| Most teachers and administrators will
tell you the problem with educational technology goes beyond placing
computers in schools or even networking the schools. The real difficulty
comes in convincing teachers to use the technology to entice kids
to work harder and more intelligently.
How do you do that? We believe success begins with a commitment
to technology integration that runs both broad and deep. That's
the commitment we made when we formed the Hanau Model Schools
Partnership, a technology-based reform effort targeted at four
American schools -- two elementary, one middle school, and one
high school -- in the Hanau, Germany, schools, which have 1,400
students. The four schools are part of the U.S. Department of
Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) school system, which serves
roughly 82,000 students worldwide whose parents work in the armed
services.
Helped by a grant from the National Science Foundation, the
Hanau schools hired a group of consultants in 1995 to help integrate
technology into the four schools. At the time, the schools had
very few classroom computers, and none were networked. To access
e-mail, teachers in each school shared a single designated computer.
Opportunities for middle and high school students to use computers
were limited mostly to official "computer classes."
Four years later, teachers communicate regularly by e-mail,
classroom computers are networked, teachers are infusing a myriad
of technologies into their daily lessons and using web pages to
share ideas, and students are becoming adept at using the Internet
and multimedia presentation tools such as PowerPoint. As administrators
and teachers have broadened their technology experience and developed
a deeper understanding of its potential, they have come to see
the powerful impact that the effective use of technology can have
on teaching and student achievement.
Casting a wide net
In seeking to integrate technology, school administrators have
tended to follow one of two routes. Some have taken a "trailblazers"
approach, focusing technical and professional-development resources
on teachers most eager to use technology. In a trailblazers approach,
programs are set up to appeal to what are known as "early adopters."
These programs require a great deal of effort from teachers, but
they also offer teachers significant potential payback, both professionally
and materially. Teachers who are early adopters often are involved
in field-testing software and new curricular approaches. The trouble
with this approach is that it is usually limited to a small number
of teachers.
A second route -- what we call the "equity" approach -- involves
every teacher in learning the broadest, simplest, and most general
technological skills (Some examples include training in basic
software such as Microsoft Word or an e-mail program). It is not
unusual for this kind of training to be focused on the technology
alone while excluding its educational purposes. As a consequence,
it does little to help technology serve a school's educational
reform agenda. What's more, while the skills learned might be
valuable, the approach toward teachers is often "do this or else."
Too often, schools treat these approaches as if they were mutually
exclusive. The result is that students are deprived of opportunities
to use technology in meaningful ways in a variety of subjects.
Moreover, the failure to connect the two approaches means that
teachers seldom serve as technological resources to each other.
Indeed, many teachers have only a vague idea of the ways their
fellow teachers might use technology.
The Hanau Model School Partnership presented several professional
development opportunities for teachers and specialists to develop
their technology skills and look for new ways to integrate what
they had learned into their classrooms.
One feature that helped focus the energies of everyone was the
emphasis on a common tool kit. The Hanau Implementation Team --
a group of administrators, teachers, and parents -- helped select
the Model School Tool Kit, basic software applications and supporting
materials that could be used across a variety of curricular areas.
These applications included Microsoft Word, Amazing Writing Machine,
and Smart Keyboards for word processing; Excel, The Graph Club,
and The Cruncher for graphs and spreadsheets; The Teacher Associate
and Integrade for administrative tools; Netscape and cc:mail for
communications; and Hyperstudio, PowerPoint, digital cameras,
printers, and scanners for multimedia presentations. All of the
applications were placed on more than 500 high-speed networked
computers in the four schools.
Teachers and specialists had several opportunities to learn
one or more parts of the tool kit in summer training sessions,
after school and weekend workshops, and professional development
days. Because every teacher and specialist in Hanau has a networked
computer with the tool kit in his or her classroom, everyone can
practice the lessons learned in workshops. And because they are
learning the same set of tools, teachers and specialists have
many colleagues to ask for help. When everyone is stumped, members
of the technical staff provide assistance through e-mail, a quick
visit to a teacher's room, or privately scheduled instruction
time.
The common tool kit, and the multiple opportunities to learn
more about it, served as the backdrop for the Technology Action
Plans (TAPs), which focused on individual use of the tool kit
during the first year. Teachers and specialists were asked to
pick one application or curricular issue to focus their technology
integration efforts. Initially, the most popular technology applications
chosen were PowerPoint and Internet search engines. Teachers liked
PowerPoint because presentation is such a critical feature of
school life -- and elementary teachers quickly realized that,
with its large print, PowerPoint was a great tool for creating
student-made books. Teachers liked the Internet search engines
for finding information that was more up-to-date than what was
available in the library.
