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Why are schools using computers primarily to teach low-level skills when technology has the potential to deepen student learning?

Revisiting the literature from the 1990s on instructional technology is like journeying back to a more nostalgic and hopeful time when the promise of computers—and their potential impact on student learning—appeared boundless. Used in concert with a learner-centered instructional approach and a curriculum that focused on authentic learning, computers, it was thought, would serve as “mind tools” (Jonassen, 1996) to build students' higher-order thinking skills. In fact, the terms computers and higher-order thinking formed a sort of double helix in instructional technology parlance. Infrastructural supports in the United States—such as E-rate and federal funding for hardware, software, and teacher training initiatives—exemplified a commitment to the belief that computers could transform student learning.

How different the present era. With proposed budget cuts for teacher technology training programs, , and, most important, no body of research unequivocally linking student technology use to improved learning, the pendulum has shifted. Computers will certainly not disappear from schools, but educators and education officials are currently scrutinizing their potential value as an instructional tool.

This diminished enthusiasm may prove beneficial in the long run. By reflecting on the original goals for instructional technology and reevaluating prevailing patterns of classroom technology use, we can begin to bridge the gap between intention and implementation.

What Happened to Eureka?

Can technology improve student learning? Yes. Computers can provide transformative student learning experiences that would otherwise not be possible. One such moment occurred during an activity I conducted with social studies teachers, in which they were tasked with reapportioning the 435 members of the House of Representatives across the 50 states using 2000 Census population data. Although these teachers “covered” reapportionment in the curriculum, they had never really understood its impact nor the impact of the Connecticut Compromise on each state's share of electoral votes—until they used spreadsheets to model reapportionment. They realized that each person's vote is weighted differently, depending on the state in which he or she lives. People living in states with smaller populations have a larger share of the vote than do residents in more populous states.

Why are such eureka moments the exception rather than the rule? Many educators believe in the “exceptionality” of computers, viewing them as instructional talismans that can do for student learning what other reforms and tools cannot. This has resulted in a narrow focus on technology at the expense of the more important pillars of learning—cognition, instruction, assessment, and curriculum. Four common behavior patterns reinforce this notion of exceptionality and simultaneously handicap the potential of computers to promote higher-order thinking.

First, many districts have concentrated on professional development that trains teachers in skills instead of teaching them how computers can enhance student learning. This focus on technology skills has diverted needed attention from helping teachers understand the instructional practices best suited to capitalize on technology's potential, serving instead to hide or exacerbate weaknesses in instruction, lesson design, and assessment.

Second, many districts have not made the kinds of accommodations necessary to allow for the full capitalization of classroom technology, failing to provide such supports as long-term professional development in technology integration; access to sufficient hardware and software; creation of sufficient instructional time for inquiry-based, technology-integrated activities; on-site technical support; and instructional leadership to help teachers understand how they can use computers to extend and deepen student learning.

Third, schools have conflated technology use with instructional quality and student engagement with improved learning and higher-order thinking. In all the excitement about new ways of teaching with technology, we educators may have neglected to pose the most fundamental question: Are students really learning?

Fourth, we often classify all software applications as cognitively and instructionally equal. This misconception has resulted in an overreliance on conceptually easy kinds of software—lower-order applications that, although engaging, focus on simple cognitive tasks—at the expense of more conceptually difficult kinds of software—higher-order applications that are more aligned with higher-order skills.

Lower-Order Versus Higher-Order Applications

Technology alone cannot move students to higher-order thinking skills, but some applications are more suited for this task than others. My own experience in classrooms indicates that students generally use lower-order applications that offer few opportunities for problem solving, analysis, and evaluation.

Observations of middle and high school classrooms conducted between 1999 and 2003 through the South-Central Regional Technology in Education Consortium indicate that most schools use the Microsoft Office software suite (including word processing, spreadsheet, database, electronic presentation, publishing, Web editing, and e-mail programs) as well as the Internet. The most commonly used applications are what I call show-and-tell applications—PowerPoint, Word, Publisher, and Front Page—with the Internet the most commonly used non—show-and-tell kind of application in terms of frequency of classroom use. Classrooms rarely use spreadsheets or databases, which are conceptually and technically more difficult. E-mail is virtually nonexistent because of policies prohibiting student use.

