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Today, as in the last century, the speed of technology continues to modify the physical environment of education. New approaches are indispensable to meet the issues of learning with technology in our contemporary society. Education is regarded as the professional setting in which we will prepare our future leaders for the next generation to maintain our nation competitive in the information age. As customary, in the field of education, we tend to speculate and create ideas about what we think could work from a statistically point of view to execute curriculums that interest us, specially if they can be designed to pursue continuity into a higher order scheme.
For economic reasons and other social circumstances beyond our control, it is rare we try to manipulate the environment or problem areas that apply to the creation of what we initially thought. The way we have approached the integration of technology to schools is a live example of this philosophy. According to Viadero (2001), schools need to focus on electing administrators that are committed to the projects involving technology, educators must believe that technology is a way to extend the curriculum through their personal involvement in school-wide instructional decisions, and the community as a whole must maintain openness to educational innovations. There is a need of establishing a link between technology and district or state curricular standards, and frameworks must be re-written to reflect technology's role.
Schools are going through some instability in regards to the types of technology found in classrooms. Due to some acquired old habits, the lack of understanding of technology structures and its networks, and the "perceived" insignificancy, of broader technological knowledge of our school leaders, it was hard to break the logic of buying an additional computer to make things better. Cuban (1996), contends that educational reformers oversold inflated capabilities of technology to the public, which follows the familiar American cycle of creating a crisis, naming schools or teachers as a problem, and putting forward new machines as the best solution. Yet each technological innovation has had, at best, an uneven record in entering schools and classrooms.
The needs of the schools for the future are currently being identified and managed today, in the forms of projects that primarily ensure we don't create a separate community of information. Glennan & Melmed (1995) have argued that the disparities in home possession and use of computers were substantial among families with differing incomes, parental education, and ethnicity. To the degree that technology comes to be used to extend the amount of time spent in learning activities outside the schools, these disparities will have considerable consequences for the achievements of students from different family backgrounds. If the disparities persist, access to technology is likely to become one more element in the array factors that cause a student's educational attainment to be highly correlated with the socioeconomic status of his or her family.
Today, the first challenge is to acknowledge that schools must compete with the technological knowledge students have acquired outside the school grounds. Teachers must realize that students are exposed to the information age in every public area, in their homes, where their parents work, and in a variety of sophistication levels. It is difficult for a student to be motivated in the school environment when the most basic technology is not available in the classroom or teachers don't know how to use it. This way, respect and motivation, and finally, the credibility of the teacher and school are at risk when the classroom environment does not look like home or the public environment. Larner & Timberlake (1995) have recorded that teachers feared their lack of computer expertise causes embarrassment and undermines their classroom authority.
Another challenge is to recognize that technology is not an end but a working tool. It is a medium that helps teachers in teaching and learning, and helps the students to explore information in an efficient manner as it motivates to put time in the tasks we recognize as important for learning.
Owen (2001), brings to our attention that schools are not helping teachers
in the integration of technology to create interactive learning conditions many educators and business executives believe is crucial to enhance the learning process. The need for more
professional development for teachers in the use of educational technology seems to be a viable contemporary solution.
The last challenge is to recognize that the most expensive and less impacting measures for the improvement of technology status in our schools is to maintain improvised, uncoordinated, and fragmented steps of technology integration, often politically motivated to satisfy for a short time, but detrimental in the long range. Owen (2001) relates through the voice of Dawn Hogue, a Wisconsin high school student that her school has the best and latest in technology. However, the hands-on time with students lag behind, and computers available are limited to students enrolled in computer classes. Hogue adds that teachers are not able to use technology and many are not interested in teaching with technology. Davidson & Ritchie (1994) predicted that the majority of teachers believed computers use was important in education but lacked the confidence and ability to effectively integrate it into classroom instruction.
We don't need to build the curriculum around technology in most instances. In turn, we need to apply technology appropriately to involve the students and teachers in learning and teaching experiences of using technology skills. These skills should be taught by integrating them into the curriculum. Through integration, technology can be used to enhance instruction and expand the limits of the existing curriculum. As an information tool, it can be used to obtain, organize, manipulate, and communicate knowledge and information. It can help to address the range of differing learning styles and the variety of individual learning strengths. By tapping into
the power of machines, students can expand their access to the world around them (Technology Task Force Report to the Board of Education, 1997).
