HOW TECHNOLOGY SUPPORT LEARNING

TECHNOLOGY TO SUPPORT LEARNING

Attempts to use computer technologies to enhance learning began with the efforts of pioneers such as Atkinson and Suppes (e.g., Atkinson, 1968; Suppes and Morningstar, 1968).  The presence of computer technology in schools has increased dramatically since that time, and predictions are that this trend will continue to accelerate (U.S. Department of Education, 1994).

The romanticized view of technology is that its mere presence in schools will enhance student learning and achievement.  In contrast is the view that money spent on technology, and time spent by students using technology, are money and time wasted (see Education Policy Network, 1997).

Several groups have reviewed the literature on technology and learning and concluded that it has great potential to enhance student achievement and teacher learning, but only if it is used appropriately (e.g., Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1996; President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, 1997; Dede, 1998).

What is now known about learning provides important guidelines for uses of technology that can help students and teachers develop the competencies needed for the twenty-first century. The new technologies provide opportunities for creating learning environments that extend the possibilities of “old”—but still useful—technologies—books; blackboards; and linear, one-way communication media, such as radio and television shows—as well as offering new possibilities. Technologies do not guarantee effective learning, however.  Inappropriate uses of technology can hinder learning— for example, if students spend most of their time picking fonts and colors for multimedia reports instead of planning, writing, and revising their ideas. And everyone knows how much time students can waste surfing the Internet.

Yet many aspects of technology make it easier to create environments that fit the principles of learning discussed throughout this volume. Because many new technologies are interactive (Greenfield and Cocking, 1996), it is now easier to create environments in which students can learn by doing, receive feedback, and continually refine their understanding and build new knowledge (Barron et al., 1998; Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1993; Hmelo and Williams, 1998; Kafai, 1995; Schwartz et al., 1999).  The new technologies can also help people visualize difficult-to-understand concepts, such as differentiating heat from temperature (Linn et al., 1996).  Students can work with visualization and modeling software that is similar to the tools used in nonschool environments, increasing their understanding and the likelihood of transfer from school to nonschool settings. 

These technologies also provide access to a vast array of information, including digital libraries, data for analysis, and other people who provide information, feedback, and inspiration.  They can enhance the learning of teachers and administrators, as well as that of students, and increase connections between schools and the communities, including homes.

In this part we explore how new technologies can be used in five ways:

• bringing exciting curricula based on real-world problems into the classroom;

• providing scaffolds and tools to enhance learning;

• giving students and teachers more opportunities for feedback, reflection, and revision;

• building local and global communities that include teachers, administrators, students, parents, practicing scientists, and other interested people; and

• expanding opportunities for teacher learning.

NEW CURRICULA

An important use of technology is its capacity to create new opportunities for curriculum and instruction by bringing real-world problems into the classroom for students to explore and solve;   Technology can help to create an active environment in which students not only solve problems,

but also find their own problems.

 This approach to learning is very different from the typical school classrooms, in which students spend most of their time learning facts from a lecture or text and doing the problems at the end of the this part.

Learning through real-world contexts is not a new idea.  For a long time, schools have made sporadic efforts to give students concrete experiences through field trips, laboratories, and work-study programs.  But these activities have seldom been at the heart of academic instruction, and they have not been easily incorporated into schools because of logistical constraints and the amount of subject material to be covered.  Technology offers powerful tools for addressing these constraints, from video-based problems and computer simulations to electronic communications systems that connect classrooms with communities of practitioners in science, mathematics, and

other fields (Barron et al., 1995).

A number of video- and computer-based learning programs are now in use, with many different purposes.  The Voyage of the Mimi, developed by Bank Street College, was one of the earliest attempts to use video and computer technology to introduce students to real-life problems (e.g., Char and Hawkins,1987):  students “go to sea” and solve problems in the context of learning about whales and the Mayan culture of the Yucatan.

     New learning programs are not restricted to mathematics and science.

Problem-solving environments have also been developed that help students better understand workplaces.  For example, in a banking simulation, students assume roles, such as the vice president of a bank, and learn about the knowledge and skills needed to perform various duties (Classroom Inc., 1996).