The ability to synthesize information using a combination of text and visuals is certainly an important skill. But an overreliance on electronic presentation software precludes more rigorous kinds of learning. PowerPoint does not lead students to delve deeply into the writing process or wrestle with complex and conflicting conceptual information. Indeed, its very architecture demands episodic, disjointed knowledge construction. Content is reduced to a “sight bite”; the focus is on color and visual stimulation. PowerPoint may be developmentally appropriate for younger students who are still learning the refinements of organizing thoughts. It may be a wonderful entry-level tool for teachers wading into the technology waters. But as the default tool of choice at the middle and high school levels, it fails to promote deep, complex, or even developmentally appropriate learning.

In addition to lower-order tools, classrooms use more robust tools, such as the Internet, in such nondifferentiated ways that they dilute their power. Although students use the Internet to access information, I have seen little evidence of students engaging in more complex and dynamic kinds of online learning opportunities—such as online collaboration or content-oriented simulations—despite the fact that much of the rationale for broadband access in schools was for students to take part in such opportunities.

Instead, students generally use the Internet as an electronic textbook, often without questioning, validating, or evaluating the information they find. Consequently, a good deal of student Internet use is intellectually passive, with the greatest amount of activity occurring at the fine motor level—pointing, clicking, and copying and pasting large amounts of text (often with impunity and without attribution) into Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or Publisher, a pattern emblematic of an increasingly copy-and-paste culture (Gibson, 2005).

More developmentally appropriate and challenging tools, such as spreadsheets and databases, offer richer opportunities to practice analytical and critical thinking skills. Spreadsheets demand both abstract and concrete reasoning and involve students in the mathematical logic of calculations. They enable learners to model complex and rich real-world phenomena. Students practice their critical thinking skills by making assumptions, coding assumptions as variables, manipulating variables, analyzing outcomes, and evaluating and displaying data both quantitatively and visually (Jonassen, Carr, & Yueh, 1998).

Yet how do classrooms generally use spreadsheets? For show-and-tell: to input and graph information. Although spreadsheets are a natural fit for math and science classes—as the various Excel applications, from accounting to trigonometric function, illustrate—they are often conspicuously absent from these environments. Spreadsheets may receive their most rigorous workout in computer classes, but often in a decontextualized, mechanical fashion (entering data, formatting columns, and so on)—a lower-order use of a potentially higher-order tool.

Databases, like spreadsheets, are naturally suited to cultivating higher-order thinking skills. By its very taxonomical nature, database design can help students systematically organize, arrange, and classify data according to established criteria (Adams & Burns, 1999). Such activities require students to think inductively (in aggregating data) and deductively (in disaggregating information). Yet databases, like spreadsheets, are “difficult,” so students rarely use them for analytic purposes.

A number of other software tools offer even greater opportunities for interacting with rich content, real-world data, and complex procedures that foster higher-order thinking. These tools are nearly invisible in most schools. Geographic information systems (GIS), computer-aided design programs, and simulation software programs—especially those with a problem-based component—can stimulate students' intellectual development and enable learners to create, revise, and reconstruct what they know to create new frameworks of knowledge.

For example, students can use GIS to indicate a geographic area's vulnerability to natural disaster, identifying constraints such as floodplains or areas subject to coastal erosion. They can create an alternative land use plan in light of such constraints. Using a free GIS-type tool, such as Google Earth, they can show change over time for a specific city by scanning in historical photos of the city and “rubber-sheeting” them onto the actual topography of a current satellite view.

