Education Needs the New Media
Technology tackles the test scores
This year’s education panel at Digital World reminded us, if we needed reminding, that this country’s educational system could stand improvement. Panelists included Dana Beth Ardi, of Dana Ardi Productions; Skip Crew, a teacher in the Wawona Middle School at Fresno, CA; Robert Tierney, a professor of education at Ohio State University; Ronald Rescigno, superintendent of the Port Hueneme School District; and Steve Carr, a teacher and model technology site coordinator for Hueneme School District. Despite their varied backgrounds, all agreed that the new media offer hope for remedial and advanced instruction.
Ardi, a long-time consultant in both education and technology, noted that test scores are lower each year, yet teachers continue to cling to the familiar textbook-oriented methods of fact-based instruction. One reason, she says, may be that teachers themselves are usually not trained in the visual and auditory media.
THE THREE PS: PERSONAL, PATIENT AND POWERFUL
There are some bright spots in the picture, however. Many a demonstration project has shown that the high-tech tools of new media can be personal, patient and powerful. Texas and California, whose centralized textbook purchasing systems make them the two largest customers in the education market, have begun to require some high-tech media as part of their curriculums. Wherever these two states lead, others often follow.
“At-risk kids.” Skip Crew, a math teacher in a Fresno, CA, middle school, described his own experiences in the trenches. Four years ago, he said, there was not a computer in the place. He worked to change that, and now the math lab has ten computers, with more on the way.
He has had to adapt his curriculum to some harsh facts: many of his students have no home life to speak of. “These are at-risk kids,” says Crew. They come to school only to be with their friends, and success in mastering the curriculum is rather low in their scale of priorities. Thus, his first goal must be to get them interested in something. Fortunately, computer software is very flexible. Unlike a textbook, a program can be tuned for each kid’s particular needs.
The right ruler.>> Robert Tierney, an Ohio State University professor who teaches graduate courses in literacy and language education, looks at the system with a more academic, research-oriented viewpoint. His focus is literacy — not just of words, but also of imagery. What power, he wonders, might accrue to students who from preschool have had access to tools such as QuickTime? What happens when there is not a “level of investment” problem, where kids have access to state-of-the-art technology and truly productive software? To find out, he has been providing computer and video technology to two cohorts of students for seven years so far, and plans to continue the experiment as they progress through high school and beyond.
Such a study obviously requires some form of testing. However, Tierney thinks educators are measuring technology projects with the wrong ruler: paper-based tests. (Most of the standardized tests in use were designed around the turn of the last century, and even then, their designers expected they would be out of date within ten years. It’s now 90 years later.) A better measure, he says, is observing the way students approach the tasks and materials of the curriculum.
The belief is that interactive media changes the way people represent ideas, how they explore ideas—a shift away from linear, text-oriented thinking. Some believe it also affects how the kids react to authority. Linear text acquires a remote and canonical (hence unchallengeable) aspect, while interactive media invite participation and dialog (an end result that may be uncomfortable to teachers accustomed to “ruling” the classroom). Educators need to be open to the possibilities that technology affords, and not be blinded by standardized tests or by fear of trying a new kind of relationship with students.
Success is political.>> Ronald Rescigno is a successful school superintendent; he’s survived 14 years in the post. Nine years ago, the Port Hueneme (CA) school district began allocating one percent of its budget each year to an experimental technology program. Now, in the demonstration classroom taught by Steve Carr, he can showcase a complex network of servers and computers, with audio and video moving across the network to 32 students at a time.
Carr, in cooperation with the Thousand Oaks, CA-based company Total Multimedia, has developed a series of multimedia history lessons that TMM will publish on CD-ROM. The results have been outstanding. As teachers and administrators from other programs have reported at previous Digital World conferences, the students are more engaged and more motivated when they use computer technology to learn. Equally important in a real world where — like it or not — students and schools are measured by standardized tests, test scores have risen dramatically. The only problem (and when you think about it, it’s not a trivial one) has been that students really miss the technology when they move on to high school.
Carr noted that, even so, replicating his demonstration room is not going to be easy; the cost to do so will approach $200,000 per room for hardware and staff development. He suggests that one source of funding might be to get nearby businesses involved; his own project had extensive participation by TMM.
The teaching strategies (and for the kids, the learning strategies) are beginning to be understood. As with any technology demonstration program, the challenge now is to replicate the results achieved in his model classroom at other schools. But first, it is necessary for Rescigno to convince the wider community that he’s got a good idea, by showing results as measured by standardized tests. (Despite the success at the middle school level, the local high school has not yet seen fit to follow suit.)
ELECT A NEW BOARD, FIRE THE SUPE AND MAKE A VIDEO
Getting the money for classroom technology is always the first obstacle. Funding in his district is nearly $5,000 per student — considerably less than the average spent per student in U.S. public schools. But Rescigno contends there are few school districts that really don’t have the money; often the textbook budget can be tapped if new money can’t be raised. (The state of Texas has already decided that computer programs can be regarded as textbooks and purchased with textbook monies. California, Florida and Texas — the three American states with centralized, state-wide textbook adoption programs — are working together on common standards for computer-based course materials.)
If all else fails, suggested Rescigno, elect a new school board and fire the superintendent.
Another obstacle is teacher cooperation and support. That’s why Carr emphasizes that technology “is simply another resource in my room. It is not in any way guiding my curriculum.” It’s important that great content be part of any technology product; teachers like the idea of open systems, but they don’t want to have to learn complex authoring packages as the first step — even in systems designed to teach authoring techniques.
All of the panel members agreed that computers should be regarded as tools, with heavy emphasis given to hardware and software that lets teachers — and students — create their own materials. Where “courseware” is used, it should always be “open” so that teachers and students can use it as a base for creating more personalized instruction.
Little things count.>> Even the little things, such as keyboard skills, count. One faculty committee discovered that its members who could type were usually in favor of using technology in the classroom. Those who had never learned the skill expected that the computer would be inaccessible to them and thus were markedly less enthusiastic about technology.
More money is not always the answer, said Rescigno, no matter what militant teachers’ unions say. At bottom, the issue is the political will of the wider community. Which makes us wonder: should technology advocates begin making videos to educate the parents and taxpayers as well as the students?
Peter Dyson