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Thank you very much for inviting me. I appreciate that. Some of the ideas that I will be offering today come about as a result of actually a small grant from the Center for Ecoliteracy that permitted me to hire two graduate students to help me research the huge amount of literature on technology that had grown since the last time I had spent a lot of time on it, which was up through the mid-'80s. The book, Teachers and Machines, was a kind of a point in time and over the last decade I really haven't followed it intensely, but through Bill Ruykeyser and Zenobia Barlow, it was very helpful to me to hire two graduate students to help me get on top of that literature. So some of the ideas that I'll be talking about come from that help. Now, Roy and I were discussing briefly the pro and con format. There's enough pro and con already out there that you don't need to hear it from the two of us, although you'll see that there will be some differences. What I plan to do is basically offer you a few questions that I would ask if I were a funder. If I were the person that had a pile of money, and I like to think about that as I get older, and I like to think of people coming to me and say, "Larry, we have a great idea that will revolutionize what goes in the classroom and in the school through technology." Now that, to me, is something that I fantasize about. So, in the spirit of that fantasizing, let me then offer you some of the kinds of questions that I would ask. Now, these questions come from the two careers that I have been very lucky to have. One is as a public school teacher and an administrator for 25 years. The second is from the very privileged perch of being a tenured university professor since 1981, and so it's a balance in my own mind from the world of experience, which I then go back to periodically, but also the world of research, since I believe that worthwhile knowledge comes from both experience and from the conduct of research. So, with that in mind, I'm going to offer you three questions. I've indicated where they come from in general, and these are going to be very familiar to you. So if you're expecting-ah, pencil poised, that this is-I mean, these are going to be pizzazzy questions, you may be a bit disappointed, but what I will point out is that even though these are familiar, they're very tricky and they're quite complex, with different layers to them.
So let me begin. The first question that I would ask of anyone coming to me and saying that "I want your money," is that I would ask him, "What do you want students and teachers to achieve in the classroom from the use of information technologies?" Now, this is a goal-centered question and it's far trickier than it sounds, because it's kind of familiar ask" "What are your goals?" I mean, it's the nature of the rational approach, okay? But it's trickier. What makes a question tricky is that there are many overlapping and conflicting goals embedded in practitioners', administrators', and policy-makers' desires for more and better use of computers in schools. Moreover, there are a variety of ways that hardware and software are currently used in schools and classrooms. So let me take up the point of the complexity of the goal that is in my question. If I were to categorize the many reasons why students and teachers should use computers, they fall into the following groupings, and they're the most common ones.
The first is the phrase "computer literacy" that Roy appropriately dismissed, but if you remember The Nation at Risk report, which is only a bare 15 years ago but a millennia in the way we count time today-if you remember that, computer literacy was right there and there were course after course about how to teach kids to learn programming languages, making sure that there were such courses for graduation and so on. But if you just take apart the phrase "computer literacy," the slogan, what is really behind that goal is a pervasive fear of being unskilled in an automated workplace. Presidents, governors, and corporate executives have created a commonly accepted story that cuts across political parties, socioeconomic groupings, and has become virtual dogma, and the story goes like this, and I can give you the source for it. I wish I had written it, but this is basically the story, and it'll sound very familiar. It goes like this:
We are entering the Information Age, a time of change equivalent to the shift from the Agricultural to the Industrial Age. The resulting deregulated global economy is bringing freedom and democracy to the rest of the world, and technological wonders to America. But if you want to enjoy it, you have to compete against about 6 billion people out there, most of whom will work for a lot less than you. The price of labor is set in South China. If you want to live seven times better, you have to be seven times more efficient. You should get all the technical training you can get, pack a computer on your back, and get out there and compete.
Now, how many think that Bill Clinton said that? How many think that's a reasonable story for Bill Clinton to say? Okay, how many would say that's a reasonable story for Newt Gingrich to say? I'm disappointed in you, because both of them have said that-both of them. And that's the pervasiveness of computer literacy. It really talks about the economic fears that are behind the pervasiveness of wanting to get computers into schools. It's behind the fear, of the individual parent's fear for their children of being unskilled. Now, that's the dominant rationale and Roy refers to it-everyone refers to it. Any superintendent, any governor will use that. The digital high school, the language, the state task force that recommended billions of dollars to be spent here in California-that's what they start with-everyone starts with. That's the goal.
The second goal that's layered in there is that students must master basic skills, including reasoning and problem solving, and acquire knowledge faster and better than before. This is goal of increasing the productivity of basic literacy with the primary measurement usually being standardized test scores. So that's built into that question that I asked also, and how the practitioners would usually respond to my question. So it's not only that you've got to have kids computer literate because of the automated workplace, but you also have to have them master basic skills, and you have to have them do it because knowledge changes so fast that you really can't stand still in this kind of a world.
The third is that you want to change how teachers teach to become more constructivist and student centered. Constructivist is the academic term for it, but it really means much more, as any of you know who are most familiar with it. Now, this goal requires changing the traditional social organization of the classroom and the school, and Roy has indeed mentioned that, too.
Now, these goals overlap. The first and second goal, the economic justification and the basic literacy for knowledge and skills-they overlap. The last one does conflict, about changing the school toward a different kind of teaching and a different kind of organization. It does conflict with the second one because most schools measure academic performance with standardized test scores. And when you begin to peel back these different justifications and you see that there's some internal conflict and contradictions, then you have to really then take a step back and say, "Well, is this what you want to do, and why, and then what are the different strategies, and what are these strategies linked to?" Very rational kinds of questions. But even if you're a little skeptical of what Larry is saying, let me sketch out briefly the different ways that information technologies are presently being used in the classroom to add to the complexity.
