Technology in Schooling: A SYNOPSIS - Part 1

Posted by Nehal Preet on December 31st, 2020

Technology is everywhere in education: Public colleges in the United States now provide at least one computer for each five college students. They spend more than billion per year on digital content. Brought by the federal government, the country is in the midst of a massive effort to make affordable high-speed Internet and free online teaching resources available to even the most rural and remote universities. And in 2015-16, for the first time, more state standardized checks for the elementary and middle grades will be administered via technology than by document and pencil.

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There’s the booming ed-tech market, with corporate titans and small start-ups alike vying for a slice of an billion-plus yearly market for hardware and software. Much attention is also paid to the “early adopters”-those districts, institutions, and teachers who are making probably the most ingenious and effective uses of the new tools at their disposal.

But a significant body of analysis has also made clear that most teachers have been slow to transform the ways they teach, despite the influx of new technologies into their classrooms. There remains limited evidence to show that technology and on the internet learning are improving learning outcomes for most learners. And academics and mothers and fathers as well have expressed concerns about electronic distractions, ways in which unequal access to and use of technologies might widen achievement gaps, and more.

State and federal lawmakers, in the mean time, have wrestled in recent years with the reality that new systems also found new problems. The rise of “big data,” for example, has led to new issues about how schools can keep sensitive student details private and protected.

What follows can be an overview of the huge trends, opportunities, and concerns associated with classroom technology. Links to additional resources are included in each section for those who wish to dig deeper.

What Is Personalized Learning?
Many inside the ed-tech field see new technology as powerful equipment to help schools meet the needs of ever-more-diverse student populations. The idea is that digital products, software, and studying platforms offer an once-unimaginable array of options for tailoring education to each individual student’s academic strengths and weaknesses, interests and motivations, individual preferences, and optimum pace of learning.

In recent years, a group of organizations including the Costs & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, and EDUCAUSE have crafted a definition of “personalized learning” that rests on four pillars:
Each student should have a “learner profile” that paperwork his or her strengths, weaknesses, preferences, and goals;
Each college student should pursue an individualized learning path that encourages him or her to set and manage private academic goals;
Learners should follow a “competency-based progression” that focuses on their ability to demonstrate mastery of a topic, rather than seat time; and,
Students’ learning environments should be flexible and structured in ways that support their individual targets.
How does technology assistance that vision?

In many schools, students are given district-owned computing devices or allowed to bring their own devices from home. The theory is that this allows for “24-7” learning at the time and location of the student’s choosing.

Learning management systems, student information techniques, and other software are also used to distribute assignments, manage schedules and communications, and track student progress.

And educational software program and apps have grown more “adaptive,” relying on technologies and algorithms to determine not only what a pupil knows, but what his / her learning process is, and even their emotional state.

For all the technological progress, though, implementation continues to be a major challenge. Universities and educators across the country continue to wrestle with the changing function of teachers, how to balance flexible and “personalized” models with the state and federal government accountability specifications they still must satisfy, and the deeper cultural challenge of altering educators’ long-standing practices and routines.

Despite the substantial investments that many school systems are making, the evidence that electronic personalized understanding can improve pupil outcomes or narrow accomplishment gaps at scale remains scattered, at best.

WHAT'S 1-to-1 Computing?
Increasingly, universities are relocating to provide students with their own laptop computer, netbook, or digital capsule. Schools purchased more than 23 million gadgets for classroom use in 2013 and 2014 only. Recently, iPads and then Chromebooks (inexpensive Web-based notebooks) have emerged as the devices of choice for many schools.

The two biggest factors spurring the rise in 1-to-1 student computing have already been new mandates that state standardized tests be delivered online and the widespread adoption of the Common Core State Specifications.

Generally, the hope is that putting devices in the hands of students will help with some or all of the following goals:

Enabling teachers and software to deliver more personalized content and classes to students, while allowing college students to learn at their very own speed and ability level;
Helping learners to become technologically skilled and literate and thus better prepared regarding modern workplaces;
Empowering students to do more complex and creative work by allowing them to use digital plus online applications and tools;
Improving the administration and management of schools and classrooms by making it simpler to gather info on what students know and have done;
Bettering communications among college students, teachers, and parents.

Despite the potential benefits, however, many districts have run into trouble when attempting to implement 1-to-1 computing initiatives. Paying for the devices could be a challenge, especially because the strategy of issuing long-expression bonds for short-term technology purchases has come into question. Several districts have also run into problems with infrastructure (not enough bandwidth to support all learners accessing the Internet at the same time) and deployment (poor planning in distributing and handling thousands of devices.)

The most significant problem for schools trying to go 1-to-1, though, is a lack of educational vision. Without a clear picture of how teaching and understanding is expected to change, professionals say, going 1-to-1 often amounts to a “spray and pray” method of distributing numerous devices and hoping for the best.

Some critics of educational technology also point to a recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which found that countries where 15-year older students use computers most in the classroom scored the worst on international reading and math tests.