When Does Educational Technology Make Sense?

In 1995, the Jeremiah Burke High School in Dorchester, Massachusetts, lost its accreditation. There were many reasons, but lack of educational technology was a major one in the opinion of the accrediting agency. Also faced with a civil suit by parents, the Boston Public Schools acted swiftly with what I call a "technology airdrop." In response, the school asked me to consult on how to integrate a million dollars' worth of new technology: a high-end computer on each teacher's desk, four new computers in each classroom, a high-speed network, a powerful file server, and a fast connection to the internet.

My first question was, "What is your goal for introducing all this technology?" I wondered what the response might be. Would it be to add technology to the classroom as part of an effort to regain accreditation? Like adding books to a school library that had been judged too small? Mary, the single technology director at the school, had the right answer: she firmly stated that her goal for introducing new technology was to improve teaching and learning. She saw technology use in education, like library books, as a means rather than an end. She knew that the real problem at the school was not its sagging physical and technical plant: it was the need to help teachers teach and students learn in more productive ways. And she could see that computer technology could, if properly used, play a role.

The school's efforts to introduce technology had mixed results in the end. I learned a great deal about how important leadership from the administration and buy-in from the teachers can be. About how much a security-mad central IT department can do to quash technical innovation. About how crazy it is to expect one over-worked person to manage and support such a massive change in infrastructure and school culture. And especially about how important it is for everyone in a school to agree on the same goal: improving teaching and learning.

Instead of asking, "How can we integrate this technology into the classroom?" we should be asking, "What teaching and learning problems do we have that technology might help solve? When does using a new educational technology make sense?"

Many older educational technologies remain in wide use today because they solve educational problems. Blackboards make it possible for everyone in a class to participate in visual information transfers as well as auditory ones. Paper and pencil make it possible to record notes or answers to a test, and to preserve them for later scrutiny. Books make it possible to study another person's ideas and discoveries anytime, anywhere.

So when does introducing new educational technology make sense?

To be continued...