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This paper evaluates Dr. Laurence Peters' article titled Joining forces: A third millennial challenge: Harness the power of educational technology to advance the standards movement (2000), [On-Line]. Available: xanedu.com. The author's thesis rests in the notion that the erratic trajectory of the educational reform during the last decade can be transformed into a practical unification of technology with current methods of teaching. He exposes his case by first noting that the reform movement was initially blown out of proportion when the general public was driven to think that it was going to change traditional teaching and learning methods, for the better. Peters hits the nail squarely with background knowledge and deep reasoning skills. For this, he presents evidence from primary sources, begins with some historical facts, and concludes each point with viable recommendations.
Peters talks about misfortune in the form of circumstantial luck-of-draw that both, technology and the reform movement appeared in the early 1990s. His theme is critical to point that Americans have grown somewhat disenchanted in the promise of a successful transformation of the American education by failure to integrate technology with the reform movement. He indicates that early on, people knew technology and reform had a bright future, but today the horizon looms dark and uncertain. So similar has been the public's thinking about technology in schools. During the last decade the nation has invested considerable time, money and resources trying to improve our educational system. The United States spent over $4 billion on instructional technology during the school year of 1996-1997. In addition, the cost of putting computers and software in schools was high during the early stages of reform (Logan and Scheffler, 1999).
Monetary resources are starting to materialize through Federal and private sector grants that total $330 million. The money will be used as part of new educational technology initiatives that include increase of multimedia in the classrooms, encouragement to develop educational software, teacher training in technology, and Internet connections in all classrooms (Ellyn, 2000).
It's not incidental that early in the decade teachers regarded technology to be important, but they lacked confidence in the ability to integrate it into their curriculum (Logan and Scheffler, 1999). This is no more than a combination of clinging to traditional teaching methods, and technology offering more to fear than a valuable information vehicle.
Peters reveals himself as an energetic authority with extensive teaching background in the
United Kingdom. His physical participation and contribution to the technological advances in the UK educational system put him in an advantageous position for evaluation of our own accomplishments and potential. Although he was born and educated in England, Peters received his doctorate at the University of Michigan and a law degree at the University of Maryland. He has been Deputy Director of the US Department of Education’s Empowerment Zone and Enterprise Community Task Force since 1998. Peters was counsel to the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Select Education and Civil Rights for six years. He specialized in educational research issues and helped design the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI). In 1994, he joined the Clinton Administration to become a Senior Policy Advisor for the Assistant Secretary for OERI. Peters' vast experience in the UK educational system and his American background working in policy-centered positions make his recommendations worthy of consideration.
Although Peters realizes that it may be a little too early to predict that these reform strategies will fail totally; there is much concern about the ultimate educational value of technology, despite a large financial investment in digital equipment. His explicit argument leads to national survey results concerning the use of technology in the classrooms. The report shows low rates of teacher support about the quality of educational software, and the value of the World Wide Web as primary means to teach. Most of the teachers surveyed feel that technology helps students in their traditional skills and knowledge, but it should remain as a secondary source.
Peters reinforces the need of connection between standards reform and technology. He assures that the electronic means will get better, and questions the time will take. Teachers are too busy with their daily work of teaching. Their transition to new forms of instructional delivery has been difficult, and teachers want to be trained before they are required to make a change (Bennett, 2000). On the other hand, technology planning has already being integrated in schools programs. Despite the need to conduct further needs assessment in many areas, specific technological approaches should key on school reorganization and technology-centered competencies for teachers. A crucial point about achieving these conditions is that doing so comes at a high price in a broad range of resources (Guarino and Mathews, 2000).
Peters questions how we can describe this opportunity cost and refers to it as “unrealistic belief in the power of technology to solve problems? He believes is tough for teachers to incorporate high quality digital content to standards-based curriculum. Policy mandates that are too broad have resulted in a broken, decentralized system. This creates the needs to look into a “superstandard" to compare standards among states, and eventually create a set of identical lesson plans. The cause for the slow-down of the educational reform is the fact that teachers have not being given the time to train and incorporate technology into their classrooms. Teachers often suffer frustrations for not being able to create computer-aided lessons to use in their classrooms, because they have not received the proper training (Owen, 2001). Teachers need continuous technology training and professional development. Teacher preparation should target competencies essential for designing, delivering, managing, and evaluating instruction (Logan and Scheffler, 1999).
A second alternative in Peter’s argument for the eventual fix can be made by means of advancement of the standards. He uses a model in which teachers save time and effort to ensure greater quality control, through their own evaluation of the standards. This model could provide teachers the opportunity to create their own software and to compete with commercial vendors. Lastly, teachers will have a voice in identification and selection of high quality digital content. Peters uses the UK’s National Grid for Learning (NGFL) to form an accurate evaluation of the link between standards and technology. He refers to the grid as a system that eases the learning process for teachers and students because it serves as a centralized point to obtain high quality digital content. Peters considers the grid as a great example to emulate, despite still being under development and going through a series of changes. Some of NGFL critics believe that teachers will not switch from the traditional methods to technology, and the software industry is worried that the British government and schools are spending too much on hardware and online software.
