledge map of large geographical regions. Students in NewOrleans, for example, document with photos and videos whatshappening with frogs in the Mississippi River near their homesand share their observations with students 1,000 miles north inMinnesota who are studying their local stretch of the Missis-sippi, Doering says.

Digital devices drastically lower the cost of taking scientificmeasurements, and computers make once-formidable data analy-sis easy, says Paulo Blikstein, an assistant professor of education

at Stanford University and director of its Transformative LearningTechnologies Lab. Today, a $50 science-lab setup can includedata loggers digital devices that can record physical mea-surements such as temperature, humidity, light intensity or volt-age and upload them to a computer, where the data can be putinto visual form, graphed and analyzed mathematically. The lowprice and ability to analyze data without having advanced mathskills put deep science concepts within reach of high-school-ageand even younger students, Blikstein says.

By showing whos connected to whom, social media cangive students a sense of being connected to a larger networkand to the world and encourage them to link their learning

with real-world action, says Christine Greenhow, an assistantprofessor in the Schools of Education and Information Studiesat the University of Maryland, College Park. When studying atopic such as global warming, for example, Web-connected stu-dents find ways of connecting with stakeholders, policymakersand other interested citizens. Such work can increase studentsengagement with their academic studies and also increase theircivic engagement, she says.

Computer software that collects detailed information aboutexactly how a student behaves when taking a test or workingmath problems can help pinpoint the kind of help the studentneeds, says Daniel Schwartz, a Stanford education professor.Its always been one of the toughest nuts for schools to crack,Schwartz says.

A kids taking a test and fails. Now what? What do you do?There are a million possible reasons why he may be gettingthings wrong, each calling for a different remedial strategy,Schwartz says. Does he have a misconception about the sub-ject? Does he not persevere in problem-solving? If you canfind out exactly what the students process is when he hes-itated, moved through a question too fast, changed an answerand so on the information provides the clues to help himimprove. Digital sensing, data collection and data analysis to re-

veal subtle behavior patterns are exactly what computers do well and humans cant do at all, Schwartz says.

Marcia Clemmitt

Technology Opens New Doors to LearningScholars say transformative ideas could bolster student engagement.


15/24


logic to debug nonworking programs as programming classes teach theyusually just erased them and started overfrom scratch, Pea reported. Transfer of

problem-solving strategies between dis-similar problems proved notoriouslydifficult . . . even for adults. 33

By the 1990s, enthusiasm for teach-ing programming to students all butdied out for a whole host of reasons,says Yasmin B. Kafai, a professor oflearning and technology at the Uni-versity of Pennsylvanias GraduateSchool of Education.

For one thing, most schools had notintegrated programming into the rest ofthe curriculum, leaving it without ob-

vious applications to other activities,Kafai says. Then, beginning around1990, multimedia CD-ROMS provideda more immediately attractive use forcomputers, with games to play andvideos to view.

Many teachers werent up to the taskof teaching programming adequately, saysOregons Moursund. When training teach-ers to teach LOGO, Moursund says hefound that many had no insight intoproblem solving and thus couldnt teach

students the deeper thinking skills thatprogramming could impart.Proponents of getting students to

program didnt give up, however. Inthe 1990s and 2000s, new languagesfor beginners emerged. Perhaps themost prominent is Scratch, a free on-line Web community designed to teachprogramming concepts by letting userscreate and post online videos, music,graphics and computer games. Scratchsdevelopers, which include the NationalScience Foundation and MIT, aimed to

make the language a favorite hobbyrather than a school subject. 34

Kids only spend 18 percent of theirwaking hours in school, so theres lotsof time outside that can be leveraged,says Kafai, a Scratch developer and re-searcher. In the past, students had noaccess to programming resources exceptthrough schools, but now the situationhas flipped. Every child has a smart-

phone that can be used to program. Asof October, the website had 921,785 reg-istered members, 270,318 of whom hadcreated more than 2.1 million projects. 35

After enrollment surged in the 1980sand 90s, the percentage of high schoolsoffering elective introductory courses incomputer science dropped from 78 per-cent to 65 percent between 2005 and2009. During the same period the per-centage offering Advanced Placement(AP) courses also declined, from 40 to27 percent. 36 The College Board, whichhad offered two levels of computer-science exams, ended its more advancedAP exam after the May 2009 tests. 37

College computer-science enrollment

also fell, from a record per-departmentaverage of 100 newly enrolled studentsin 2000 to 50 by 2007. 38

Enrollments have remained in atrough in recent years, says Joan Peck-ham, a professor of computer scienceat the University of Rhode Island, inKingston. Part of the problem is image.Research finds that students have a verypoor image of computing as boring

and full of these nerdy people facinga screen all day, she says. Theres a lotto lose should interest remain low, Peck-ham says. We have a technical and an

interdisciplinary world in which virtu-ally every profession depends on so-phisticated computer applications.