Once they picked a technology application, teachers were asked
to create a plan for technology integration within one curricular
unit. For example, a middle school home economics teacher and
a school nurse teamed up to use the Internet for teaching a health
unit where students would conduct Internet searches on issues
such as AIDS, teen pregnancy, and smoking. Second-grade teachers
used the Amazing Writing Machine to create student storybooks
for the school library. And a freshman biology teacher had students
using multiple technologies -- such as the Internet, scanners,
Smart Keyboards, Hyperstudio, Adobe PhotoShop, and Microsoft Word
-- to gather and present information about biological life.
Changes that run deep
From the outset, "co-teaching" has been an important part of
our effort to encourage teachers to use technology to improve
student learning. During the first summer training sessions, content
specialists provided workshops focusing on specific curricular
areas and technology tools, and during the next year, experts
visited the schools and classrooms to observe, teach, and reflect
with teachers.
As the project has matured, co-teaching has shifted in nature.
Initially, the experts came from outside the Hanau schools to
work with teachers. Now, Hanau teachers serve as the experts.
In this way, Hanau has set up an internal system for sustaining
the depth of understanding about specific technologies and how
they can be used in classrooms.
The Hanau Model School Partnership's full approach to technology
integration has had significant impact on the four dimensions
of successfully networked schools: educational practice, professional
culture, technology leadership and management, and family and
community participation. Student surveys document that more students
are using more kinds of technologies across a wider breadth of
grades. The high school library usually has a waiting list to
check out one of the school's 50 Smartboards, which are keyboards
with small screens that run on batteries and hold up to 60 pages
of text. In one elementary school, most teachers have Smartboards
for their own use.
The changes have extended beyond hardware and software. Classroom
observations document changes in teaching practices, classroom
management, and relationships between teachers and students. Clearly,
technology has been the impetus for teachers to try new instructional
approaches.
Hanau teachers now rely heavily on e-mail for conducting school
business. E-mail allows teachers to share information about scheduling
changes, discuss concerns about students, ask questions about
policy directives, and request classroom supplies. Beyond that,
e-mail has become a powerful tool for local union information
dissemination, discussion, and organization.
Parents have been included in the technology-based changes.
Parents can enroll in technology workshops introducing them to
the hardware and software in the schools. For their participation,
they receive a certificate that becomes part of their personnel
record in the military. They repay the schools by volunteering
their time in the schools.
Parents are also members of the Hanau Implementation Team. This
is the first site-based management group of its kind in Hanau.
Parents work shoulder-to-shoulder with teachers and administrators
to debate and make decisions about technology in the schools.
As a result of this deliberate mixing process, a number of significant
improvements have occurred. For starters, entire schools have
raised their "technology IQ" -- which means everyone knows more
about technology and its applications, is more comfortable using
technology, and is more willing to use technology to solve problems.
One good example of this evolution occurred in an elementary
school, where several teachers learned, as part of the first summer
training program, how to use graphing and spreadsheet software
for a new math program. By the end of the next year, one first-grade
teacher had her students using graphing software for all kinds
of activities. For instance, the youngsters used it to show which
students brushed their teeth the most. Other teachers quickly
realized that they could be using spreadsheets to keep track of
various lists, such as classroom materials and student permission
slips.
The Hanau Model School Partnership's full-school technology
integration approach shows how educators can address the demands
to integrate technology into the classroom while responding to
calls for educational reform. This work provides a model for understanding
how broad-based technology integration approaches can be fruitfully
combined with more deeply focused efforts.
From the beginning, we were careful not to tie project success
to standardized test scores. Following advice from the national
testing center at the University of California in Los Angeles
(UCLA), we looked for "proxies" of achievement -- that is, changes
in practice. We found those in abundance.
To our surprise, we also found some interesting changes in student
achievement, especially in writing at the high school level. For
years, Hanau high school students had failed to have their compositions
accepted in the DoDEA student writing anthology, which is distributed
every year. In the third year of our project, however, the compositions
of 11 Hanau students were accepted. A major reason for their success,
we believe, was their teacher's introduction of Inspiration writing
software -- a program that is chock full of lessons for outlining
and organizing writing.
Whether it is organizing an essay using Inspiration or designing
a spreadsheet for a math lesson, technology is clearly having
a direct impact on the students in the Hanau schools. Because
the schools are infusing technology into daily learning, the students
are finding that the best learning with technology goes both broad
and deep.
Judith
Davidson, a former scientist for TERC,
a Cambridge, Mass., consulting firm, is now an assistant professor
of education at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell; Elizabeth
McNamara is director of educational programs for Open System
Technologies LLC in Clifton Park, N.Y.; and Kevin
McGillivray is an educational technologist in the DoDEA schools.
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