A pitched battle is being fought over the relative costs and benefits of digital technology in K12 classrooms. I find much of the debate to be nonsensical because it is so often conducted at a hopelessly abstract level. Is Wikipedia “good” or “bad” for students? Should every student have a laptop computer? You cannot really answer these questions until you answer much more detailed questions about educational goals, staff training, curriculum design, etc. No matter; the war rages on in the national media and the blogosphere – not to mention in school board rooms and cafeterias. Just over a year ago, a federal NCEE study helped to intensify the debate by failing to find a correlation between the deployment of specific instructional software packages and gains in reading and math scores (though the findings were widely misinterpreted and inappropriately generalized). Other studies seem to show positive correlations between the use of specific technologies and student achievement.
Many, like Alan November, have argued that the benefits of digital technology in classrooms are undermined by the industrial-age culture that persists in our schools. According to this line of reasoning, computers will be nothing more than “$2,000 pencils” until we rethink our educational goals, practices, and values. Alan and other ed-tech gurus have long championed the use of technology as a fulcrum for lifting teaching and learning out of the nineteenth century.
While I largely agree with this line of thinking, and have spent much of my professional career advancing similar arguments, I also believe that there are serious problems in education that can be effectively addressed with technology, and that we need research to capture these success stories. These uses of technology are less compelling to the big-picture set; but think about this: if the NCEE study had demonstrated (which it did not) that every child who used Waterford or Read 180 ended up reading at or above grade level within two years, wouldn’t this necessarily have a profound impact on current educational realities – and on the premium placed on technology in schools?
I suppose what I am arguing for is the proper balance. It’s not a question of whether technology belongs in the classroom or not – that dichotomy is certainly nonsensical. Nor is it a question of Second Life versus Read 180. The real questions are: “What do you want to achieve?”, “Is the use of digital technology an appropriate means to achieve it?”, and if so, “What technologies can best help you to achieve it?”
I’m curious what you think!