Connected Computers

P erhaps the heaviest blow to pro-gramming came from the Inter-net. As schools gained online access,networked computers potential to serveas tools of hitherto unimagined powerfor accessing information and com-

municating quickly outpaced othercomputer uses. Internet-connectedlearning provides a tantalizing glimpseof the world of personalized study thatmany scholars say the Information Agewill ultimately bring.

The Internet allows students andteachers to try out different ways oflearning, something that was hard todo when every learning methodology

Growth in Online Courses Predicted

The presidents of four-year public colleges expect nearly half of their

undergraduate students to be taking an online course in 10 years, up

from only 14 percent now. Two-thirds of presidents at two-year

colleges and 54 percent at for-profit colleges predict that more than

half their students will be taking online courses in 10 years.

Source: Paul Taylor, et al., The Digital Revolution and

Higher Education, Pew Internet & American Life Project,

August 2011, p. 10, www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/

Reports/2011/PIP-Online-Learning.pdf

Percent of College Presidents Saying Undergraduate

Students Are Taking or Will Be Taking an Online Class

Now

Ten years from now

Time period

010

203040506070

80%

For profit2-year private/public4-year public4-year private

11%37%

14%

45%

16%

65%

20%

54%


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1016 CQ Researcher

DIGITAL EDUCATION

was available only as a pricey text-book or software purchase, says Stan-fords Schwartz. For example, the KahnAcademy offers a large number of short

lectures posted on YouTube on suchsubjects as solving quadratic equationsand learning the parts of a cell. MITgraduate Salman Kahns videos are agood example of stuff thats easy touse and that multiplies learning op-tions cheaply, Schwartz says.

Original documents, maps, archivedfilm footage and interviews with peo-ple involved in historical events beganappearing online in the past 15 years,providing opportunities for more in-depth, self-directed learning, says

Resta of the University of Texas. Forexample, with primary sources online,you can have kids actually practicehistorical thinking by using originalsources to construct their own versionsof how and why some historical eventshappened, he says.

As the Internet has provided learn-ing opportunities, it has increasedpressure on schools to provide Internet-connected devices.

An infrastructure for learning should

support learning in and out of theclassroom, and thus an effective,modern education system should finda way to supply students and educa-tors with Internet-access devices foraround-the-clock use, said the federalgovernments most recent nationaleducation-technology plan, issued in2010. 39 Some school districts and onestate, Maine, as well as countries suchas Uruguay and Peru, have imple-mented one-digital-device-per-studentprograms, typically dispensing laptop

computers to students in some grades.Maine debuted the biggest U.S. pro-

gram in 2002, placing a laptop intothe hands of every middle-school stu-dent. The program didnt mandatespecific uses but provided training forteachers to help them integrate thecomputers into the curriculum. If youjust drop the computers on the kidsdesks, it wont work, said Gov. Angus

King, an Independent. Its a funda-mentally different way of teaching. Itsnot standing up in front of the class-room lecturing. 40

Research on one-child, one-deviceprograms supports Kings contention,scholars say.

Few studies show that laptop pro-grams raise standardized-test scores sig-nificantly. However, greater quantityand improved quality of writing; moreteacher and peer feedback on studentwork; wider opportunities to access in-formation from a wide variety ofsources; and deeper exploration oftopics through in-depth research aredemonstrated outcomes of programs

that are integrated into the curriculum,according to Mark Warschauer, a pro-fessor of education and informatics atthe University of California, Irvine. 41

Some studies do show test-scoreimprovement. For example, between2000 and 2005 the percentage ofMaines eighth-graders who met thestates proficiency standard for writingrose from 29.1 percent to 41.4 per-cent, and classes that used laptops fordrafting and editing outperformed those

that didnt.42

Other one-child, one-device pro-grams operate on the principle thatownership of computers is enough byitself to improve learning. Whenevery child has a connected laptop,limits are erased as they can learn towork with others around the world,to access high-quality, modern mate-rials, to engage their passions and de-velop their expertise, according to theCambridge, Mass.-based One LaptopPer Child Foundation, which distrib-

utes laptops free to children in de-veloping countries. 43

But research fails to back up thatcontention, some scholars contend.