Why, then, the focus on lower-order technology tools at the expense of higher-order ones? Why the near ubiquity of PowerPoint and the dearth of databases? Higher-order tools, for the most part, are not as user-friendly or visually appealing. They are time-intensive to learn, integrate, and use. Teachers often don't understand how these applications can help foster analytic skills because they don't understand the tool or its instructional possibilities. Similarly, school districts often lack technology trainers who are proficient in the mechanics of these tools and in the conceptual skills they demand. It's easier, quicker, and cheaper to teach and use PowerPoint. It's easier to ask students to write a newsletter article in Publisher that explains the Connecticut Compromise than to require them to use spreadsheets to model the way in which the Connecticut Compromise influences the notion of “one person, one vote.”

Two Strategies for Change

How can schools and school districts change such patterns of use and nonuse and address the factors that impede teachers from capitalizing on computer technology's instructional potential? It will require a return to original assumptions—the need for critical thinking, for learner-centered instruction, and for students to use computers as mind tools. It will also require professional development for teachers that systemically and intensively addresses these needs (Boethel & Dimock, 1999; Means et al., 1993; Roehrig-Knapp & Glenn, 1996).

Strategy 1: Teach critical thinking first and technology later.

If higher-order thinking is a main goal of instruction, then teachers themselves must keep sharpening their critical thinking skills. It's not enough to help students find and communicate information. Teachers need to show students how to evaluate the information's veracity, reason logically, come to evidence-based decisions, create relevant new knowledge, and apply this learning to new situations. This instruction may involve using computers, but computer use is not the goal. Students may be engaged, but engagement is not the goal, either. Students and teachers must become creators of information and ideas, not simply users of technology.

For example, a science teacher might ask students to create a survey that measures attitudes about the environment, which they would administer to teachers, peers, and community members. Students could input survey responses in Excel and run a basic statistical analysis of the data, thereby creating two new sets of information: survey data, and an analysis of survey results. Or students could deconstruct hard-copy graphs, examining their scale, proportion, labels, graph types, units of measure, clarity of message, and data integrity. By doing so, they would familiarize themselves with the idea that every graph tells a story, using numbers to stand in for words.

For students and teachers to become creators of information, the instructional technology community needs to focus on the role of computers as learning tools. In our desire to advance technology use among teachers, those of us working in the field have often resorted to cheerleading as opposed to critical thinking, rationalization as opposed to reasoning, and complacency as opposed to critical self-reflection regarding patterns of current classroom computer use. The instructional technology community needs to actively encourage teachers to reflect on technology and engage them in discussions about technology's role in fostering learning.

Teachers should reflect on the following questions:

    What kinds of software should I use in the classroom, and why?

    When should my students use computers in class? When should they not use them?

    Does the current technology use in my classroom support the curriculum and deepen content? How?

    Do certain uses of technology match certain learning outcomes?

    Does my current technology use improve my students' learning?

More specific questions might deal with how teachers could use spreadsheets to help students better understand linear algebra, what kinds of communications skills students might develop if they heavily use PowerPoint, or how Microsoft Word might help improve student writing in ways that would otherwise be impossible.

Strategy 2: Focus on curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

So much current technology professional development for teachers is stalled at the sensorimotor stage (Piaget, 1936)—focusing on tool use instead of on critical evaluation of the tool's ability to achieve stated education aims. Professional development must foster an intellectual environment in which teachers address not just the lower-order what and how to questions that accompany technology professional development, but also the higher-order how and why questions that prompt real understanding of the true potential of computers in instruction.

To use and integrate computers in higher-order ways, teachers must engage in intensive and ongoing professional development that responds to a number of needs. First, the program should model good instruction and take teachers through the learning process so that they experience learning from the learner's point of view and reflect on it as a practitioner. For example, in Southwest Educational Development Laboratory's Active Learning with Technology program, teachers participate as students in ongoing problem- and project-based activities that feature technology as a problem-solving tool. They then reflect on these activities as teachers and plan similar exercises in their own classrooms.

Second, professional development should help teachers understand the conceptual reasoning behind such higher-order software as geographic information systems and databases. For example, in learning about geographic information systems, teachers can begin by working with a series of base maps, transparencies, and vellum grids. Teachers can take a sheet of transparency, overlay it on the base map, and color in features. They can add or remove layers by adding or removing transparencies. In this way, they become familiar with the concepts of spatial analysis and overlaying information, and they come to understand the importance of scale and projection.