The first generation of computer software, beginning in the late 1960s and extending through the mid-1980s with continuing great use today, is called "computer-assisted instruction," CAI. This use is called by friends "tutorials." But by those who really don't like it, "drill and kill." So there's a pejorative side to it. It's computer-assisted instruction and if there's anything that's quite clear about that literature on the research, it is that computer-assisted instruction does increase test scores, particularly if it's aimed at reading and math and certain levels of skills. There's no question about that and study after study has shown that it does do that, and there are enough software around continually in use to support as it's currently used.
There is a second strategy of the use of information technology and it arose mostly in the 1970s with much presence in low-income, minority communities. Although it's not restricted there, they have-many big cities have purchased these-the software and the hardware. It's called "computer-managed instruction," CMI. Sometimes they're called "instructional learning systems" or ILSs, and the way they work is that the software program literally diagnoses what each student knows and can do, guides the student through the next best steps for them in learning, and then records their progress for teachers and parents. So it's an individually kind of managed system that has an enormous repertoire of software that literally places a kid somewhere in a math program at a certain level and gives the kid appropriate exercises, problems at that level and moves the kid along. That's called CMI, okay? Now, both computer-assisted instruction and computer-managed instruction deemphasize the role of the teacher, particularly around interacting with students. The teacher becomes more of a manager, leaving instruction in basic skills to the software.
A third use began in the mid-1980s and has surged throughout the 1990s, and that is "computer-enhanced instruction," CEI. Now, computer-enhanced instruction differs from the other two forms in that it refers to programs that provide less structure and more open-ended opportunities that support a particular lesson or unit. Roy was talking mostly about computer-enhanced instruction. Would that be fair, Roy? Okay. Thank you, Roy. Teachers in this kind of a use of computers in the classroom and other information technologies are viewed as essential in structuring the experience in interacting with students constantly, since simply sitting students in front of the computer to browse the Internet will not result in the same learning curve as when students are assigned well-designed projects for using the net as a method of information gathering.
Now, given these varying purposes in classroom uses of information technology, those who would ask me for money at the minimum would have to be clear about which goals they seek, what kinds of software and hardware would they be using, the kind of computer assisted, computer managed, computer enhanced, or mixes of them, to achieve those ends, and whether there is a fit in their proposal between their goals and their strategies, and if there isn't a fit, how come?
So that's the first question about goals. As I said, it was a little tricky. Let me turn now to the second question. Can you reach the same goals at less cost without additional investments in technology? Very few people ask that question, and the reason is the pervasiveness of the myth, the story about the fear of being unskilled in a computerized workplace. So people don't ask that question because you assume that everyone's got to have this. But it's a little-and, again, let me just show you-you can see the range of my humor, because this is "Calvin and Hobbes." First panel: "If I had a computer, I'm sure I'd get better grades on my book reports." Second panel: "You'd still have to read the book and tell the computer what you want to say, you know? And third panel: "What's all this fuss about computers?" The father is simply raising the alternative. Oh, if we had more people that would do that! More people, I think, should do that. Some funders never ask this question because the promotion, hype, and economic justification for information technologies are so pervasive that you just don't consider it. If raising test scores in math and reading is a goal, there are solid computer-assisted instructional programs that work on that, but much cheaper than a major capital investment in hardware and software that becomes obsolete in 18 months to 24 months-and I hope that people ask questions about that-might well be to reduce class size, adding aides to the classroom or peer tutoring. When I looked through the literature, I was shocked. I only found one study, and I'm sure there are others, but I only could find one study, and it was done by a colleague, Henry Levin, who looked at the cost effectiveness of CAI as compared to other strategies-reducing class size and so on-and he found peer tutoring with the outcome measure being standardized test scores. And peer tutoring was much cheaper than the capital investment and the continuing technical support for CAI. Very few researchers look at that, the cost effectiveness, again, because of the total domination of the mindset and the assumption about the economic importance of information technologies.
Now, if making classrooms more student centered is the goal, and that's a reasonable goal-I don't believe there's only one kind of good school; there are many good schools; some of them are more traditional, some of them are more progressive-whatever the case is, it's a meritorious goal to seek out more student-centered classrooms and schools, but there are alternative strategies to achieve that, too. You can change the age grade at school, you could well reduce class size, you can sustain professional development and school-based programs for new teachers, all of which may be cheaper, and probably are cheaper and may be equally or more effective to get that kind of a goal, too. Now, sadly, as I've indicated, few research studies have pursued this basic question. Nonetheless, it is, for me, the one that is crucial to ask because it forces those who seek money to consider alternatives that have been overshadowed by the hype over classroom technologies.
Final question: after the person asking for funds has satisfactorily, in my mind, answered those first questions, I would ask, "What configuration of hardware, software, and Internet connections would best meet your goals and projected use of computers?" Put the stuff in labs, put the stuff in libraries, put more machines in classrooms, some combination. Now, these kind of implementation strategies have all kinds of consequences, both covert and overt, embedded within them, and very few people think those through, of what a lab-drive strategy does to the teaching and learning that one wants, or what it means to saturate a classroom with 6 to 10 computers for 25 students and what that means if you have the rhetoric and the current buzzwords about integrating the curriculum with classroom computers.
So all of these are very concrete strategies that need to be really thought through when you talk about a particular school. Now, I'm uncertain whether most funders question the strategies or the rationale in the proposals or even the connections of the strategies to the overall goals, so for what it was worth, I thought I would offer you these kind of three questions that I would ask in this kind of deeply personal fantasy that I have from time to time. Thank you.
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