The process of developing any teaching and learning environment for the information age, besides been a complex one, due to fast changes in technology, constitutes an effort of long commitment. It involves creating an environment of network in which educators, students and the students and the community have access to the appropriate information sources, while
administrators ensure the availability of management of tools and resources. This must be accomplished within a planned budget appropriate to the resources available in the community or district. The strength of technology is that it provides an excellent platform where students can collect information in multiple formats and then organize, link, and discover relationships among facts and events. An array of tools for acquiring information and for thinking and expression allows more students more ways to enter the learning enterprise successfully and to live productive lives in the global, digital, information-based future they all face (Stratham & Torell, 2001).
Historically, there has been any achievement of equality in the implementation of technology throughout the schools. The purchase of basic technology has been executed without the consensus of the standards and platforms, without planning for the future using a needs prioritization based on the available systems in the information age. There is a lack of external network planning, other than some isolated applications, and the infrastructure has been approached in opportunistic, occasional ways, resulting in availability of information limited to the same school network. This historic problem requires significant changes in the structure to ensure its solution is permanent. Since early in the last decade, the government initiated large funding programs to develop the information infrastructure of technology integration in schools. McClintock & Taipale (1994) confirm that these programs require explicit educational provisions to make information and research available for broad use in schools. To achieve the educational
and cultural efforts of this initiative, educators must step forward asserting leadership and taking personal responsibility.
Cuban (1996) adds that buying machines was an administrative decision; but using them has always been a teacher decision. The technological gap between schools and society has been
a political-power issue. Techno-reformers, with their ignorance of classroom realities, contributed to framing the problem of having a few serious users of these new technologies in the classroom.
While school administrators have automated most managerial tasks, classroom teachers have been selective in choosing which technologies to use. This is because teacher-talk and practices reflect conflicting purposes of schooling and the social organization of the school. The roles of teachers include covering academic content and teaching skills that advance general intellectual skills of all students to help them into the mainstream of the society. So, this clearly assigns the additional role of gatekeepers determining which machines enter classrooms.
Today, as in the last century, the speed of technology continues to modify social, political, economic, and cultural relationships of public and private life. During an era that requires continuous learning tied to an effective practice, expectations, needs, scenarios, and ways of collaboration remain evolving toward technology-based instruction. Today's physical environment of education must possess the technology hardware and software that symbolize being part of school systems that are able to meet the true experiences of classroom and distance learning environments. The pursuit of educational technology must explore alternatives that acknowledge risk, expect failures, use past experience as a guide, and monitor the wide range of its implementation to advance educational opportunities and achievement.
References
Cuban, L. (1996). Techno-reformers and classroom teachers. Education Week on the Web. [On-line]. Available: http://www.edweek.org/ew/vol-16/06cuban.h16
Davidson, G.V., & Ritchie, S.D. (1994). Attitudes toward integrating computers into the classroom: What parents, teachers and students report. Journal of Computing in Childhood Education.
Glennan, T.K., & Melmed, A. (1995). Fostering the use of educational technology: Elements of a national strategy. [On-line]. Available: ttp://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR682/
Larner, D. K., & Timberlake, L. M. (1995). Teachers with limited computer knowledge: Variables affecting use and hints to increase use. (ERIC No. ED 384595).
McClintock, R. & Taipale, K.A. (2001). Educating America for the 21st century: A strategic plan for educational leadership 1993-2001. [On-line]. Available: http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/ilt/docs/ILTplan.html
Owen, T. (2001). Learning with technology. English Journal. [On-line]. Available: http://www.xanedu.com/
Stratham, D.S., & Torell, C.R. (2001). Computers in the classroom: The impact of technology on student learning. [On-line]. Available: http://www.temple.edu/lss/spot206.htm
Technology Task Force Report to the Board of Education. (1997). [On-line]. Available: http://district125.k12.il.us/docs/tech_plan/Tech_Plan_3_97.html
Viadero.D. (2001). Putting it all together. Education Week on the Web. [On-line]. Available: http://www.edweek.org/sreports/tc/class/cl-s2.htm
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