In Birmingham, Ala., researchersfound that two years into a programthat gave students computers but did-nt formally integrate them into cur-ricula, only 20 percent used the lap-tops a lot in class, while 60 percent

used them a little and 20 percentsaid they never used them. 44

In Uruguay, which received laptopsfrom the foundation in 2007, only

about 25 percent of the kids are bring-ing them to class, says Kim, at Stan-fords School of Education. He citesthe limited use as evidence that be-fore students can be motivated to usefree laptops in class, educators mustactively engage them in projects thatencourage them to do their own In-ternet research.

In the past few years, as cell phoneshave aqcuired as much memory ascomputers, some schools have beenflirting with the notion of bring-your-

own-technology programs. Such ini-tiatives generally allow students to usetheir own devices usually smart-phones in class while allowing stu-dents who dont own Internet tech-nology to borrow devices that belongto the school. In a survey of schooladministrators in the fall of 2010, near-ly two-thirds said they were unlikelyto allow students to use their own mo-bile devices in class. However, justunder a quarter said they were likely

to do so.45

Using bring-your-own-technologyprograms to save schools money andencourage student engagement raisesfears, however. Besides worryingabout unfairness to students who dontown high-tech phones, administratorssee murky areas of legal liability if stu-dents access inappropriate Web pages,cheat or disrupt classes using theirown equipment. 46

You can see the tension as someschools say, We have to ban person-

al cell phones in class, says KeanUniversitys Lerman. But many youngphone owners are discovering phonesproductive capabilities, doing unbe-lievable things, he says. Some havewritten novels. Schools should en-courage such innovations, not banthem, he says.

Continued on p. 1018


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no


At Issue:Should schools use as much digital technology as they can afford?yes

yes

CURT BONKPROFESSOR, INSTRUCTIONAL SYSTEMSTECHNOLOGYDEPARTMENT,

INDIANA UNIVERSITY

WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, DECEMBER 2011

despite persistent budget dilemmas and constraints, thisis no time to ban, control, limit or passively ignorepossible uses of technology in teaching and learning.Instead, it should be an age filled with heavy doses of learning-technology experimentation and creative initiatives. With properplanning, discussion and evaluation, there is much that technol-ogy dollars can afford, even for the smallest or most impover-ished school or district.

A couple of years ago, I authored the book The World IsOpen: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education. Init, I detailed many free and openly available resources for learn-ing. With careful budgeting, laptops, tablet computers such asthe iPad or other hardware can be acquired and embedded

with a wide range of free tools and applications for learningbasic mathematics, spelling, grammar and scientific concepts.

Is that not enough? Then have students explore learningportals containing the works of Shakespeare, Darwin, Einstein,

Jane Austen, Jane Goodall, the Dalai Lama and other major

historical figures. For those concerned about resource quality,such contents are often created by NASA, the U.S. govern-ment, the Smithsonian, National Geographic, the United Na-tions, MIT, Berkeley, and many other reputable sources.

Digital technologies offer much hope to learners and educa-tors today. Students can be inspired by mentors and role modelsfrom all corners of the Earth. Feedback on ones ideas can bereceived in the early morning hours or late at night. E-bookscan be loaded into mobile devices that can represent eventsthrough simulations, animations, videos and hyperlinked text.

Web technology situates students in authentic contexts ana-lyzing real world data and interacting with their global peersabout the results of their investigations. If this requires acheap $20 membership in some service that fosters such ex-

pert advice or interaction, that is $20 well spent. Ditto thetens of thousands of dollars many school districts are spend-ing today on iPads and other learning technologies.

