There Are No Technology Shortcuts to Good Education « Educational Technology Debate. Kentaro Toyama. There are no technology shortcuts to good education. For primary and secondary schools that are underperforming or limited in resources, efforts to improve education should focus almost exclusively on better teachers and stronger administrations. Information technology, if used at all, should be targeted for certain, specific uses or limited to well- funded schools whose fundamentals are not in question. But, the conclusions are relevant for a broad class of primary and secondary schools in developed countries, as well.) To back these assertions, I’ll draw on four different lines of evidence. The history of electronic technologies in schools is fraught with failures. Computers are no exception, and rigorous studies show that it is incredibly difficult to have positive educational impact with computers. Technology at best only amplifies the pedagogical capacity of educational systems; it can make good schools better, but it makes bad schools worse. Technology has a huge opportunity cost in the form of more effective non- technology interventions. Many good school systems excel without much technology. The inescapable conclusion is that significant investments in computers, mobile phones, and other electronic gadgets in education are neither necessary nor warranted for most school systems. In particular, the attempt to use technology to fix underperforming classrooms (or to replace non- existent ones) is futile. And, for all but wealthy, well- run schools, one- to- one computer programs cannot be recommended in good conscience. All of the evidence stands on its own, but I will tie them together with a single theory that explains why technology is unable to substitute for good teaching: Quality primary and secondary education is a multi- year commitment whose single bottleneck is the sustained motivation of the student to climb an intellectual Everest. Though children are naturally curious, they nevertheless require ongoing guidance and encouragement to persevere in the ascent. Caring supervision from human teachers, parents, and mentors is the only known way of generating motivation for the hours of a school day, to say nothing of eight to twelve school years. While computers appear to engage students (which is exactly their appeal), the engagement swings between uselessly fleeting at best and addictively distractive at worst. No technology today or in the foreseeable future can provide the tailored attention, encouragement, inspiration, or even the occasional scolding for students that dedicated adults can, and thus, attempts to use technology as a stand- in for capable instruction are bound to fail. ![]() ![]() With respect to sustaining directed motivation, even the much- maligned rote- focused drill- sergeant disciplinarian is superior to any electronic multimedia carnival. But, while Bon. Tempo suggested that we should seek technologies that motivate both teachers and students, I believe today’s technology is not up to the task. The first is Larry Cuban’s Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1. American education up to the early 1. The second is Todd Oppenheimer’s The Flickering Mind: Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology. Oppenheimer also focuses primarily on US education, but updates and expands on Cuban’s findings for computers in schools through the early 2. Both authors consider the record of technology in schools and find it wanting. They reveal that while technologies can have positive educational impact in restricted instances, successes pale in comparison to failures overall. By not knowing this past history, we seem condemned to repeat it over and over and over. One point that both authors make is that there is a repetitive cycle of technology in education that goes through hype, investment, poor integration, and lack of educational outcomes. The cycle keeps spinning only because each new technology reinitiates the cycle. In 1. 92. 2, Thomas Edison claimed that movies would “revolutionize our educational system.” In 1. William Levenson, a Cleveland radio station director, suggested that portable radios in classrooms should be “integrated into school life” alongside blackboards. In the 1. 96. 0s, governments under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson invested in classroom TV. In an irrational leap of reasoning that is symptomatic of technology in education, Johnson went from a valid lament, “Unhappily, the world has only a fraction of the teachers it needs,” to a non- solution. If anything, we have become wary of their educational power. For example, on the one hand, television excels as a medium for delivering information. ![]() Seduced by this capacity in 1. Wilbur Schramm, the father of communications studies, asked “What if the full power and vividness of television teaching were to be used to help the schools develop a country’s new educational pattern?” He was thinking, in particular, of mass media’s potential to transform education for developing countries. The transformation never occurred, probably because as motivational as television can be, it still falls far short of generating the motivation required for education. For every person who falls prey to Madison Avenue’s latest advertisement, hundreds of others just ignore it or turn the channel – if that’s true of the most persuasive television commercials, why should we expect television to be able to regularly sustain the motivation (and not just the attention) of easily distracted children to do the cognitive push- ups that education demands? In the meanwhile, many of us have come to sense television’s