Education and Technology: Future Visions - Princeton University

Education and Technology: Future Visions

September 1995

OTA-BP-EHR-169

GPO stock #052-003-01454-8

Recommended Citation: U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Education andTechnology: Future Visions, OTA-BP-EHR-169 (Washington, DC: U.S. GovernmentPrinting Office, September 1995).

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omputers, telecommunications networks, and other technolo-gies have become increasingly central to the American way oflife. The nation’s schools are also investing substantially intechnologies for education. What will be the impact of these

technologies on schools in the near future? Will there be dramaticchanges in teaching techniques, curriculum, staffing, and even the con-cept of school as a result of investments in these tools? What kinds ofvisions can we foresee for education over the next decade, if technologyuse is supported? What factors affect the likelihood of meeting these vi-sions? What role might the federal government play?

In the fall of 1994, the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) com-missioned five contractors to write papers dealing with these issues. InJune 1995, the contractors and a number of other prominent educatorswere invited to OTA for an all-day workshop to discuss these papers andthe issues more broadly. This background paper summarizes the work-shop discussion and contains the commissioned papers in their entirety.OTA gratefully acknowledges the contributions of the individuals whoparticipated in these efforts.

ROGER C. HERDMANDirector

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roject Staff

Clyde J. BehneyAssistant Director, OTA

Denise DoughertyProgram DirectorEducation and Human Resources

PRINCIPAL STAFFKathleen FultonProject Director

Isabelle Bruder-SmithAnalyst

Ethan T. LeonardResearch Analyst

Kathleen McCormallyResearch Assistant

ADMINISTRATIVE STAFFRebecca EricksonOffice Administrator

Linda RayfordPC Specialist

Nanette RushingSecretary

CONTRACTORSNancy KoberEditor

Madeline GrossIn-House

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Education and Technology: Future VisionsJune 9, 1995

Ted Kahn, Workshop Chair *Institute for Research on Learning

Jonathan BetzThomas Jefferson High School

Senior

James J. Bosco*Western Michigan University

Luyen ChouLearn Technologies

Larry CubanStanford University

Christopher DedeGeorge Mason University

Bruce GoldbergBolt Beranek and Newman

Nancy HechingerIndustry Consultant

Beverly Hunter*Bolt Beranek and Newman

Robert Kozma*SRI International

Matthew W. LewisThe RAND Corporation

Stephen Marcus*National Writing Project

Technology Network

Arthur Melmed*George Mason University

David Mintz*National Center on Education and

the Economy

W. Curtiss PriestCenter for Information

Technology and Society

Margaret Riel*InterLearn

Richard WertheimerPittsburgh Public Schools

________________

*These individuals also reviewed the background paper.

orkshop Participants

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Education and Technology: Future Visions 1Background for this Study1Summary of Key Points and Workshop Discussion3Technology and School Reform: Setting the

Context 4Key Issues for Future Visions of Educational

Technology 9Is There a Federal Role?18Will Promising Visions Become a Reality?20Choosing a Future 22

APPENDIXES

A Schooling and Learning in an InformationSociety 25Current Conditions in Schools27Purpose and Focus28The Three Great Codes and the Creation of Human

Culture 28The American Public School as an Institution38The Human as a Natural Learner45The Future of Learning and Schooling in American

Society: Conclusions and Implications49Appendix A References55

B Learning and Teaching in 2004:The BIG DIG 57

Vignette: “The Big Dig” 58Teaching and Learning: Underneath The

Big Dig 67Discussion: Getting from Here to There71Summary 81Appendix B References82

ontents

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C The Future of Teaching 89Planning Office of Central Elementary89Visit to the Oceans Learning Center94Visit to the District/School Offices 105

D Year 2005: Using Technology to BuildCommunities of Understanding 121A Vision of the Year 2005 123Implications 139Conclusion 142Appendix D References143

E Public School Teachers Using Machines inthe Next Decade 147The Spread of Computers in Schools: Confusion Over

Access, Use, and Innovation148Technologies and School Reform149Impulses for Using Latest Technologies in

Schools 150Three Scenarios 152Which is the Least Likely Scenario?155How Likely are the Preservationist and Cautious

Optimist Scenarios? 156Which Scenario is Most Likely?157Summary 160Appendix E References160

F Contractor Reports 163

Education andTechnology:

FutureVisions

BACKGROUND FOR THIS STUDYSeveral times over the last decade, Congress has asked the Officeof Technology Assessment (OTA) to examine the status oftechnology in American education from various perspectives. Inthe 1988 study Power On! New Tools for Teaching and Learn-ing,1 OTA looked at the use of computers and other technologiesin K-12 schools. In the 1989 study Linking for Learning,2 OTAfocused on distance learning technologies, including improve-ments in their affordability, flexibility, and educational applica-tions. In the 1993 study Adult Literacy and New Technologies,3

OTA looked at technologies for providing literacy instruction toadult learners. And in the 1995 study Teachers and Technology:Making the Connection,4 OTA examined how teachers learnabout and use technologies and how various technologies canhelp teachers improve their teaching and grow professionally.

