Technology in School
PRACTICE COMMON
CORE ASSESSMENT
TEXT BOOKLET
Context: In 2010, Arne Duncan, the United States’ Secretary of education sent a letter
to Congress saying, “I urge you to consider … transforming American education by using
the best and most inclusive modern technology.” He argues that increasing digital
technology in our nation’s classrooms will make America more competitive. That’s why
millions of dollars are being invested in bringing more technology into our schools.
At the same time, brain scientists warn that our increasing use of digital technology may
be leading to shorter attention spans and difficulty engaging in deep learning. They say
people’s brains are getting “re-wired” to be more distracted.
The debate continues: should our school system increase or decrease digital technology
in classrooms?
During this assessment, you will watch a video and read several articles about this issue.
This booklet contains space for note-taking, places to briefly answer questions about the
articles, and room for drafting and revising an essay.
DO NOT OPEN BOOKLET UNTIL INSTRUCTED TO DO SO
Text #1
8 Ways Technology Is Improving
Education
This article was adapted from an article written by Sarah Kessler
Nov 22, 2010
The Education Tech Series is supported by Dell The Power To Do More, where you'll
find perspectives, trends and stories that inspire Dell to create technology solutions that
work harder for its customers so they can do and achieve more.
Don Knezek, the CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education,
compares education without technology to the medical profession without technology.
“If in 1970 you had knee surgery, you got a huge scar,” he says. “Now, if you have knee
surgery you have two little dots.”
Technology is helping teachers to expand beyond linear, text-based learning and to
engage students who learn best in other ways. Its role in schools has evolved from a
contained “computer class” into a versatile learning tool that could change how we
demonstrate concepts, assign projects and assess progress.
Despite these opportunities, adoption of technology by schools is still anything but
ubiquitous. Knezek says that U.S. schools are still asking if they should incorporate more
technology, while other countries are asking how. But in the following eight areas,
technology has shown its potential for improving education.
1. Better Simulations and Models
Digital simulations and models can help teachers explain concepts that are too big or too
small, or processes that happen too quickly or too slowly to demonstrate in a physical
classroom.
The Concord Consortium, a non-profit organization that develops technologies for math,
science and engineering education, has been a leader in developing free, open source
software that teachers can use to model concepts…[The] organization is developing
include a software that allows students to experiment with virtual greenhouses in order to
understand evolution, a software that helps students understand the physics of energy
efficiency by designing a model house, and simulations of how electrons interact with
matter.
Notes on my thoughts,
reactions and questions
as I read:
2. Global Learning
At sites like Glovico.org, students can set up language lessons with a native speaker who
lives in another country and attend the lessons via videoconferencing. Learning from a
native speaker, learning through social interaction, and being exposed to another culture's
perspective are all incredible educational advantages that were once only available to
those who could foot a travel bill. Now, setting up a language exchange is as easy as
making a videoconferencing call.
3. Virtual Manipulatives
Let's say you're learning about the relationship between fractions, percents and decimals.
Your teacher could have you draw graphs or do a series of problems that changes just one
variable in the same equation. Or she could give you a "virtual manipulative" and let you
experiment with equations to reach an understanding of the relationship.
"You used to count blocks or beads," says Lynne Schrum, who has written three books
on the topic of schools and technology. "Manipulating those are a little bit more difficult.
Now there are virtual manipulative sites where students can play with the idea of
numbers and what numbers mean, and if I change values and I move things around, what
happens."
4. Probes and Sensors
Collecting real-time data through probes and sensors has a wide range of educational
applications. Students can compute dew point with a temperature sensor, test pH with a
pH probe, observe the effect of pH on an MnO3 reduction with a light probe, or note the
chemical changes in photosynthesis using pH and nitrate sensors.
5. More Efficient Assessment
Models and simulations, beyond being a powerful tool for teaching concepts, can also
give teachers a much richer picture of how students understand them.
