Part One The Promise: An Educator's History of the Internet
1986 1993 1994 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 Summary
In the fall, the U.S. Department of Educaton begins a year-long review of the national educational technology plan, Getting America’s Students Ready for the 21st Century: Meeting the Technology Literacy Challenge (ED3) from 1996. Several white papers are commissioned and the Forum on Technology in Education: Envisioning the Future (ED4) is held in December. The forum "convened a variety of experts to explore the implications of the white papers and to engage in interactive exercises designed to explore the most promising future roles of technology in education." It "concluded with the identification of emerging priorities." The Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) grant program of the U.S. Department of Educaton's Office of Post Secondary Education (OPE) is begun.
The Internet is now a fireball of activity. Technology and the Internet are inseparable from the future of commerce and general prosperity. Most schools are now wired for connectivity, particularly in their "media centers" or computer labs, and the focus is turning to wiring individual classrooms. The Internet and technology are the center of the debate for school reform as educators attempt to catch up with the business world in their use of digital technologies.
Cohen and Ball discuss our long history of disappointing efforts at school reform in their June 1999 report Instruction, Capacity, and Improvement. They point out that the state of our schools is inseparable from the sociopolitical context that envelopes them, and teachers are inadequately trained and supported for reforms to succeed.
"Since World War II, efforts to improve schools have numbered in the thousands. ...Unfortunately, three decades of research has found that only a few interventions have had detectable effects on instruction and that when, such effects are detected, they rarely are sustained over time." Page 1
"A review of research and professional experience with school improvement suggests several explanations for these disheartening findings. One is that schools are complex social organizations situated within, and vitally affected by, other complex social systems including families, communities, and professional regulatory agencies. The larger social environment of schools constrains and shapes the actions of teachers, students, and administrators, often in ways that greatly complicate the work of school improvement."
"A second explanation for the typically small effects of school improvement interventions is that most are not designed to provide the opportunities for teacher learning that would be need to change classroom instruction. Even when interventions explicitly introduce new curricular materials or provide teacher "training," they rarely create adequate conditions for teachers to learn about or develop the knowledge, skills, and beliefs needed to enact these interventions successfully in classrooms...Neither is it common to provide teachers with opportunities for guided practice or reflection on how new teaching strategies are working in their classrooms. Instructional interventions are commonly introduced into schools without taking adequate account of what it would take to make them work in classrooms."
"In the last several years, a number of new interventions have been invented... All of them envision more comprehensive strategies..."
Interviews with eight leading researchers by Technology and Learning Online in Taking Stock: What Does the Research Say About Technology's Impact on Education? (T&L) shows that "Questions about educational technology and whether "it's working" continue to rage as our nation grapples with the next steps involved in readying schools for the 21st century." (The Overview, Judy Salpeter) Most of the interviews discuss the need to further define and refine our educational goals for students before we can competently measure the impact of technology.
In the Interview with Cheryl Lemke conducted by Judy Salpeter, Editor, Technology & Learning, Lemke touches on the fundamental financial reality regarding the development of educational programming:
"Another disappointment that research could help us deal with is content development. Elliot Soloway from the University of Michigan wrote an interesting article recently about how software development for K-12 education is not a lucrative business. This is a problem for educators."
From Computer-Based Technology and Learning: Evolving Uses and Expectations (Valdez) sponsored by the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory:
"The value and use of technology in K-12th-grade education continues to be debated even though computer-based technology is being credited as one of the major reasons for the increased work productivity and economic success of the United States." (Overview)
"One reason researchers have had a difficult time studying technology's impact on learning is that they have been studying a moving target. Rapid technological changes and advances in software development have made some findings obsolete even before they were published." (Overview)
"Numerous recent events have pointed out how interrelated schools and society are and how we cannot think of education in isolation of society any more than society can consider itself in isolation of schools. The rapid and ongoing pace of technological changes has shortened the life cycles of products, processes, and information exchanges, leading to new discoveries and insights about the world. Today's children need to be connected to this world in order to receive a useful education and to prepare them to deal with it when they graduate." (Conclusions)
The authors divide the impact of technology in education into "three distinct phases in the evolution of its uses and expectations: Print Automation, Expansion of Learning Opportunities, and Data-Driven Virtual Learning." (Phases of Technology Use)
In the most advanced Phase III, Teachers use technology to guide and engage students in self-directed learning activities wherein students use technology to explore diverse information resources inside and outside school.
"Students have greater opportunities to access up-to-date, real-world resources and experts, especially through the Internet and other telecommunication resources; focus is on solving authentic tasks."
"Multimedia and global telecommunications network infrastructure enables unlimited information transfer and online collaboration."
"Students and teachers any where can access learning experiences online as they need them; and engaged learning strategies are used in the instruction. Data-driven decision making helps determine the flow of instruction and appropriate uses of technology resources."
"Web sites and interactive electronic systems are used to provide multi-tiered collaborations among educators, students, parents, and community members."