Effective learning requires an environment designed formultiple paths to success. In the 21st century, digital technolo-gies social networking, e-books, shared online video, mo-bile applications, virtual worlds, collaborative tools, etc. enhance the learning opportunities for untold millions oflearners. The maximization of technologies in the learningspace, in effect, provides a distinct advantage for learning.Now is the time to move ahead, not retrench or retrace.no

PAUL THOMASASSOCIATEPROFESSOR OFEDUCATION,FURMANUNIVERSITY

WRITTEN FOR CQ RESEARCHER, DECEMBER 2011

technology represents the essence of American con-sumerism by feeding our popular clamor for acquiring thecurrent hot thing. Yet the ever-increasing significance oftechnology in our daily lives and its contribution to powerfuladvances as well as a widening equity gap place education in a

complex paradox.Author Kurt Vonnegut quipped, Novels that leave out tech-nology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresentedlife by leaving out sex. As with novels, so with schools, Ibelieve, but we must take one step beyond whether schoolsshould address technology to how.

Two experiences from my 18 years teaching high schoolEnglish inform my belief that schools should not incorporateas much digital technology as finances allow. I began teachingin the 1980s during the rise of MTV and witnessed my fieldmake a claim that text was dead, and thus English teachinghad to shift to the brave new video world failing to antici-pate instant messaging, email, texting, blogging and the text-rich social-media boom.

The intersection of technologys unknowable future, its in-flated costs, and its inevitable obsolescence must give uspause as we spend public funds. Let me suggest simply look-ing into the closets and storage facilities at schools across theUnited States, where cables, monitors and other artifacts cost-ing millions of dollars lie useless, replaced by the next-bestthing we then had to acquire. In fact, just think of one thing,the Laserdisc video player (soon to be joined by interactivesmart whiteboards in those closets).

Chalkboard, marker board, interactive board this sequencehas not insured better teaching or learning, but has guaranteedgreater costs for schools and profits for manufacturers.

In Walden, Henry David Thoreau offered two warnings thatshould guide how we approach technology: We are in great

haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; butMaine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to commu-nicate, and, We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.

The foundational principles of public education for democracyand human agency must not fall prey to preparing children forthe future by perpetually acquiring new technology because wecan never know that future. Thus, we must not squander publicfunds on ever-changing technology but instead focus on thehuman interaction that is teaching and learning as well as thecritical literacy and numeracy every child needs. We can antici-pate only one fact of our futures change.


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1018 CQ Researcher

CURRENT

SITUATIONDigital Expansion

T ight school budgets and concernsabout preparing students for tech-nology-heavy workplaces are drivingefforts to expand computer-based learn-ing. But controversy continues overwhether fast-changing digital technol-ogy is the best use of scarce funds.

The New York City Department ofEduc a t i on l a s tspring announced itwould boost tech-nology spending by$542 million for the2011-12 school yearto pay for newwiring and otherinfrastructure up-grades, despite im-posing major cuts

elsewhere. Over thenext three years,the city will cut$1.3 bill ion fromplanned schoolconstruction andel iminate 6 ,100teachers morethan 6 percent ofthe citys workforce 4,600 throughlayoffs. The newtech spending comes on top of an

initiative, completed in 2009, thatequipped every classroom withplug-in and wireless Internet con-nections. 47

If we want our kids to be pre-pared for life after school in the 21stcentury, we need to consider tech-nology a basic element of public ed-ucation, said New Yorks Deputy Chan-cellor of Education John White. 48

But history shows its all too easyto make flawed technology purchases,some analysts say. We have seen cir-cumstances where schools have over-

bought for bandwidth that they didnttouch, said Douglas A. Levin, execu-tive director of the State EducationalTechnology Directors Association, a na-tional membership group. 49

A growing number of states are ex-panding access to so-called virtualor online public schools, where stu-dents take all or some of their cours-es via the Internet using technologiessuch as tutoring software and web-casts and are assisted by teachersusing email or chat software. 50 (See

sidebar, p. 1006.)