"You can ask students questions, and multiple choice questions do a good job of
assessing how well students have picked up vocabulary," Dorsey explains. "But the fact
that you can describe the definition [of] a chromosome ... doesn’t mean that you
understand genetics any better ... it might mean that you know how to learn a definition.
But how do we understand how well you know a concept?"
Technology can help teachers collect real-time assessment data from their students. When
the teacher gives out an assignment, she can watch how far along students are, how much
time each spends on each question, and whether their answers are correct. With this
information, she can decide what concepts students are struggling with and can pull up
examples of students' work on a projector for discussion.
6. Storytelling and Multimedia
Asking children to learn through multimedia projects is not only an excellent form of
project-based learning that teaches teamwork, but it's also a good way to motivate
students who are excited to create something that their peers will see. In addition, it
makes sense to incorporate a component of technology that has become so integral to the
world outside of the classroom.
7. E-books
Despite students' apparent preference for paper textbooks, proponents like Daytona
College and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are ready to switch to digital. And
electronic textbook vendors like CourseSmart are launching to help them.
8. Epistemic Games
Epistemic games put students in roles like city planner, journalist, or engineer and ask
them to solve real-world problems. The Epistemic Games Group has provided several
examples of how immersing students in the adult world through commercial game-like
simulations can help students learn important concepts.
In one game, students are cast as high-powered negotiators who need to decide the fate of
a real medical controversy. In another, they must become graphical artists in order to
create an exhibit of mathematical art in the style of M.C. Escher. Urban Science, the
game featured in the above video, assigns students the task of redesigning Madison,
Wisconsin.
These eight technologies are redefining education. Which technologies would you add to
the list? Let us know in the comments below.
Series Supported by Dell The Power To Do More
The Education Tech Series is supported by Dell The Power To Do More, where you'll
find perspectives, trends and stories that inspire Dell to create technology solutions that
work harder for its customers so they can do and achieve more.
Text #2:
We Live in a Mobile World
Will Richardson, the co-founder of "Powerful Learning Practice," is the author of several
books, including, "Personal Learning Networks: Using the Power of Connections to
Transform Education." He is on Twitter as @willrich45.
January 4, 2012, 4:37 PM, New York Times
Let’s face it: For my children and for millions like them, life will be an open phone test.
They are among the first generation who will carry access to the sum of human
knowledge and literally billions of potential teachers in their pockets. They will use that
access on a daily basis to connect, create and, most important, to learn in ways that
most of us can scarcely imagine. Given that reality, shouldn’t we be teaching our
students how to use mobile devices well?
The analog, 20th century curriculum that most classrooms deliver doesn’t fit well with
the realities of the exploding mobile, digital world.
Right now, schools are resistant, fearing the disruption that mobile access might cause
and the dangers that might lurk online. However, the analog, 20th century curriculum
that most classrooms deliver doesn’t fit well with the realities of the exploding mobile,
digital world. Our kids are stuck in a paper-based, local-learning system that doesn’t
acknowledge the global, networked, always-on opportunities that mobile access affords.
There's no doubt that the current slate of mobile devices have their limitations. There
are still better technology options for constructivist, meaningful learning (i.e., laptops)
that provide power and flexibility that phones and tablets cannot. That, of course, may
change. But regardless, for many kids right now, especially at the lower end of the
income scale, these devices are their only connections to the content and people who
can help them learn great things. We need to leverage that.
Access in our kids’ pockets will force us to rethink much of what we do in schools. For
one thing, we have to stop asking questions in classrooms that students can now answer
with their phones (state capitals anyone?) and instead ask questions that require more
than just a connection to answer -- questions that call upon them to employ synthesis
and critical thinking and creativity, not just memorization. Anything less is not preparing
them for the information rich world that we live in.
Notes on my thoughts,
reactions and
questions as I read:
DO NOT TURN PAGE UNTIL INSTRUCTED TO DO SO AFTER
THE VIDEO.
Text #3
A Misguided Use of Money
Paul Thomas, a public high school English teacher for 18 years, is an associate professor of
education at Furman University in Greenville, S.C. You can follow his work at Radical
Scholarship and on Twitter at @plthomasEdD.