(Phases of Technology Use)
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports progress in the national initiative to connect schools and classrooms to the "information superhighway." From the NCES Education Statistics Quarteriy article Internet Access in U.S. Public Schools and Classrooms: 1994-1999 (NCES1):
"The most recent survey of Internet access indicates that public schools in the United States have nearly reached the goal of connecting every school to the Internet. The percentage of public schools connected to the Internet has increased each year, from 35 percent in 1994 to 95 percent in 1999."
"In earlier years, access to the Internet varied by school characteristics. In some previous surveys, for example, secondary schools, schools with lower concentrations of students in poverty (as measured by eligibility for free or reduced-price lunches), and suburban schools were more likely to have Internet access than other schools. By 1999, these differences had disappeared; all schools, regardless of level, poverty concentration, and metropolitan status, were equally likely to have Internet access."
"In 1994, 3 percent of all U.S. public school instructional rooms* were connected to the Internet; by 1999, 63 percent were connected. Classroom connectivity is expected to continue to grow due to the allocation of funds through the Education rate (E-rate) program, which was established to make services and technologies in telecommunications available to schools and libraries at discounted rates based upon the income level of the students in their community and whether their location is urban or rural."
"According to the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (1997, 21), 4 to 5 students per computer is the ratio 'that many experts consider to represent a reasonable level for the effective use of computers within the schools.' In 1999, the ratio of students per instructional computer in public schools was approximately 6, the same as in 1998."
Teacher usage of the Internet is reported in the NCES Stats in Brief Teacher Use of Computers and the Internet in Public Schools (NCES2) (Requires the Adobe Acrobat Reader): 39% of public school teachers used computers or the Internet "a lot" to create instructional materials, 34% for administrative, and less than 10% to access lesson plans, research, or best practices; 66% used computers or the Internet for instruction during class time, 41% assigned work that involved computer applications, 30% assigned research using the internet to a "moderate or large extent." It also noted that:
The Milken Exchange on Education Technology commissioned the Internaional Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) to survey teacher-preparation institutions across the country. Survey results were gathered from 416 institutions representing approximately 90,000 graduates per year and reported in Information Technology Underused in Teacher Education (Milken Family Foundation Articles. (Milken1)
"Over 70 percent of teacher training programs surveyed require students to take three or more credit hours of instruction with information technology (IT). And on average, preservice teachers get an equivalent amount of IT built into their non-IT courses. But despite the course requirements, most faculty did not feel that IT training was adequate or effectively modeled for the future-teachers they serve."
For preservice teachers, they also "found that most of those classrooms have information technology available, but student-teachers do not routinely use that technology during their field experience."
Zehr addresses the importance and lack of quality educational content on the Internet in Screening for the Best from Education Week's Technology Counts '99, Building the Digital Curriculum:
"Interest in digital content for schools has never been higher. From 1996 to 1998, annual sales of software and online materials specifically designed for instruction increased by 21 percent, from $473 million to $571 million, according to Simba Information, a business-information publisher in Stamford, Conn.
"The reason is simple: After investing billions of dollars over the past few years to make sure schools have enough computers, educators are now turning their focus to what kind of content to put on them."
"But the quality of the digital content currently available to schools has some experts concerned."
"Others warn that truly exceptional products can get lost in the shuffle. With so many software titles and Web sites to choose from, it can be difficult and time-consuming to find the good stuff, as teachers like Baker and Connelly have discovered."
"'There's a lot out there that is junk,' says Evelyn J. Woldman, the education coordinator at the technology center of the Massachusetts Elementary School Principals' Association in Marlborough, Mass. 'You have to be adept at siphoning through the very rote, the very boring stuff, to get to a few quality pieces.'"
"Teachers seem particularly frustrated by the process of searching for software. More than half of teachers who search for software to use for instruction say it is 'very difficult' or 'somewhat difficult' to find the kinds of products they want to fill their specific classroom needs."
"For the time being, sales of educational CD-ROMs far outnumber those of online materials."
"Everyone expects that all content now on educational CD-ROMs will eventually be delivered over the Internet. But as of yet, and probably for at least a few more years, schools don't have enough bandwidth to receive the same quality of video and sound over the Internet as on a CD-ROM."
"Some teachers complain that Web designers often try to load their sites with the latest technical advances. In fact, teachers say, they don't need all the bells and whistles."
"Some companies, mindful of schools' limited bandwidth but anxious to move more of their products to the Internet, are devising Web/CD-ROM 'hybrids' that represent an intermediate step between the two technologies."
She also notes that "others say educators should do more to influence the development of digital content." Trotter goes further and reports in From Science and the Workplace Come New Tools of the Trade that:
"Teachers and students don't just use digital content. More and more often, they make it as well, thanks to the growing popularity of computer tools for creating, analyzing, and publishing data and information."
"Creating digital content using tools doesn't necessarily mean passing up other commercial products. Archives on CD-ROMs and the Web, along with library books and other traditional sources, provide raw materials. And instructional software, computer games, and simulations offer technical models and ideas for homemade productions.
"But teachers who use class-produced content cite a number of other advantages over prepackaged material. Content that students collect or assemble can be updated every day, and drawn from an enormous range of sources--everything from NASA to a backyard telescope, for example."