The future students - Article

The impact of the technology in the education

What is the effect of technology? Is it worth the cost? Take a look at how to evaluate the effectiveness of technology implementation within your school.
Studies on Technology Effectiveness
The following studies have been launched to evaluate the effectiveness of technology:
"The Costs and Effectiveness of Educational Technology: Proceedings of a Workshop" Arthur Melmed (editor) November 1995.

This two-day workshop […] was organized primarily to gather information and expert opinion on the potential benefits and effectiveness of the school use of computer technology. Over the course of two days, workshop participants heard and considered 14 presentations, including summary reviews of the implementations and benefits of the school-wide use of computer technology in five pioneering technology-rich schools; four reviews of experimental and empirical data on the use of computer technology in order to implement a familiar curriculum component or realize a well-defined goal in K-12 and adult education, and military training; a prepared paper on the technology related costs for technology-rich schools; and a prepared paper discussing factors affecting what can be learned about technology in education from traditional evaluation methodology.

Denis Doyle and Eliot Levinson "Doing More with Less" American School Board Journal March 1993

Northcentral Regional Education Laboratory (NCREL’s) Technology Effectiveness Framework (see below)

The Technology Effectiveness Framework was developed to assist educators, researchers, and policymakers in evaluating technology and technology-enhanced programs/curricula against specific reform goals for a school, district, state, or service agency."

Technology Effectiveness Framework
Ask yourself the following questions:

• What are the learning goals to which technology applies?
• How are these learning goals moving the school toward reform?
• How will a technology-enhanced curriculum support instructions that addresses those learning goals?
• Does the technology-enhanced approach help restructure the school to meet its plant for educational reform?
• Do the students achieve the learning goals using the technology-enhanced curriculum?
• Can the school implement cost-efficient technologies given its goals and current realities?
• Can the school extend or adapt less functional technologies so that they are more functional to support a global community of learners in sustained learning that is challenging and authentic?
• Are there funding strategies/partnerships that can reduce the cost?
• How can a school continuously plan to use technology to reach for more powerful learning goals and reform?

Keep in mind the following variables that define learning:

• The goals and metaphors that drive learning and instructions (vision of learning).
• The tasks that ultimately define the nature and level of achievement as well as the curriculum
• The assessment principles and practice.
• The instructional model.
• The characteristics of the learning context including where learning takes place, the nature of the learning environment, the nature of the relationship among teachers and students.
• The learner roles.
• Teacher roles.

Maintain the new definition of Technology Effectiveness to include:

• Authentic and multi-disciplinary tasks
• Addresses important issues and problems in the real world.
• Performance-based assessment.
• Interactive models of instruction.
• Heterogeneous groupings.
• Collaboration.
• Students exploration.
• Teacher as facilitator.

Remember . . .

• LEARNERS: knowledgeable, self-determined, strategic, empathetic
• TASKS: challenging, authentic, integrative
• ASSESSMENT: performance-based, generative, seamlessly interwoven with curriculum and instruction
• INSTRUCTIONAL MODELS AND STRATEGIES: interactive, generative
• LEARNING CONTEXT: knowledge-building learning community, values diversity and multiple perspectives, wide-ranging collaborative experiences in and out of school.
• GROUPING: heterogeneous, flexible, equitable
• TEACHER ROLES: facilitator, guide
• STUDENT ROLES: explorer, cognitive apprentice

Six Variables for Technology Assessment

• Access of school to telecommunications and within given classroom to diverse technologies and resources.
• Operability.
• Location and direction of resources.
• Capacity of technology or program to engage students in challenging learning.
• Ease of use.
• Functionality (capacity of the technology to prepare students of a diversity of technology functions).

What are the features of technology that promote engaged learning and effective instruction??

• Access: connectivity and interconnectivity, design for equitable use
• Operability: interoperability, open architecture, transparency
• Resource location and direction: distributed, user control of input, designed for collaborative projects
• Capacity for engagement: provide access to authentic and challenging tasks, interesting and useful databases or information sets and powerful relationships, take charge of learning, problem solving and exploring, provide information that is just in time and just enough, make explicit what is typically implicit, diagnose learning problems, adapt the system output and learning opportunities in light of diagnoses, customize learning for specific interests, levels of ability and learning preferences.
• Ease of use: effective help, user friendliness, speed of processing and operations, user control, training and support
• Functionality: prepare learners for diversity of technology functions used in the workplace and homes in the 21sst Century, develop skills for programming and authoring, develop skills related to project design and implementation.

From: http://www.nsba.org/sbot/toolkit/teie.html