SCAFFOLDS AND TOOLS

Many technologies function as scaffolds and tools to help students solve problems.  This was foreseen long ago:  in a prescient 1945 essay in the Atlantic Monthly, Vannevar Bush, science adviser to President Roosevelt, depicted the computer as a general-purpose symbolic system that could serve clerical and other supportive research functions in the sciences, in work, and for learning, thus freeing the human mind to pursue its creative capacities.

In the first generation of computer-based technologies for classroom use, this tool function took the rather elementary form of electronic “flashcards” that students used to practice discrete skills.  As applications have spilled over from other sectors of society, computer-based learning tools have become more sophisticated (Atkinson, 1968; Suppes and Morningstar, 1968).

 They now include calculators, spreadsheets, graphing programs, function probes (e.g., Roschelle and Kaput, 1996), “mathematical supposers” for making and checking conjectures (e.g., Schwartz, 1994), and modeling programs for creating and testing models of complex phenomena (Jackson et al., 1996).  In the Middle School Mathematics Through Applications Projects (MMAP), developed at the Institute for Research on Learning, innovative software tools are

used for exploring concepts in algebra through such problems as designing insulation for arctic

dwellings (Goldman and Moschkovich, 1995).

FEEDBACK, REFLECTION, AND REVISION

Technology can make it easier for teachers to give students feedback about their thinking and for students to revise their work.  Initially, teachers working with the Jasper Woodbury playground adventure had trouble finding time to give students feedback about their playground designs, but a simple computer interface cut in half the time it took teachers to provide feedback (see, e.g., Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1997).  An interactive Jasper Adventuremaker software program allows students to suggest solutions to a Jasper adventure, then see simulations of the effects of their solutions.  The simulations had a clear impact on the quality

Of the solutions that students generated subsequently (Crew et al., 1997).

Opportunities to interact with working scientists, as discussed above, also provide rich experiences for learning from feedback and revision (White and Fredericksen, 1994).  The SMART (Special Multimedia Arenas for Refining Thinking) Challenge Series provides multiple technological resources for feedback and revision.  SMART has been tested in various contexts, including the Jasper challenge.  When its formative assessment resources are added to these curricula, students achieve at higher levels than without them (e.g. Barron et al., 1998; Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1994, 1997; Vye et al., 1998).

    Classroom communication technologies, such as Classtalk, can promote more active learning in large lecture classes and, if used appropriately, highlight the reasoning processes that students use to solve problems. This technology allows an instructor to prepare and display problems that

the class works on collaboratively.  Students enter answers (individually or as a group) via palm-held input devices, and the technology collects, stores, and displays histograms (bar graphs of how many students preferred each problem solution) of the class responses.  This kind of tool can provide useful feedback to students and the teacher on how well the students understand

the concepts being covered and whether they can apply them in novel contexts (Mestre et al., 1997).

CONNECTING CLASSROOMS TO COMMUNITY

It is easy to forget that student achievement in school also depends on what happens outside of school.  Bringing students and teachers in contact with the broader community can enhance their learning.  In the previous part, we discussed learning through contacts with the broader community.

 Universities and businesses, for example, have helped communities upgrade the quality of teaching in schools.  Engineers and scientists who work in industry often play a mentoring role with teachers (e.g., University of California-Irvine Science Education Program).

Modern technologies can help make connections between students’ in school and out-of-school activities.  For example, the “transparent school” (Bauch, 1997) uses telephones and answering machines to help parents understand the daily assignments in classrooms.

 Teachers need only a few minutes per day to dictate assignments into an answering machine.  Parents can call at their convenience and retrieve the daily assignments, thus becoming informed

of what their children are doing in school.  Contrary to some expectations, low-income parents are as likely to call the answering machines as are parents of higher socioeconomic status.

The Internet can also help link parents with their children’s schools. School calendars, assignments, and other types of information can be posted on a school’s Internet site.  School sites can also be used to inform the community of what a school is doing and how they can help.  For example, the American Schools Directory (www.asd.com), which has created Internet pages for each of the 106,000 public and private K-12 schools in the country, includes a “Wish List” on which schools post requests for various kinds of help.  In addition, the ASD provides free e-mail for every student and teacher in the country.

