Better Learning With Technology.

If the goal is improved achievement, you need to surmount four challenges in the way your schools use computers

Like many school districts, the Prairie-Hills Elementary School District 144 in Hazel Crest, Ill., jumped onto the educational technology bandwagon with best intentions, enthusiasm and commitment from school board members, staff and community.

Five years ago the school district wired all classrooms, installed networks in each of the seven schools, invested heavily in curriculum-based software and began an extensive staff development program for teachers.

All of the promises of increased student achievement, improved technological literacy of staff and students and linkages to the outside world sparked wide support in the Prairie-Hills community. Yet two years after a substantial monetary investment of nearly $1.8 million from the school board, the vision of the high-tech classroom looked more like a showroom at an electronics superstore than that of an engaging and successful learning environment. What really consumed our attention was counting the number of workstations, cable drops and servers. We largely ignored what really mattered: Does the use of educational technology help students learn any better?

This is not an easy question to address. In fact, a district must overcome a series of challenges before trying to answer it. The challenges include how to:

* change the classroom/school environment in light of increased use of technology;

* work within this new high-tech environment;

* apply the right tools to assist in the effective use of educational technology in classrooms/schools; and

* make the connection between student achievement and the use of educational technology.

An Applicable Framework

Fortunately, the debates pitting Windows versus Macintosh computers and classroom deployment versus computer lab deployment are things of the past for most school districts. Now we are focusing on which software seems most effective in raising student achievement. To an extent, even this discussion is inappropriate because research is, at best, inconclusive in finding a direct link between the use of computer-based instructional software and student achievement.

One of the best strands of research on this issue has been conducted by the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. The federally supported lab, in its report "Plugging In: Choosing and Using Educational Technology, provided an excellent summary of what is known to date about effective and ineffective uses of educational technology.

NCREL introduces the term engaged learning" as a framework in which educational technology resources are used to promote positive student achievement results. (See related story, page 26.) The framework addresses the need for balance between improvements in the use of traditional pedagogy and the increased use of technology resources.

Prairie-Hills Elementary School District 144 followed a path common to other districts when the euphoria surrounding the implementation of technology led to the initial technology deployment in 1995.

While access to technology-related equipment, software and staff development was increased over the next three years, little or no emphasis was placed on other pedagogical factors that are affected by the increased use of technology in schools. As a result, little movement was made toward the indicators of effective use of technology as described in NCREL's "Plugging In."

Environmental Change

In 1998, the focus of technology implementation throughout the school district changed from a capacity-building effort to a results-based effort.

Adding networked computers to classrooms alone does not ensure improvement of student achievement. Changes in the environment of classrooms and schools, changes in attitudes of staff, selection of appropriate technology resources and development of data collection systems need to be accomplished before technology can have an impact on student learning.

Accomplishing these challenges is at the heart of a successful implementation of educational technology in schools. A description of these challenges follows.

* Challenge No. 1: How to change the classroom/school environment.

It's an awesome task to decide where to place computers in the classroom, what type of computer furniture to use or what software to select. Just ask any district's technology coordinator how many hours he or she devotes to these tasks. Unfortunately, the placement of new technology alone does nothing to change the environment in classrooms that has an impact on student achievement.

First, the debate about whether to deploy computers in classrooms or in computer labs should be settled once and for all. Access to computers and other technology should be ubiquitous for students and staff. Technology must be available to students in their classrooms.

Computer labs might be more convenient, less costly and easier to gain the support of staff. Unfortunately, 45 to 90 minutes a week in the computer lab does not foster the type of learning that will improve student achievement. Students need to interact with technology everywhere and at anytime.

Second, for ubiquitous access to have the greatest impact on student achievement, all teachers need to take responsibility for understanding how to use technology effectively. There's little mystery in the popularity of computer lab deployment. It places the responsibility for learning technology skills and integrating technology into the curriculum on a single technology teacher, who shoulders the burden when students are sent down the hall to the computer lab.

For this reason, an essential element for the change in the use of computers in the classroom is an effective professional development program for all staff that includes technology skills training combined with curriculum integration planning.

During the 1998-1999 school year, the administrative team of the Prairie-Hills Elementary School District 144 recognized that while sufficient technology resources existed, this availability made little difference on the classroom environment. As a result, last spring we launched an initiative called the "High-Tech Classroom" project. Teachers submitted proposals for high-tech classrooms that described how they would apply technology to improve their students' achievement. Any equipment, software or training required to implement the plan would be supported if the proposal were selected.

Three of the district's seven schools have received support of up to $20,000 to find these projects. Support for these classrooms came from several sources, including federal programs and a grant from Intel Corp. This has allowed the schools to bring in additional computers, printers, scanners and software into 11 classrooms that now serve as models for others in the district.

We believe it is much easier to change the environment of a school when staff members can actually see their colleagues acting on the vision. Additional high-tech classrooms will be added during the next school year.

Five Training Levels

* Challenge No. 2: How to work within the high-tech environment.

When the first computers were brought to the district, the school board made a substantial commitment to staff development. District resources were designated to support consultants to provide all-day staff development and to cover substitute teacher costs so teachers could focus intensely on technology training.

