Technology
in Schools: Some Say It Doesn't Compute!
Technology changes
faster than educational researchers can study it. Although many researchers
insist computers are valuable in schools, they readily admit they can't
yet say whether technology actually helps kids achieve educational goals.
Have schools jumped onto the technology bandwagon too soon? In this story,
Education World focuses on some of the research that makes a strong case
against the way technology is currently used in schools.
"If you have all the computers hooked up to only one server, then they
are very slow," Erin, a 14-year-old middle-school student, told Education
World. "We had to go on the Internet for class one time, and it took three
to five minutes just to get to Yahoo [the search engine]. We had only
45 minutes in the lab, and with all the wait time, most of us accomplished
very little. I felt like that class was totally wasted. When schools buy
computers, couldn't they also invest in more or quicker servers? Isn't
my time valuable too?"
Educational psychologist and longtime teacher and administrator Jane
M. Healy, once an advocate of technology in the schools, sees many problems
with the way educational technology is used today. "It's become an idea
that has taken over the public consciousness, helped, of course, by the
mass promoting of these products to kids as young as a year-and-a-half."
(See "Once a Champion of Classroom Computers, Psychologist Now Sees Failure,"
New York Times, September 16, 1998.)
THE HIDDEN PRICE OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE SCHOOLS
Ms. Healy has many concerns. Along with Erin's situation, she worries
about
the possibilities for visual and postural problems and repetitive-motion
injuries, such as carpal tunnel syndrome;
the potential danger of emissions from the backs or sides of older
machines;
the consequences of many children, including preschoolers, being sedentary
instead of active and spending considerable chunks of time interacting
not with peers but with computers instead of developing their motor
and social skills;
schools using software that, although fun, might be of dubious educational
value and not necessarily relevant to the curriculum;
children's expectation that learning must be entertaining and their
failure to use all their senses or to become active learners;
the frustration caused by frequent computer breakdowns and inadequate
technical support.
In an October 1998 Education Week commentary, The
'Meme' That Ate Childhood, Healy cited an experiment that compared
young children's math learning from board games played on computers with
the same games played by a child with an adult. The study found that because
of the language interaction, a child's one-on-one contact with an adult
produced far greater gains than those achieved when played on a computer.
"Most available research," Healy adds, "has been commissioned by industry
interest, and the sparse objective evidence indicates that computers have
thus far contributed nothing of note to the learning process.... There
is no question that computers are 'motivating' to children -- but are
they motivated to learn or just to play with the computer?"
"Take note," Healy concludes, "several responsible educators I interviewed
deem up to 85 percent of current software not only 'worthless' but possibly
damaging. For example, one study of children using a popular reading-readiness
program showed a 50-percent drop in their creativity scores." Since developing
educational software does not pay that well, top software developers tend
to go into other areas, not education. (See "Tots at the Computer: Educators
Debate Value of Use at Young Age," Christian Science Monitor, February
2, 1995.)
ADDITIONAL RESEARCH ABOUT THE CORRELATION BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND RESEARCH
According to a USA Today story, Do
Classroom PCs Help Kids Learn? (8/03/98), "the Third International
Math and Science Study found that the five countries that outperformed
U.S. fourth-graders in math did not use computers in their schools very
often (one-third as often as we do), and fourth graders in five other
nations who had more home computers than our children did not do better
in science than did our students. The study found no correlation between
computer use and math or science achievement.
Christopher Columbus Middle School in Union City, New Jersey, is a school
praised by President Clinton as having dramatically raised its test scores
through technology use. Scrutiny, however, revealed that the test scores
actually rose before the school installed computers. (See "Hype
vs. Hope in Union City, New Jersey," Technology & Learning, December
1998.)
Stephen Krashen, a professor of education at the University of Southern
California, investigated several of the studies that indicated working
with computers improved student achievement. He found several of those
studies had serious structural discrepancies. Some made claims but provided
no supporting data, and others, curiously, were not available for public
inspection. (See "Conflicting Claims Concerning Computers: A Comment on
Hinkson (1996)," The California Reader, winter 1997.) Recently
the Educational Testing Service reported that students who spent more
time on computers in school actually performed slightly worse than those
who spent less time on them. (See Does
It Compute? The Relationship Between Educational Technology and Student
Achievement in Mathematics.) Eighth-graders who used computers primarily
for "drill and practice" scored more than half a grade lower than students
who did not use them in that way, and drill software had little impact
on the performance of fourth-grade students.
