Rethinking Technology in Education :: Technology Essays

Over the past decade, many billions of dollars have been invested in computer hardware, software, and network access for our nation's schools. This unprecedented support for school technology has come about as a result of the confluence of a number influences. The historical foundations of public education in America; the introduction of the personal computer; and a cultural history that seems to make Americans particularly susceptible (though perhaps not uniquely so) to the idea that "technology is good, that it is value-free, that it should find application in many fields, disciplines, and aspects of our lives." (Kerr 1996) have come together at a time, and in a way, that has caused society to view computers in schools in a uniformly positive way. The paradigm embracing computers in schools has to this point, become so reified that teachers, administrators, and community leaders have seemingly come to view the acquisition of hardware, software, and access capabilities as an end unt o itself. This paper examines technology in education by looking historically at the implementation of educational technology before the computer; looking at the implementation of computers in a social context, by arguing for the need to broaden the current discourse about computers in education, and by suggesting a framework around which this broadened discourse may be shaped. In spite of many predictions that teachers, schools, and textbooks would see their demise at the hands of new technologies of teaching and learning, schools seem to have grown increasingly rooted over the years and seem to have tendencies to remain highly traditional institutions. Computers and computing networks are the most recent in a long line of educational technologies that were looked at as the catalysts for transformative change with the power to revolutionize the way that schools taught and the way that students learned. In order to understand the context of how computers and computing networks have come to be viewed and understood in the education field, it is helpful to first examine how technology has typically been both viewed and implemented for use in schools by teachers, students, and school administrators. Despite its centuries-old status, the moveable type printing press appears to be the gold standard, against which all other technological innovations in education are now measured. The movable type printing press made possible, "new patterns of knowledge development, storage, and distribution," (Meyrowitz 1996) and thus, ultimately helped to shape the way that we, as a society, have come to view schools and learning.