Third, professional development should model technology use that is deliberately matched to a particular learning outcome so that teachers can see how activity design, tool use, and learning connect. For example, teachers could go through a structured exploration of various kinds of software—from those that emphasize “drill-and-kill” to more open-ended products—in light of Bloom's Taxonomy. This kind of analysis would reveal that not all software is equal. Some products are good for lower-order skills and some for higher-order skills.

Last, professional development should focus on core areas of teaching—content knowledge, curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Once teachers have a solid base in these areas, they can begin incorporating technology. Teachers should familiarize themselves with the skills needed to manipulate specific software applications, but the focus should be on integrating technology to support the four core areas of teaching. The technology should be almost invisible. Also, training should help teachers overcome their concerns about not being experts in technology use. They will develop their expertise as their students do, in time and with practice.

To implement these recommendations, teachers need a panoply of supports. They need opportunities to work together with colleagues to plan rich, preferably interdisciplinary activities in which technology serves to extend learning in ways that would not be possible without its use. They also need effective instructional and technology leadership from school and district administrators, access to higher-order technology tools, time to learn about and integrate these tools, and follow-up support and coaching.

The jury is still out on the impact of computers on student learning. But before we dismiss computers as an expensive fad or boondoggle, schools must take measures to ensure that they are using computers to their fullest instructional potential. Only then can we reclaim the optimism that greeted technology's dawn in the classroom. Only then will we witness the good work that results when schools use good tools well.

References

Adams, S., & Burns, M. (1999). Connecting student learning and technology. Austin, TX: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory.

Boethel, M., & Dimock, V. (1999). Constructing knowledge with technology: A review of the literature. Austin, TX: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory.

Gibson, W. (2005, July). God's little toys: Confessions of a cut and paste artist. Wired, 118–119.

Jonassen, D. H. (1996). Computers in the classroom: Mindtools for critical thinking. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Jonassen, D. H., Carr, C. S., & Yueh, H-P. (1998). Computers as mindtools for engaging learners in critical thinking. TechTrends, 43(2), 24–32. Available: http://tiger.coe.missouri.edu/~jonassen/Mindtools.pdf

Means, B., Blando, J., Olson, K., Middleton, T., Morocco, C. C., Remz, A. R., et al. (1993). Using technology to support education reform. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.

Piaget, J. (1936). The origins of intelligence in children. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Roehrig-Knapp, L., & Glenn, A. D. (1996). Restructuring schools with technology. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Mary Burns is Senior Technology Specialist and Professional Development Specialist at Education Development Center, 55 Chapel St., Newton, MA 02458; 617-618-2852; mburns@edc.org.

December 2005/January 2006 | Volume 63 | Number 4 Learning in the Digital Age Pages 48-53, Mary Burns

Copyright © 2005 by Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

What Screenagers Say About …

Pete Davidson, Alison Enzinna, Casey Gannon, Samoris Hall, Corinne Hayward, Ogechi Irondi, Ashley Magnifico, Terence Perry and Michael Virag

An issue on screenagers wouldn't be complete without the perspectives of the screenagers themselves. Fortunately, ASCD had such a group on staff last summer—our high school and college interns. So Educational Leadershipasked them about how they liked to learn and about their experiences—both good and bad—with technology use in school. Here's what they told us.

PowerPoint

"My history teacher did a good job with PowerPoints. He would put them online, which made for really great reviews. But my science teacher did just the opposite. She would get up and read off her PowerPoints. And that's so boring for everyone."

"My history teacher's PowerPoints had a lot of the key points, and he would talk around it. He would hardly ever address what was on the slide. The PowerPoint was just to help us focus on what he was talking about."

Using technology is good. But you need to take it to the next level where you’re not just reading what you wrote on the PowerPoint."

Multitasking

"My English professor got really angry about people texting and said, 'Don't you think it's rude while someone's talking?' But it's not. We've really become a generation where we have to do two things at once, and we can focus on each of them. It was a five-minute argument because he was losing."