Unfortunately, the content and format of this training proved to be ineffective. The training focused upon the use of curriculum software in language arts, mathematics and science when most teachers had few basic technology skills. What resulted was "tunneling" behavior. Tunneling occurs when teachers who are new to technology are able to select a program from a menu, perform all the wonderful things the program can do and then back out through the menu system without the comfort level to move beyond the specifics of their training. Teachers with limited technology skills do not feel comfortable exploring other programs they may not have been taught, even when those programs can benefit their students.

The goal for training is not to turn a teacher into a computer programmer or technician, but we expect to raise the teacher's comfort level high enough to promote independent exploration of the technology. In most cases, teachers from within the district conduct our professional development programs in technology, instead of hiring outside consultants. The transfer from staff development to classroom practice is greatest in teacher-to-teacher interactions.

Teachers now work within a five-tier professional development program. This program gives teachers the greatest flexibility to select the level of training they feel the most comfortable completing, while providing sufficient guidance in the sequencing of professional development programs.

The following levels are used to describe technology training courses:

* Level 1: basic computer skills, operating system use and required technology use (using the computer for daily attendance, access to the curriculum and simple word processing);

* Level 2: mastery of an application package (Microsoft Office[R] or AppleWorks[R]) and application of these to classroom use;

* Level 3: mastery of skills and tools for using the Internet effectively from using Web browsers and e-mail to creating Web pages;

* Level 4: expanded use of multimedia in various applications; and

* Level 5: de-emphasis of skills training and focus on improvement of student achievement using technology through the implementation of engaged learning classroom models.

Selecting Software

* Challenge 3: How to select the right tools to use.

There is a time and place for curriculum-specific software. Unfortunately, many schools and districts make these software packages the foundation of their technology program.

A major finding in the NCREL research relates to the changing role of teachers and students to gain the full potential of educational technology. Curriculum software packages do not allow for the traditional teacher and student roles to change from the traditional teacher as the "deliverer of knowledge" and "student as a passive learner" to the new roles where teachers and students become co-learners and creators of new knowledge in a more engaged classroom.

A key to fostering changes in these roles is to use the technology as a source of creativity and not simply an alternative worksheets or direct instruction. For this reason, you must develop a toolkit of computer applications that include word processing, spreadsheets, multimedia presentation software and Internet tools for use by all staff members. Proficiency in the use of this toolkit should be the aim of profess ional development skills training.

Selection of the specific software applications is a decision each school district needs to make to fit its own needs, but an application for each of the following areas is warranted: an integrated "office" application, including word processing, spreadsheets, database and presentation applications; a Web browser; a multimedia authoring tool; and an email program.

More applications can be added after staff become proficient in the use of these tools.

Gauging Results

* Challenge No. 4: Making the connection

Once you are assured each of the conditions as described in the previous challenges has been met, it's time to tackle the big question: Does the use of educational technology help students learn better? All district administrators and school board members should be asking this question once they have a firm understanding of engaged learning and the indicators for effective use of technology.

Without the transformation of the school/classroom environment (Challenge 1), sufficient preparation of staff to work successfully in the new high-tech environment (Challenge 2) and a focused approach to the use of technology resources (Challenge 3), any attempt to link student achievement and the use of educational technology is futile.

When these conditions are met, educational technology has a positive impact on student achievement. The Prairie-Hills Elementary School District, in its fifth year of technology implementation, has begun to document improvements in student achievement. The school district uses various action-based research models to track these improvements, and the data is analyzed using a tool called T.I.E. 2000 that allows student performance data to be accessed by teachers and administrators in real time from their desktop, allowing teachers and administrators to monitor student progress toward curriculum goals on a day-today basis.

Based on initial data, technology-rich classrooms are showing positive student achievement results, In one 6th-grade class, students in a High-Tech Classroom project outperformed students on the district's quarterly reading assessment compared to students in the same school and grade that worked within a traditional classroom. Teachers participating in the project are more likely to work in cross grade-level team teaching situations, even with teachers who are not participating in the High-Tech Classroom project.

Prairie-Hills Elementary School District continues to assess the impact of educational technology on student achievement. During the 2000-2001 school year, the effect of student achievement using technology in the teaching of mathematics, as well as reading, will be studied. The impact of technology use on student achievement is made possible by the district's ability to address each of the four challenges above.

Steven Kozlowski is an assistant superintendent with the Prairie-Hills Elementary School District 144, P.O. Box 233, Hazel Crest, Ill. 60429.

Suggested Resources

The author suggests the following resources on connecting technology to student achievement:

* "Plugging In: Choosing and Using Educational Technology," available from the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, describes which technologies best promote learning. Contact NCREL at 800-624-2926 or www.ncrel.org. NCREL's Web site also offers research results regarding the effective use of technology.

* "Designing Learning and Technology for Educational Reform" by Beau Fly Jones, Gilbert Valdez, Jeri Nowakowski and Claudette Rasmussen, available from NCREL.

* "Handbook of Engaged Learning Projects," available at the NCREL site.

* The North Central Regional Technology in Education Consortium's Web site (www.ncrtec.org) provides a variety of tools and information to improve technology-related professional development programs.

* LiveText Curriculum Manager (www.livetext.com) provides tools for engaged learning classroom projects and provides online professional development for teachers at all levels of technology deployment.