For example, introducing a half-dozen computers into a classroom or creating microcomputer labs, over time, alters how teachers teach (that is, they move from whole-class instruction to small groups and individualized options) and how students learn (they come to rely upon one another and themselves to understand ideas and practice skills). The evidence for this scenario is a small but growing body of research. It is inexorable because believers in this scenario are convinced that the future school will mirror a workplace dominated by computers and telecommunications.
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It is slow because schools, as organizations, take time to learn how to use computers to guide student learning. Advocates of this scenario see it occurring inexorably, much like a turtle crawling towards its pond. I n this scenario, putting computers into classrooms will yield a steady but very slow movement towards fundamental changes in teaching and schooling. The cautious optimist’s scenario: slow growth of hybrid schools and classrooms. Examples of such schools range from cyber-schools to regular elementary and secondary schools fully stocked with devices, software, experienced teachers, and highly-motivated students. The strategy for achieving the vision is to create total settings that have a critical mass of machines, software, and like-minded people who are serious users of the technologies.
Teachers are helpers, guides, and coaches to students being tutored and interacting both with teachers and machines. They are seen as liberating tools for both teachers and students to grow, communicate, and learn from one another.
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Machines and software are central to this dream. The dream is to make teaching and learning far more productive through project-based learning or competency-based instruction than it now is. These are schools with sufficient numbers of machines, software, assorted accessories, and wiring to accommodate varied groupings of students in classrooms, seminar rooms, and individual work spaces. The techno-optimist’s dream: electronic schools of the future now. Here are the three scenarios I sketched out in 1992. Yet one in particular–here’s the spoiler–exists now. In the intervening decades, each of these scenarios have real-life evidence that they occurred.
Nearly three decades ago, I wrote a few pieces on this techno-optimism (see here and here) when it comes to public schools and posed three scenarios then. And schools win by having access to new technologies while tailoring their use to fit the “grammar of schooling.” In other words, techno-optimists win in getting much of their hardware and software into schools and classrooms but lose badly in seeing that what occurs as a result falls far short of their dreams of faster, more, better, and personalized teaching and learning. They domesticate the technology to fit what already exists. What is often missed in this familiarity with exaggerated claims for new technologies (i.e., access and use of new hardware, software, and now social media) is that schools do, indeed, end up extensively using the new stuff. Every ill has a cure, every problem has a solution, and every school needs the latest software to boost students’ math test scores ( Dreambox) or make English-speaking students fluent in French ( Duolingo).Īnyone over the age of 40 recognizes this repetitive hype and dashed expectations when it comes to the promise of new technologies in schools. From Thomas Edison’s words on film revolutionizing teaching and learning in the early 1900s to the acclaim accompanying desktop computers overhauling K-12 schools in the early 1980s to MOOCs in the 2010s transforming higher education to BrainCo–software that tracks and uses students’ brainwaves in 2019–enthusiasm for the latest technological innovation is boundless.
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