Technology Alters Our Educational Landscape
I was sitting among the students in a computer classroom at Magnificat High School as the teacher moved about freely and students helped each other. I remembered Rahner's thought that the world is graced. Technology can be such a blessing, but we have a lot of work ahead of us to manage all of it!
Our relatively comfortable educational landscape has been changed radically. In Ohio, SchoolNet legislation will invest $95 million to bring telecommunications and computer technology into every classroom. Catholic school technological infrastructure will change also; teaching and learning will be altered radically. Perhaps never before have teachers faced a challenge like the one ahead of us now.
There are many challenging aspects; I would like to focus on three in this brief essay.
Interactivity has always been a part of good education. It is rapidly becoming the core of the learning process and technologies are pushing us in that direction (whether we welcome this or not).
This technological infrastructure will enhance both standalone learning (one student at a computer workstation) and cooperative learning (students linked to others in the classroom and beyond its walls).
This education/technology change will happen-either in a haphazard or in a systematic way. The way to do it right is to spend much, much more time and money on professional development of our teachers than we have to date.
Let's look at each component briefly.
Inter-connected Learning
If we reflect briefly on the popularity of the telephone it will not surprise us that we all want dialogue to be part of our communication (and learning) processes. Communication researchers are discovering that there is much interaction going on even when seemingly-passive viewers watch TV. New technological tools are essentially two-way. And with increased storage capacity and telecommunications links we have more and more to interact with: CD Rom; laserdiscs; Internet; and hypermedia, to mention a few.
Linkages can enhance learning for students by connecting them to additional sources such as courses, interaction with others around the globe, and databases. Many a student at the computer says: "Watch me do this!" and we are reminded of Dewey's concept that we learn by doing. However, simply plugging in to a larger array of factual data can lead to confusion unless our educational process organizes the information systematically. Wisdom and true learning means that we discover relationships and patterns among disparate data, that we guide our students to understanding rather than simply encourage them to "plug in."
Individualized Instruction and Learning Networks
It's paradoxical that technology will result in our students being both more independent and more interdependent. The pace of learning can be individualized as students work independently with learning software at each one's level, with time now for individual attention from teachers. However, as parents learn who struggle to keep their children off the telephone, there's something wonderful about sharing ideas with someone else, especially if we can now do it without worrying about distances. Varied cultures can be exchanged and experts can mentor elementary school children on-line. These linkages can, of course, continue at home as computers become more common there.
Professional Development of Teachers
When instructional television was introduced to the classroom we typically under-invested in helping teachers utilize it well. (This was called "utilization" by ETV folks.) We spent our budgets on the product (ETV programs) instead of working more with teachers.
We must not make that mistake now. Funds will be required for equipment and for educational software, but we desperately need to help teachers become comfortable with educational technology. This takes time. I usually tell workshop groups that developing a healthy relationship with a computer takes time, just as developing any relationship takes time.
We must have workshops for teachers and we must have comfortable settings (sometimes away from their schools) where they can work at computers and talk with peers about how to change their teaching techniques. We tend to change our educational habits when a peer "early adaptor" shows us the technology's effectiveness.
We must also schedule time for teachers to work together in re-designing their instruction habits moving into a facilitator/coordinator mode for much of the learning process. We must help teachers become comfortable being taught by students (who often know more about the technology than we do). My husband died suddenly only three weeks after we bought our first computer. We were planning to learn its operation together. As soon as I could handle it I simply called my local high school computer teacher and announced I needed to "rent" one of his students as my tutor! I've been learning about technology from my students ever since.
One of the most exciting educational technology projects I've ever known - used a satellite to link teachers in northern and southern California so they could work out ways to improve their individualized instruction curricula. The Archdiocese of San Francisco was a leader in this event called "Project Interchange" and it was a pioneer educational experiment. We must link teachers more as we reinvent our instructional techniques.
Our teaching roles will be redefined, but as the management expert Stephen Covey reminds us: our roles are stewardships. We will have to find ways to reorganize our time and our teaching as we face the educational technology horizon ahead of us.