Smart Thinking About Educational Technology
Simplistic thinking is often applied to educational technology. Either it’s the greatest approach to education ever invented or it’s a waste of money. We can do better than such limited rhetoric. Too many advocates rely on weak arguments, such as “students are digital natives, so we should use more technology,” as if schools should have used radio and TV more often when earlier generations grew up with those media. Stanford University’s Larry Cuban was right to warn against the excessive “hype” one hears about the value of computers. ( "The Laptop Revolution Has No Clothes," Commentary, Oct. 18, 2006.) On the other hand, a majority of skeptics have failed to notice how quickly online schools, computer-based testing, and other powerful innovations are spreading, and how significant they are.
Instead of taking sides, we should think about how to use digital tools well. The reasons for doing so are compelling: (1) We need to transform American schools into higher-performing organizations, whether or not we use technology; (2) Digital technology provides a powerful toolkit, offering unique advantages (such as bridging time and distance, democratizing access to information and services, and leveraging exponential increases in computer power) that have helped transform other organizations, especially those based on information and knowledge; and (3) Many schools already use technology in smart ways to support education goals.
Using a framework of six key education goals rather than just one helps us better understand how schools use technology to meet the multiple aims policymakers have established for them. These six goals enjoy widespread support and have been codified in national and state laws such as the federal Goals 2000: Educate America Act in the 1990s. One of the benefits of using these goals as a framework is clarified thinking and conversations about the important roles technology is playing in schools. Computers, the Internet, and other digital technologies are used to do far more than raise students’ test scores or “increase student achievement.” A school is not like a business that can express its profit or loss as one number, the bottom line. This fact is often ignored in discussions of the role of technology in schools, as well as in the national debate about strengths and weaknesses of the No Child Left Behind Act. Besides increasing achievement, other important goals for...
This article is available to subscribers only.
To keep reading this article and more, subscribe now or purchase this article.
Subscribe to Education Week and Save
Get a full year and save up to 45%!
Viewed
Emailed
Recommended
Commented
- Principal
- Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, Los Angeles, CA
- K-8 Principal
- EdVantages/Performance Academies, Detroit, MI
- 2 Positions -Associate Superintendent and Chief Academic Officer, and Director of Human of Resources
- Washington County Public Schools, Hagerstown, MD
- Principals
- Prince George's County Public Schools, MD
- Elementary School Teacher
- Success Academy Charter Schools, New York, NY