"It's not like we're so distracted that we can't accomplish anything. It's more that we've gotten into the habit of doing a couple of things at the same time and being able to function adequately in both areas. I don't think that's a bad thing."

"I can write an essay and listen to music at the same time. It actually helps me because one thing is in the back of my mind taking up the space that the essay isn't. So I feel like I'm working more productively."

"I doodle. I’m a writer. I write notes in the margins about things in the back of my head. I just have to do more than one thing at once now. There used to be a time--when I was in 1st grade maybe--where I just focused on the teacher. But not now."

"If you can have a 4.0 and are still dialing Faceook friends and IM-ing and texting, that’s more of an accomplishment than people back in the day who had a 4.0 but didn’t have [all the distractions], like TV or video games."

"It’s like playing with toys when you’re younger. You may have blocks and something else. But you play with both equally. Just because we’re thinking about an English paper on Keats doesn’t mean we can’t also think about football practice."

Interactive Whiteboards

"If teachers are explaining something using a whiteboard, instead of our just hearing it and trying to do it, we can see their screen and do what they're doing along with them. So the explanation is easier to understand."

"I would love for more teachers to use SMART boards. If a teacher can scroll through the SMART board, select something, and show you everything, they're the best! But the teacher has to know how to use it and not ask us, 'How do I close this?'"

"Make the SMART board workshop mandatory. Some teachers in my school were good with using a SMART board, some were great, and some just wrote on it—they literally hung a piece of paper on it. They'd rather use it that way than use it as a SMART board. That's my parents' tax money, right?"

"I’ve only had one teacher who had a SMART board, and she didn’t know how to use it. She was just like, 'Well, all right, that didn’t work. Just rely on your textbook for now. I’m going to try and figure this out. And then we’ll get back to it.' But why have a SMART board if you’re not going to use it?"

Technology-Challenged Teachers

"I'd much rather explain some technology thing to a teacher than sit there and watch them try to figure it out for themselves. Just admit you don't get it. We all know you don't know. Because if you knew, it would be up already. Just don't be afraid to ask for our help."

"There's a lot of pressure for teachers to use technology, but no one teaches them how. What drives me nuts is when we're going to watch a YouTube video, 10 minutes later the teacher still hasn't figured out how to start it. It's kind of cute. But it's a waste of time."

"One of the most frustrating things is when you have to help the teacher with technology. It's annoying. It puts you above them. And then it's hard to learn from them."

Teachers shouldn’t be afraid of technology. Understand that it’s how we live our lives. So don’t just push it out. Learn to cope with us and how we work.

The Downside of Technology

"Technology has become such a social and fun way for us to do things that, in a way, it's more useful to power down in the classroom, especially with cell phones. Because otherwise, you'd be distracted."

"I hate reading on the computer. I like to have something in my hand."

"I had to dish out $120 for an online textbook— and then it goes away at the end of the semester. You can't hold onto it in case you want to reference something in the future."

"I wonder whether getting a cell phone really young may influence the way kids end up writing because they're texting before their writing is fully developed. At 14, your writing is at a place where it's good enough that you're not going to be spelling 'you' with a U instead of y-o-u. But if you're 5, it may change things."

"Sometimes you get so caught up in technology, you forget about everything else."

"During the class, it was all lecture. But it’s good to learn to listen and take notes. You have to experience that, too."

Cyberbullying

"The thing about cyberbullying is that there's a record of it that can be found and printed out. And there you go. You're in trouble. Kids don't realize that. They hide behind computers and cell phones and say all these things they would never, ever say to your face."

"Cyberbullies break others down. There's no limit to it. They can type as long as they want, say whatever mean things they want to say."

"You have to teach kids how to deal with cyberbullying. Kids need to know that Facebook isn't the problem. Teachers need training so they know what they're dealing with—and not just say we need to keep kids off the Internet because they're going to cyberbully each other. Kids are always going to bully each other. They're going to find ways. Schools just have to prevent this or teach them not to do certain things. Isn't that their job?"