TEACHER LEARNING

The introduction of new technologies to classrooms has offered new insights about the roles of teachers in promoting learning (McDonald and Naso, 1986; Watts, 1985).  Technology can give teachers license to experiment and tinker (Means and Olson, 1995a; U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, 1995).  It can stimulate teachers to think about the processes of learning, whether through a fresh study of their own subject or a fresh perspective on students’ learning.

 It softens the barrier between what students do and what teachers do. When teachers learn to use a new technology in their classrooms, they model the learning process for students; at the same time, they gain new insights on teaching by watching their students learn.  Moreover, the transfer

of the teaching role from teacher to student often occurs spontaneously during efforts to use computers in classrooms.  Some children develop a profound involvement with some aspect of the technology or the software, spend considerable time on it, and know more than anyone else in the group, including their teachers.  Often both teachers and students are novices, and the creation of knowledge is a genuinely cooperative endeavor.

Epistemological authority—teachers possessing knowledge and students receiving knowledge—is redefined, which in turn redefines social authority and personal responsibility (Kaput, 1987; Pollak, 1986; Skovsmose, 1985). Cooperation creates a setting in which novices can contribute what they are able and learn from the contributions of those more expert than they.

Collaboratively, the group, with its variety of expertise, engagement, and goals, gets the job done (Brown and Campione, 1987:17).  This devolution of authority and move toward cooperative participation results directly from, and contributes to, an intense cognitive motivation.

As teachers learn to use technology, their own learning has implications for the ways in which they assist students to learn more generally (McDonald and Naso, 1986):

• They must be partners in innovation; a critical partnership is needed among teachers, administrators, students, parents, community, university, and the computer industry.

• They need time to learn:  time to reflect, absorb discoveries, and adapt practices.

• They need collegial advisers rather than supervisors; advising is a partnership.

Internet-based communities of teachers are becoming an increasingly important tool for overcoming teachers’ sense of isolation.  They also provide avenues for geographically dispersed teachers who are participating in the same kinds of innovations to exchange information and offer support to each other (see Chapter 8).  Examples of these communities include the LabNet

Project, which involves over 1,000 physics teachers (Ruopp et al., 1993); Bank Street College’s

Mathematics Learning project; the QUILL network for Alaskan teachers of writing (Rubin, 1992); and the HumBio Project, in which teachers are developing biology curricula over the network (Keating, 1997; Keating and Rosenquist, 1998).  WEBCSILE, an Internet version of the CSILE program described above, is being used to help create teacher communities.

The worldwide web provides another venue for teachers to communicate with an audience outside their own institutions.  At the University of Illinois, James Levin asks his education graduate students to develop web pages with their evaluations of education resources on the web, along with hot links to those web resources they consider most valuable.  Many students

not only put up these web pages, but also revise and maintain them after the course is over.  Some receive tens of thousands of hits on their web sites each month (Levin et al., 1994; Levin and Waugh, 1998).

In addition to supporting teachers’ ongoing communication and professional development, technology is used in preservice seminars for teachers. A challenge in providing professional development for new teachers is allowing them adequate time to observe accomplished teachers and to try their own wings in classrooms, where innumerable decisions must be made in the course of the day and opportunities for reflection are few.  Prospective teachers generally have limited exposure to classrooms before they begin student teaching, and teacher trainers tend to have limited time to spend in classes with them, observing and critiquing their work.  Technology can help overcome these constraints by capturing the complexity of classroom interactions in multiple media.  For example, student teachers can replay videos of classroom events to learn to read subtle classroom clues and see important features that escaped them on first viewing.

Databases have been established to assist teachers in a number of subject areas.  One is a video archive of mathematics lessons from third- and fifth-grade classes, taught by experts Magdalene Lampert and Deborah Ball (1998).

  The lessons model inquiry-oriented teaching, with students working to solve problems and reason and engaging in lively discussions about the mathematics underlying their solutions.  The videotapes allow student teachers to stop at any point in the action and discuss nuances of teacher performance with their fellow students and instructors.  Teachers’ annotations and an archive of student work associated with the lessons further enrich the resource.

Technology has become an important instrument in education.  Computer-based technologies hold great promise both for increasing access to knowledge and as a means of promoting learning. The public imagination has been captured by the capacity of information technologies to centralize and organize large bodies of knowledge; people are excited by the prospect of information networks, such as the Internet, linking students around the globe into communities of learners.