And some states now require stu-

dents to undertake online study. InNovember, Idaho became the first torequire students to take at least twoonline courses to graduate. The stateBoard of Education approved the planto begin in the 2012-2013 school year,though the legislature will review thedecision in 2012. 51 After prolongeddebate, the board substantially scaledback an original proposal by Idaho

state School Superintendent Tom Lunato require eight online credits. 52

There is no magic bullet . . . thatis going to meet every single need for

every single student, but making on-line study mandatory is saying thatthere is, said Sue Darden, a teacher inthe Meridian School District, near Boise.Those of us in education can tell youthat thats just not going to work. 53

But advocates of online courses saythey arent much different from cours-es in brick-and-mortar schools. Thereis still a live teacher. It may be at a dis-tance, but that teacher is still instruct-ing and interacting with the student,said Susan Patrick, president of the In-

ternational Association for K-12 OnlineLearning, a membershipgroup for public and pri-vate entities involved inonline education. 54

Idaho joins three otherstates that already hadapproved online-study re-quirements. Alabama andMichigan require high-school students to com-plete some online learn-

ing as a prerequisite forgraduation but not nec-essarily an entire course.In June, Republican Gov.Rick Scott of Floridasigned legislation requir-ing students to completeone online course forgraduation. 55

As concerns growthat lack of computer-science education

mainly training in programming and the

theory and methods of stating problemsin a form computers can solve maythreaten economic competitiveness, billswere filed in both the House and theSenate this fall to beef up computer-science instruction in K-12 schools.

Sponsored by Sen. Robert Casey,D-Pa., and Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo.,the Computer Science Education Actwould fund grants to states to improve

DIGITAL EDUCATION

Continued from p. 1016

President Barack Obama visi ts Parkville Middle School and Center ofTechnology in Baltimore on Feb. 14, 2011, to promote his 2012 budgetproposal, which calls for increasing investment in math, science and

engineering education. Some public officials are promotingonline learning and so-called blended classes that use

both computer-based and in-person instruction.

AFP/GettyImages/TimSloan


19/24


computer-science education; pay forteacher training; appoint a nationalcommission to coordinate state efforts;and develop a plan for independent

evaluation of programs.56

Scaling Up

T he number of digital devices inK-12 classrooms continues to climb.While computers proliferate, however,adequate support and appropriate cur-ricula to ensure theyre used produc-tively are still lacking, and many class-room computers are still being usedmainly by teachers, not students.

Use of digital technologies to im-prove learning is working in pockets,but scaling up is very difficult, says theUniversity of Marylands Greenhow.

Many education schools include tech-nology training in their curricula, butaspiring teachers still often end updoing their student teaching in an en-vironment where they dont have thisstuff, says Steven M. Ross, director ofthe Johns Hopkins Universitys Centerfor Research and Reform in Education.

Several recent surveys put the per-centage of K-12 classrooms with com-puters at more than 90 percent, saysKarin S. Forssell, program director forStanfords masters degree program inLearning, Design and Technology. How-ever, says Forssell, while a lot of statswe have say that there is a comput-er in nearly every classroom, theyrenot necessarily in the hands of thestudents. In an extensive survey Fors-sell conducted of California teachersat all grade levels who hold national

board certifications, about 75 percentsaid their classrooms include work withcomputers. While one cant generalizetoo much from the limited survey, it sug-gests that the 90-plus percent estimatesof classrooms with computers dont re-flect student access, she says.

Schools sensibly start by giving theteacher a computer to serve as a gradebook, communicate using websites and

email and replace audio-visual aidssuch as overhead projectors, Forssellsays. Helping teachers become com-fortable with technology is an impor-

tant first step toward helping them fig-ure out how to use it productively forstudent learning, she says.

While many schools now have digi-tal equipment, far fewer have over-hauled curricula and teaching prac-tices to facilitate productive use of it.

Weve got schools wired, and wehave significant purchases of instruc-tional software, says Brookings White-hurst. However, its at the back of theroom, rather than in daily use by allstudents, and few schools have inte-

grated computers into well-thought-outcurriculum goals, he says.

OUTLOOK

Transformers?

Atransformative shift in education to

the personalized, student-focused,lifetime-learning model that the Infor-mation Age demands will happen, manyscholars say. Its just a question of when.

Years of budget cuts, with moreto come, plus the need to train moremath, science and engineering stu-dents, will help drive the shift to morecomputer-based learning, says HarvardsDede. If the United States doesnt fixits education, in 10 years well be likea developing country.

Change might come quickly, Dede

suggests. A century ago the UnitedStates reinvented its education systemin a very short time, moving fromone-room schoolhouses to the indus-tri

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