"Once a week, 7th and 8th graders would get together to talk [about online conduct]. The school brought in different people to teach us various things. One thing they told us was that you can't hide behind the computer forever, that there are track records, that it's becoming a big offense."

"You can block people on Facebook. You can block people from e-mailing you. But you can't block a text. You can block a number, but they can use a different phone or text you from a computer. You don't know who's actually talking to you through a computer. It's completely possible you're having a conversation with someone you don't even know."

"If you put jk [just kidding] after anything, you just kind of erase whatever you said. So someone can say, 'I hope you die. jk.' And then all of a sudden, it's like, OK, wait. Do you mean that?"

"There’s a mean version of Facebook. You just go in there and talk about someone you don’t like. There was a girl that people talked about there. It was bad because everybody knew. People from outside school could access it and write and read about her."

"Someone I know used to have a friend--but it was more like a frenemy. This girl was Googling her on Facebook. So my friend blocked her on Facebook. So the girl started sending her e-mails. So my friend blocked her on e-mails. Then she started texting her. So my friend blocked her on texting. Then it escalated when the girl came out to her house."

"The only advice my school gave about cyberbullying was to snitch. They said, 'If you’re getting cyberbullied, then send us an anonymous e-mail.' Then how are you going to know it’s me? There’s something wrong with this 'anonymous.' You get back to me, and then everybody is going to know that Sam’s getting bullied."

What's Already Working Well

"Before class, one of my high school teachers would text us a question that you had to answer in class. Sometimes you'd know the answer. Sometimes you wouldn't. So you'd talk to classmates to get their thoughts. There were big separations of groups in my school. These questions would break the separation. Because you don't usually talk to that one guy, but he may know the answer. By the time you show up to class, everybody has talked about everybody else's reading assignment. So it made us study as a group. It made us more of a community."

"One of my teachers used Skype. That's face-to-face interaction. If I had a problem with some math problem I was working on, I could take a picture of it and put it on the Skype screen. She could see where I was making my mistake. It really helped."

"My whole university, all the professors, just cut their office hours because students weren't using them. Students didn't want to truck all the way across campus to sit in a professor's office for a few minutes just to ask a question. So a lot of my professors said, 'Here's my AIM account. And here's how you can get a hold of me.' It's comforting to know that they're actually there during that time. They're not just saying, 'Your e-mail's waiting in my inbox.'"

"One professor made us write stuff on the discussion board. I had a lot of classes like that, where you wrote something there, and it didn't matter. But this teacher would print it out and say, 'Hey Joe, I noticed you had this great post. You want to elaborate on that in class?' At first, it was really scary. But then it was really cool. Because she reminded you of something smart you said."

In one of my college classes, I was seat 327. So if I hit my [responder] to reply to a question, the teacher would say, 'OK, seat 327. So--here he’d look up my name--what do you have to say on the subject?' So I wouldn’t come into the classroom and just go to sleep. Both technology and the older methods can coexist. My English teacher put on a version of Hamlet. And we read it from the book while watching the movie. When you’re reading a play, a lot goes on that you don’t necessarily see. My teacher would pause every 10 minutes and say, 'So do you guys get what this means? Tell me about it.' As long as you’re on top of it, kids won’t be asleep.

What Educators Should Do

"The most important thing for teachers is to be comfortable with what they're using. It doesn't have to be super high tech. My math teacher used a projector, and it was one of my favorite classes. Then I would go to this other class where the teacher used PowerPoints and the SMART board, but I didn't get any more out of it because she wasn't comfortable with the technology."

"There are some bad things on the Internet for school purposes, like Facebook. But there are helpful things, too. If a school knows what's helpful, what's bad, and what's in the middle, then they can keep out all the bad stuff, monitor the stuff in the middle, and let us free-range on the stuff that's good."

"Teachers shouldn't be afraid of technology. Understand that it's how we live our lives. So don't just push it out. Learn to cope with us and how we work."

Assignments don’t always need to be papers. Assignments don’t always need to be text. There are other ways of figuring out what kids know using technology.

Copyright © 2011 by ASCD