JANUARY 3, 2012
Reforming education in the U.S. often includes seeking new technology to improve
teaching and learning. Instead of buying the latest gadgets, however, our schools would
do better to provide students with critical technological awareness, achievable at little
cost.
Chalk board, marker board and now 'smart' board have not
improved teaching or learning, but have created increased
costs for schools.
We rarely consider the negative implications for acquiring the newest “smart” board or
providing tablets for every student. We tend to chase the next new technology without
evaluating learning needs or how gadgets uniquely address those needs. Ironically, we
buy into the consumerism inherent in technology (Gadget 2.0 pales against Gadget 3.0)
without taking full account of the tremendous financial investments diverted to
technology.
Technology is a tool to assist learning. School closets and storage facilities across the
U.S., though, are filled with cables, monitors and hardware costing millions of dollars
that are now useless. Notably, consider one artifact that's covered in dust -- the
Laserdisc video player (soon to be joined by interactive “smart” boards).
Chalk board, marker board and now “smart” board have not improved teaching or
learning, but have created increased costs for schools and profits for manufacturers.
There is little existing research that shows positive outcomes from technology.
Onestudy found that "most of the schools that have integrated laptops and other digital
tools into learning are not maximizing the use of those devices in ways that best make
use of their potential.”
Notes on my thoughts,
reactions and questions
as I read:
Reading a young adult novel on a Kindle or an iPad, or in paperback form, proves
irrelevant if children do not want to read or struggle to comprehend the text. Good
teachers, however, can make the text come alive for the children whether it's on a
glowing screen or a piece of paper.
Schools should not be blinded by the latest trends and the inflated costs of new
technologies. Rather, we should empower teachers and divert resources into their
classrooms in more meaningful ways.
We’d do well to heed Henry David Thoreau: “We are in great haste to construct a
magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing
important to communicate.”
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Text #4:
A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute
By MATT RICHTEL, New York Times, October 22, 2011
LOS ALTOS, Calif. — The chief technology officer of eBay sends his children to a nineclassroom school here. So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple,
Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard.
But the school’s chief teaching tools are anything but high-tech: pens and paper, knitting
needles and, occasionally, mud. Not a computer to be found. No screens at all. They are
not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home.
Schools nationwide have rushed to supply their classrooms with computers, and many
policy makers say it is foolish to do otherwise. But the contrarian point of view can be
found at the epicenter of the tech economy, where some parents and educators have a
message: computers and schools don’t mix.
This is the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, one of around 160 Waldorf schools in the
country that subscribe to a teaching philosophy focused on physical activity and learning
through creative, hands-on tasks. Those who endorse this approach say computers inhibit
creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans.
The Waldorf method is nearly a century old, but its foothold here among the digerati puts
into sharp relief an intensifying debate about the role of computers in education.
“I fundamentally reject the notion you need technology aids in grammar school,” said
Alan Eagle, 50, whose daughter, Andie, is one of the 196 children at the Waldorf
elementary school; his son William, 13, is at the nearby middle school. “The idea that an
app on an iPad can better teach my kids to read or do arithmetic, that’s ridiculous.”
Mr. Eagle knows a bit about technology. He holds a computer science degree from
Dartmouth and works in executive communications at Google, where he has written
speeches for the chairman, Eric E. Schmidt. He uses an iPad and a smartphone. But he
says his daughter, a fifth grader, “doesn’t know how to use Google,” and his son is just
learning. (Starting in eighth grade, the school endorses the limited use of gadgets.)
Three-quarters of the students here have parents with a strong high-tech connection. Mr.
Eagle, like other parents, sees no contradiction. Technology, he says, has its time and
Notes on my thoughts,
reactions and questions as I
read:
place: “If I worked at Miramax and made good, artsy, rated R movies, I wouldn’t want
my kids to see them until they were 17.”