shortcomings. Educated parents restrict their children’s time in front of the TV, and many households ban television altogether – at its best, television is considered a cheap babysitter to hold a child’s attention when adult attention is scarce; at its worst, television caters to our weakest impulses, glamorizes materialism, desensitizes us to violence, and lulls us into a zombie- like trance. It starts with good grades. The Buick Achievers Scholarship Program rewards students who have succeeded both inside and outside of the classroom – and who may not be able to attend college without financial. My School is a resource for parents, educators and the community to give readily accessible information about each of Australia’s just over 10,000 schools and campuses. My School now has eight years of data enabling fair. Primary (or elementary) education consists of the first five to seven years of formal, structured education. In general, primary education consists of six to eight years of schooling starting at the age of five or six. About MFTs; Find a Therapist; Therapy Topics; BUILD Your Career. Job Connection; Find Licensing Boards; Minority Fellowship Program; COAMFTE Program Accreditation; MFT Educational Programs; ENHANCE Knowledge. As a result, most people today would laugh at a school system based on watching broadcast television programs, however educational. Yet, that was exactly the idea behind an experiment in American Samoa in the mid- 1. American Physical Therapy Association The Electrical Technician or Electrician programs can provide you with the necessary technical, scientific, communication, and interpersonal skills for successful employment. See What Students Have to. News has analyzed nearly 1,800 colleges. Browse our school profiles by narrowing down your results until you find the ones that are right for you. To unlock full rankings, SAT/ACT score and more, sign up for the U. Alternative medicine consists of a wide range of health care practices, products, and therapies. The shared feature is a claim to heal that is not based on the scientific method. Alternative medicine practices are diverse in. The program was dismantled several years later as teachers, administrators, parents, and even students expressed dissatisfaction with the students’ academic performance. Computers: The Latest Technology Cycle. Today, computers and mobile phones are the shiny new technologies, and they offer an even more seductive promise. One argument goes that it was the passiveness of older technologies that was the problem, so today’s interactive digital technologies are the perfect solution. Patrick Suppes, a pioneer in computer- aided learning suggested in 1. But, neither interactivity nor adaptive capacity are sufficient – the key challenge in education remains the long- term, directed motivation of the student – something which no technology today can deliver on its own, but which good teachers deliver regularly. Of course, computers are different from radio or television, so if they are able to prove themselves in education, we should use them. Alas, the research on computers in education consistently arrives at a single conclusion, which at its most optimistic could be stated as follows: Computers can help good schools do some things better, but they do nothing positive for underperforming schools. This means, very specifically, that efforts to fix broken schools with technology or to substitute for missing teachers with technology invariably fail. Mark Warschauer, the foremost authority on technology in American classrooms, has spent countless hours studying computer projects. He writes of underperforming US schools, “placing computers and Internet connections in low- . To the extent that an emphasis on provision of equipment draws attention away from other important resources and interventions, such an emphasis can in fact be counterproductive.” And, as for technology’s capacity to even the playing field of education, he says, “the introduction of information and communication technologies in . In rigorous large- scale studies in both India and Colombia, Leigh Linden at Columbia University found that while PCs can supplement good instruction, PCs are a poor substitute for time with teachers. Furthermore, large- scale computer roll- outs in these countries showed no significant educational outcomes compared against students who didn’t receive computers. He suggests that one problem is that teachers don’t successfully incorporate computers into their curricula. Three months after a large- scale roll- out, and despite teacher, parent, and student excitement around the technology, students gained nothing in academic achievement. Santiago also notes that even during the initial three months, the novelty factor of the laptops appears to wane, with each week seeing less use of the devices. None of these results run counter to the few research studies that show how computers can benefit education in limited ways. But, all positive instances of computers in schools are built on strong institutional foundations that are exactly what is deficient where technology is expected to save the day. Without the institutional base, technology’s impact is zero or negative. This should immediately cause anyone hoping to fix an underperforming classroom to cross off technology as any part of the “solution.” As Wayan Vota notes in a May 2. ETD article, unless the institutional foundation of teachers and administrators is built and funded properly, technology is pointless. With the lens of motivation, it’s easy to understand why. Bad schools are unable to direct student motivation towards educational goals.
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