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Running head: TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION
Technology Integration in Educational Curricula
Jessica Strahl
(E19.2018.001.SU06): Integrating Media & Technology in the K-12 Curriculum: the Wiki
August 3, 2006
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Technology Integration in Educational Curricula
Pablo Picasso once said, "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." In a
sense, Picasso was right. Today, many people turn to computers to find answers. And find them
quickly. Adults look online to see the latest news or calculate a mortgage loan, and they look to
applications like MS Excel to figure out how well they’re sticking to their budgets. Children too,
are using computers more and more. Students en masse are turning to the Internet to research
their papers, making brick-and-mortar libraries almost obsolete. However, just because people
may limit their interaction with technology doesn’t mean that technology doesn’t have more to
offer. I suggest that technology, wisely integrated into a curriculum, can spark the imagination
and evoke questions as well as answer questions.
Analysis of how technology is integrated with curricula
Ineffective technology integration
To illustrate what I mean by technology that is “wisely integrated into a curriculum” it is
helpful to provide some examples of technology integrated unwisely. Drill-and-kill exercises
immediately come to mind. When using these applications, students sit in front of computer
screens and answer a series of multiple-choice questions. They are either applauded for correct
answers or admonished for entering an incorrect answer. School administrations buy these
applications hoping they will reinforce learning and increase students’ standardized test scores.
Unfortunately, these applications are often boring and promote little transferable understanding.
As for increasing test scores, the success of drill-and-kill applications is still up for debate. When
these drill-based applications are treated as entities separate from the rest of the curriculum,
which is often the case, they become less likely to have the desired effect on student
performance.
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Assignments that don’t take into account students’ access to computers or their
familiarity with the given technologies also display a poor use of technology. If a student is
unfamiliar with the required technology or is bombarded with too much happening on the screen
at once, he can face cognitive-overload or may simply lose sight of the purpose of the lesson. At
best, technology that is unwisely integrated will have little positive effect on learning. At worst,
it can have a negative impact on student learning.
Effective technology integration
As is often the case when trying to do things the right way, preparation and
implementation is likely to take some extra effort, at least at first. This is particularly true for the
many teachers and administrators who are still uncomfortable or unfamiliar with these new and
changing technologies and teaching methods.
The most important thing to remember when trying to integrate technology is the purpose
of the lesson. If the technology is likely to obscure the intended goals and objectives then it
shouldn’t be used. In fact, I feel it’s fair to say that the more bells and whistles a technology has
the less effective it is likely to be. This is an especially important consideration when selecting
educational software.
Cognitive psychologists have done a great deal of research on how to effectively present
educational material within multimedia environments. Based on this research they’ve determined
several effects that impact an application’s educational impact. According to the coherence effect
students who receive presentations without irrelevant sound and background music do better on
transfer tests than students who receive presentation containing these irrelevant sounds (Meyer,
2003). The contiguity effect, modality effect, and redundancy effect, among others, also suggest
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effective instructional design principles. When selecting educational software and websites,
teachers and administrators should take these findings into consideration.
Students should not be limited to learning from the creations of others. The article,
“Computers as Mindtools for Engaging Learners in Critical Thinking,” suggests that
technologies can be used as “knowledge construction tools that students learn with, not from,”
and in serving this purpose the technology acts as a Mindtool. “Mindtools are computer
applications that, when used by learners to represent what they know, necessarily engage them in
critical thinking about the content they are studying (Jonassen, 1996).”
While reflecting on my group’s documentary assignment I came to see how video
production could be used as a Mindtool. This can be seen in the following blog post.
[Our group] created our project for a 4th grade language arts class focusing on poetry.
Given a prompt, "Last night I had the strangest dream...” the students were asked to write
a poem that utilizes imagery. They would then take that poem and illustrate it in a video.
The given prompt gives the students some direction while at the same time provoking
their fantastical imaginations. By putting the poem to video students are forced to think
about what their words mean to them. This doesn't limit their poems to concrete symbols,
but instead gives them the opportunity to give their own abstract ideas a more concrete
shape.
… Video used in this way, is used as a Mindtool. Students are used to taking in
the medium passively, but by taking control of its creation the students gain an
understanding of how images are used to represent things and ideas (Strahl, 2006).
WebQuests are another way of integrating technology to enhance learning.
The WebQuest Page describes a WebQuest as
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an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used by learners is
drawn from the Web. WebQuests are designed to use learners' time well, to focus on
using information rather than looking for it, and to support learners' thinking at the levels
of analysis, synthesis and evaluation (http://webquest.sdsu.edu/webquest.html).
Bernie Dodge, one of the developers of the WebQuest model, suggests WebQuest include
“a set of information sources needed to complete the [defined] task” (Dodge, 1997). This
attribute is one of six that Dodge considers to be critical to WebQuests. The presence of these
resources acts as a guide to students, helping them to develop the skills needed to analyze
potential resources and effectively navigate the internet.