Peters illustrates the NGFL benefit as an example that leads to Reconstructionist ideas. His research and consideration of the NGFL's potential and steady evolution would be a case for "constant reconstruction or change" (Ozmon and Craver). Also, the concerns from the NGFL critics and software industry demonstrate a form of democracy at its best. Ozmon and Craver present Reconstructionist ideas reflecting that change must be applied intelligently and democratically. Additionally, Peters' position using the NGFL parallels postmodern ideas (Ozmon and Craver) of drawing from the European experience to fix a period of long history of trial and error in American education. Ozmon and Craver urge that postmodern is something new and different, however, its consciousness responds negatively to certain behaviors.
The vision of UK’s Prime Minister Blair about the role of the NGFL contains an interesting feature about collaboration between a free market and government control. The grid is an Internet portal with linked sites containing high quality digital information. This alternative has been echoed in the American educational system. Similar approaches involve efforts in the same direction and constitute attempts to advance the standards. The National Education Technology Standards (NETS) has a focus similar to that of the NGFL. Its vision centers on a solution for linkage of standards to technology. NETS focuses on developing national standards for educational uses of technology that ease school improvement in the U.S. NETS works to define standards for students, integrating curriculum technology, technology support, and standards for student assessment and evaluation of technology (Bennett, 2000).
According to the Executive Summary, "due to the rapid technological advances in the early and mid-1990s, U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley released the nation's first educational technology plan in 1996, Getting America's Students Ready for the 21st Century: Meeting the Technology Literacy Challenge". In 1999, the U.S. Department of Education conducted a strategic review of the national educational technology plan. Five new national goals for technology in education were derived from this review. These goals include full access to information technology, effective use of technology by teachers, technology and information literacy skills for all students, emphasis on research and evaluation, and transformation of teaching and learning using digital content and networked applications.
Some of the difficulties inherent in Peters' view for advancement of the standards rest with some resistance groups that impede teachers from providing their much-needed input. Opponents of direct teacher participation limit the free-market sharing of ideas resulting in missed opportunities of cost. Peters believes these groups divert attention, energy and resources away from the prospect of obtaining high quality instructional materials. Peters questions whether these groups will continue to slow down the process of advancing the standards, and if teachers will be allowed to choose free-market or off-the-shelf software. Making a particular decision always closes off some options and opens up others. This view, however, results from the inevitability of quality control policies common practices, and other public agendas such as politics and tax contributions. The difficulty, of course, is that all the options involve the use of additional funds. We can assume that the practice of over-watches discipline will continue until better results are achieved (U.S. Department of Education, Author Anonymous, 2000).
Peters advises we need to follow the most correct path; use of incentives for teachers developing software, through state and software companies partnerships. But without reasonably accurate measures of cost, this recommendation is useless in particular cases. This difficulty affects technological development in another way. Once it is realized that software and training costs money, the question raised is how much to purchase. To support his points, Peters suggests we develop policies that will create the markets in need, using incentives such as taxes. This
suggestion can be interpreted as encouragement of collaboration among teachers and software builders, but the fact that we should start at the state level sounds even better. Since the U.S. Department of Education is prohibited from developing a national curriculum, Peters suggests individual states conduct research, and consult with the local software companies to face the challenges of advancing the standards.
The article compares to The Promise of the Web (2001) by Dr. Sylvia Charp. The theme of Charp’s writing presents the desire outcome mentioned by Peters. Charp shows reports and conclusions of U.S Congress'efforts to leverage the use of technology with the advancement of the standards. She depicts much work accomplished at federal and state level in an effort to digitize the classrooms. In her article, Charp depicts the recommendations from the Web Commission in which many of Peter’s suggestions seem to start materializing. As a transformation from “promise to practice,numerous federal and state initiatives appear. Some of the recommendations include pursue of high quality digital content, training for teachers in technology, and removal of e-learning restrictions, among many others.
In summary, I interact with Peters' views of public skepticism, the creation of a “superstandard" re-thinking our business practices in regards to software development and acquisition, and pursuing more professional development for teachers. The pay-off over time ought to justify the struggles the American educational reform movement endured during the past decade. It is more rational to deduct that the potential of technology will be harnessed during this century. When that degree is achieved, perhaps, the nation’s teachers and students will miss no more cost opportunities.
References
Anonymous (2000). Executive Summary. U.S. Department of Education. [On-line]. Available: http://www.ed.gov/Technology/elearning/index.html
Bennett, J. (2000, May/June). National educational technology standards: Raising the bar by degrees. Multimedia Schools. [On-line]. Available: http://researchengine.xanedu.com/
Charp, S. (2001, March). The Promise of the WEB. The Journal Magazine. [On-line]. Available: http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A3354.cfn
Craver, S.M., & Ozmon, H.A. (Sixth Edition). Philosophical Foundations of Education. New Jersey. Prentice-Hall.
Ellyn, G. (1999, August). Technology proficient teachers. Presidents and Prime Ministers.
[On-line]. Available: http://researchengine.xanedu.com/
Guarino, A.J. & Mathews, J.G. (2000). Predicting teacher computer use: A path analysis. International Journal of Instruction Media. [On-line]. Available: http://researchengine.xanedu.com/
Logan, J.P. & Scheffler, F.L. (1999). Computer technology in schools: What teachers should know and be able to do. Journal of Research on Computing in Education. [On-line]. Available: http://researchengine.xanedu.com/
Owen, T. (2001, January). Learning with technology. English Journal. [On-line]. Available: http://researchengine.xanedu.com/.
Thomas, L. (2001). The National Educational Technology Standards (NETS). [On-line].
Available: http://cnets.iste.org/index2.html
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