THE INTERNET AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT
After randomly interviewing 6,000 U.S. educators, Market Data Retrieval
found that because the material is unorganized and not directly related
to curricula or textbooks, more than 86 percent of the educators polled
believe Internet use by children in grades 3 to 12 does not improve their
academic achievement. (See "Net Day: Questioning The Impact of Computers
in the Classroom," Daily Report Card, October 27, 1997.)
In a Boston Globe article, Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard Law School
professor, said he found much of the material on the Internet to be incorrect
or biased. Material that is not edited or reviewed by peers before it
is printed is frequently of questionable reliability, he adds. (See "Net-Savvy
Students Shelving Libraries," Boston Globe, March 1, 1999.)
Lowell Monke, an advanced computer technology teacher in Des Moines,
Iowa, found that when it comes to the Internet, "the connections are often
unreliable, the interfaces unintuitive, the documentation unintelligible,
the information unfindable. And when we do get the systems working, the
technology changes so fast that we never feel fully confident about what
we are doing." Students may be able to find information on the Web, but
"just don't ask them to explain what they found when they arrived....
[A]s social critic Theodore Roszak said, 'An excess of information may
actually crowd out ideas, leaving the mind (young minds especially) distracted
by sterile, disconnected facts, lost among the shapeless heaps of data.'
...[R]responsibility demands that when we consider using computer technology,
we think about what will be lost as much as we think about what will be
gained." (See The
Web & The Plow, Teacher magazine feature, October 1997.)
Edward Rothstein of The New York Times believes "the Internet
will not come close to replacing even the most ordinary library until
every book of importance is published in digital form, financial arrangements
are worked out with publishers, and search engines become as powerful
as the index in back of a reference book. Right now, even the most limited
local library has much the Internet cannot touch." The lowest national
estimate is that it will cost at least $10 billion a year for at least
five years to guarantee U.S. school children access to the Internet. Could
cutting funding for programs and school supplies to make room for computers
be educational malpractice? (See "Gates's Largesse Stirs a Discomforting
Question: Is There Indeed a Computer Literacy?" New York Times, July
7,1997.)
EDUCATIONAL MALPRACTICE?
"In social studies we do not use the social studies books, because they're
from the 1980s and they are falling apart," Justin, a 14-year-old student,
told Education World. "Our school chose to spend money that they could
have used to upgrade our social studies books to buy computers. Almost
everyone in the school has used them only once, but we would use our books
every day."
With little evidence that technology as it is used today actually improves
student learning, should schools strapped for funds put so much of their
limited resources into something so expensive to buy and maintain? Every
new technology with the potential to bring benefits carries a price. Think
of 14-year-old Justin. In his case, is it worth the price?
ONLINE RESOURCES QUESTION THE VALUE OF TECHNOLOGY
The
'Meme' That Ate Childhood This Education Week article references
studies that have found many problems with much of the educational software
available.
Do
Classroom PCs Help Kids Learn? An August 1998 USA Today article
includes research for the Third International Math and Science Study
(TIMSS) and the CEO Forum on Education that found only 3 percent of
schools currently optimize classroom technology.
Does
It Compute? The Relationship Between Educational Technology and Student
Achievement in Mathematics The results from this study (reported
by the Educational Testing Service) suggest that technology can help
math academic achievement, depending on how it is used and how well
the teachers using the technology are trained. The study found that
technology affects fourth-graders less than eighth-graders and suggests
focusing technology on middle rather than elementary schools.
The
Web & The Plow In this October 1997 Teacher magazine article,
Lowell Monke, an advanced computer technology teacher in Des Moines,
Iowa, discusses some of the problems he sees in how the Web is used
today.
OTHER RESOURCES USED TO RESEARCH THIS STORY
"Hype vs. Hope in Union City, New Jersey," Technology & Learning,
December 1998.
"Once a Champion of Classroom Computers, Psychologist Now Sees Failure,"
New York Times, September 16, 1998.
"Conflicting Claims Concerning Computers: A Comment on Hinkson (1996),"
by Stephen Krashen, The California Reader, winter 1997.
"Net Day: Questioning The Impact of Computers in the Classroom," Daily
Report Card, October 27, 1997
"Gates's Largesse Stirs a Discomforting Question: Is There Indeed
a Computer Literacy?," by Edward Rothstein, New York Times, July
7, 1997.
"Tots at the Computer: Educators Debate Value of Use at Young Age,"
Christian Science Monitor, February 2, 1995.
"Net-Savvy Students Shelving Libraries," Boston Globe, March
1, 1999.
Technology
in Schools: Some Say It Doesn't Compute!