While other schools in the region brag about their wired classrooms, the Waldorf school
embraces a simple, retro look — blackboards with colorful chalk, bookshelves with
encyclopedias, wooden desks filled with workbooks and No. 2 pencils.
On a recent Tuesday, Andie Eagle and her fifth-grade classmates refreshed their knitting
skills, crisscrossing wooden needles around balls of yarn, making fabric swatches. It’s an
activity the school says helps develop problem-solving, patterning, math skills and
coordination. The long-term goal: make socks.
Down the hall, a teacher drilled third-graders on multiplication by asking them to pretend
to turn their bodies into lightning bolts. She asked them a math problem — four times
five — and, in unison, they shouted “20” and zapped their fingers at the number on the
blackboard. A roomful of human calculators.
In second grade, students standing in a circle learned language skills by repeating verses
after the teacher, while simultaneously playing catch with bean bags. It’s an exercise
aimed at synchronizing body and brain. Here, as in other classes, the day can start with a
recitation or verse about God that reflects a nondenominational emphasis on the divine.
Andie’s teacher, Cathy Waheed, who is a former computer engineer, tries to make
learning both irresistible and highly tactile. Last year she taught fractions by having the
children cut up food — apples, quesadillas, cake — into quarters, halves and sixteenths.
“For three weeks, we ate our way through fractions,” she said. “When I made enough
fractional pieces of cake to feed everyone, do you think I had their attention?”
Some education experts say that the push to equip classrooms with computers is
unwarranted because studies do not clearly show that this leads to better test scores or
other measurable gains.
Is learning through cake fractions and knitting any better? The Waldorf advocates make it
tough to compare, partly because as private schools they administer no standardized tests
in elementary grades. And they would be the first to admit that their early-grade students
may not score well on such tests because, they say, they don’t drill them on a
standardized math and reading curriculum.
When asked for evidence of the schools’ effectiveness, the Association of Waldorf
Schools of North America points to research by an affiliated group showing that 94
percent of students graduating from Waldorf high schools in the United States between
1994 and 2004 attended college, with many heading to prestigious institutions like
Oberlin, Berkeley and Vassar.
Of course, that figure may not be surprising, given that these are students from families
that value education highly enough to seek out a selective private school, and usually
have the means to pay for it. And it is difficult to separate the effects of the low-tech
instructional methods from other factors. For example, parents of students at the Los
Altos school say it attracts great teachers who go through extensive training in the
Waldorf approach, creating a strong sense of mission that can be lacking in other schools.
Absent clear evidence, the debate comes down to subjectivity, parental choice and a
difference of opinion over a single world: engagement. Advocates for equipping schools
with technology say computers can hold students’ attention and, in fact, that young
people who have been weaned on electronic devices will not tune in without them.
Ann Flynn, director of education technology for the National School Boards Association,
which represents school boards nationwide, said computers were essential. “If schools
have access to the tools and can afford them, but are not using the tools, they are cheating
our children,” Ms. Flynn said.
Paul Thomas, a former teacher and an associate professor of education at Furman
University, who has written 12 books about public educational methods, disagreed,
saying that “a spare approach to technology in the classroom will always benefit
learning.”
“Teaching is a human experience,” he said. “Technology is a distraction when we need
literacy, numeracy and critical thinking.”
And Waldorf parents argue that real engagement comes from great teachers with
interesting lesson plans.
“Engagement is about human contact, the contact with the teacher, the contact with their
peers,” said Pierre Laurent, 50, who works at a high-tech start-up and formerly worked at
Intel and Microsoft. He has three children in Waldorf schools, which so impressed the
family that his wife, Monica, joined one as a teacher in 2006.
And where advocates for stocking classrooms with technology say children need
computer time to compete in the modern world, Waldorf parents counter: what’s the rush,
given how easy it is to pick up those skills?
“It’s supereasy. It’s like learning to use toothpaste,” Mr. Eagle said. “At Google and all
these places, we make technology as brain-dead easy to use as possible. There’s no
reason why kids can’t figure it out when they get older.”
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