Teachers can also retool a WebQuest assignment. By making the students’ the creators of
the WebQuest the internet can be used as a MindTool. Completing the assignment would require
critical analysis of the content in order to properly use it and integrate it within their project.
To do this, teachers would need to provide a bank of sites relevant (perhaps some
irrelevant) to the given topic. Then have the students design an appropriate WebQuest
within the confines of the sites selected. This way, the Internet would act as a MindTool,
still encouraging critical thinking, but would also provide enough structure so that the
students are less likely to get lost in the web's sea of endless and frequently irrelevant
information. (Strahl, 2006)
I mentioned earlier that by treating drill-and-kill exercises as entities separate from the
rest of the curriculum they become less likely to lead to academic improvement. The same can
be said for any assignment. However, when students are made aware of links between their
technology-based activities and the rest of a lesson or curriculum student understanding and
transfer ability is likely to increase. Students may have watched a movie, created a webpage or
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played a game. It doesn’t matter. Establishing links and reinforcing the connections is key to any
well-planned curriculum.
Benefits and drawbacks to technology integration
In his article, “The Computer Delusion,” (1997) Todd Oppenheimer raises a number of
concerns about technology in schools. He finds technology to be a waste of money, noting that
the government pours billions of dollars into what Larry Cuban referred to as an endless cycle of
educational technology failure. Oppenheimer is concerned that the emphasis on technology
obscures the important points of students’ lessons. And he is also concerned that computer use
dulls a person’s ability to think. These are only a few of his concerns regarding technology.
Oppenheimer’s argument that funds are being wasted with an endless cycle of failure
assumes an objective measure of education advancement exists. However, in the book, What
video games have to teach us about learning and literacy, James Paul Gee questions the current
emphasis placed on content. Gee discusses the value of playing video games and suggests
schools change their focus from teaching content to teaching critical thinking and problem
solving. If we follow Gee’s recommendations and move the emphasis away form content, we
must then question if it even matters that technology in the classroom may obscure the content of
the lesson. Gee would likely say the students’ interaction with the technology is more important
than the content.
Neil Postman, in Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology, explores
technology’s effect on society as a whole. His concern centers on society’s unquestioning
acceptance of technology. “The ways of technology, like G-d, are awesome and mysterious”
(Postman). In the same way that people trust that G-d has a reason for everything, people also
trust the creators of technology to have reasons for all that they do. The vast majority of people
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never attempt to understand the intricacies of technology or the direction which it takes; instead
they simply trust that those who advance technology have and will continue to make educated
and ethical decisions.
Postman sites changes in language as evidence of technology’s influence. Languages
constantly adapt, changing meanings to accommodate the most current technology. Often, people
are unaware that a change has even taken place, leaving them unaware of the circumstances that
brought about these changes in the first place.
Schools are also guilty of separating accepted fact from the context that has made them
so. "To teach… what we know… today without also teaching what we once knew, or thought we
knew, is to reduce knowledge to a mere consumer product" (Postman). Without understanding
how current understanding came to be, students will be unable to see the bias inherent in all that
they learn. Only by knowing the strengths and weakness of a given idea will be able to
understand how to best use it.
The warnings of Oppenheimer and Postman do give reason to be skeptical of technology
in the classroom and in society as a whole. They do not, however, give sufficient reason to
abandon technology all together. Instead they should prompt society to take a closer look at its
interactions with technology. Students today are constantly surrounded by technology and
inundated with subtle messages delivered through various medium. It would be irresponsible for
educational institutions to dismiss this fact. Instead they need to accept it and provide curricula
that teach students how to sort through the mixed messages and become discriminating
consumers of the resources available to them.
Only if educators and administrators come to accept responsibility for teaching children
to make sense of their technology-driven world can we shift our focus to improving the
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educational systems in the areas which are failing children. Although teachers are already
working toward a thoughtful integration of technology in the classroom, researchers have only
begun to study technology’s impact on education. When more research findings are available
teachers and administrators will be able to do integrate technology into the curriculum more
effectively.
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References
Dodge, B. (1997). Some thoughts about webquests. The WebQuest Page. Retrieved August 1,
2006 from http://webquest.sdsu.edu/about_webquests.html
Gee, J. P. (2004). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy (1st ed.). New
York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Jonassen, D.H., Carr, C., & Hsiu-Ping, Y. (1998). Computers as mindtools for engaging learners
in critical thinking. TechTrends, 43(2), 24-32
Mayer, R. E. (2003). Theories of learning and their application to technology. In H. F. J. O'Neil,
& R. S. Perez (Eds.), Technology applications in education: A learning view. (pp. 127-157).
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, Mahwah, NJ: US.
Oppenheimer, T. (1997). The computer delusion. The Atlantic Monthly; 280, 1; 45-64
Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly : The surrender of culture to technology (1st ed.). New York:
Knopf.
Site Overview. (2006) Retrieved August 2, 2006, from http://webquest.sdsu.edu/overview.htm
Strahl, J. (2006), JLynn’s K12. Retrieved from http://www.jlynnk12.blogspot.com/