Although each of these studies gave some attention to new oremerging technologies and factors affecting their adoption, the

1 U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Power On! New Tools for Teachingand Learning, OTA-SET-379 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, Sep-tember 1988).

2 U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Linking for Learning: A New Coursefor Education, OTA-SET-430 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, No-vember 1989).

3 U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Adult Literacy and New Technolo-gies: Tools for a Lifetime, OTA-SET-550 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Of-fice, July 1993).

4 U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Teachers and Technology: Makingthe Connection, OTA-EHR-616 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office,April 1995).

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studies focused primarily on the present, not thefuture. But as technology advances more andmore rapidly, the future seems to arrive ever morequickly. Decisions currently facing Congressabout telecommunications policies, funding foreducation, and education program continuationsand consolidations will have impacts on school-ing that could last several years, or even decades.To make wise decisions, it is important that Con-gress consider the long-range potential and im-pacts of technologies for education. Where is thenation’s educational system headed, how will weknow when we get there, and what opportunitiesor difficulties may lie along the road?

In keeping with its role as an “early warningsystem” for Congress, OTA commissioned sever-al papers on the topic “Technology Trends andTheir Impacts on Teaching in the Future.” OTAasked the authors of the commissioned papers toconsider future visions of schooling over the nextfive to 10 years, taking into account recent trendsin technology, school reform, student demograph-ics, and telecommunications regulation. Whatmight schools of the near future look like? Whichfactors or incentives will influence the direction ofchange? What might be the positive and negativeimplications of different future scenarios? Whatare the roles of the various players in the educa-tional system? How can schools help shapetechnology decisions to acquire the resources theyneed? How might the federal government helpachieve the most promising of these visions?

In response to OTA’s request, five contractorsprepared papers in the fall of 1994. Each took aslightly different approach to envisioning the fu-ture of education:

� James Bosco’s paper, “Schooling and Learningin an Information Society,” reviews the histori-cal impact that various developments in com-munications have had on learning. Bosco alsoexamines past changes in the institution of theschool and, rather than sketching a scenario,discusses the effects of technology on learning

inside and outside of school, today and in thefuture.

� “Learning and Teaching in 2004: The Big Dig,”by Beverly Hunter and Bruce Goldberg, laysout a scenario in which students, teachers, andthe entire Boston community develop an exten-sive body of learning experiences based on anactual, major urban construction project, theCentral Artery Tunnel Project, currently slatedfor completion in 2004. Hunter and Goldbergenvision fundamental changes in the nature ofschooling and lifelong learning and describehow technological applications can bring to-gether school, work, family, and neighborhoodin new learning environments.

� Margaret Riel’s paper, “The Future of Teach-ing,” is told through the voices of educators in2005 as they explain their school’s philosophyand program to the district’s quality reviewteam. The paper describes a new school orga-nizational and physical structure, explains howtechnologies support this system, and address-es staffing, educational, and community con-cerns.

� “Year 2005: Using Technology to Build Com-munities of Understanding,” by Robert Kozmaand Wayne Grant, uses scenarios to tell thestory of a “community of learners” from threeperspectives—connections from school to theoutside world, to the workplace, and to thehome—and analyzes the social, pedagogical,and technological implications for each per-spective as demonstrated by the scenarios.

� Larry Cuban’s paper, “Public School TeachersUsing Machines in the Next Decade,” dis-cusses three possible outcomes of technologi-cal integration in schools: that of thetechnophile, the preservationist, and the cau-tious optimist. Cuban assesses the likelihood ofeach occurring and discusses the basis for hisprediction.

To supplement the information and ideas inthese papers, OTA convened a workshop on June

Education and Technology: Future Visions | 3

9, 1995, on the topic “Education and Technology:Future Visions.”5 At this workshop 17 educatorsand researchers, including the authors of the con-tractor papers, met with OTA staff to explore inmore detail the issues raised in the five papers andto discuss other future scenarios and their policyimplications. Also discussed at the workshop wasa sixth paper, by Chris Dede and Matt Lewis, en-titled “Assessment of Emerging EducationalTechnologies That Might Assist and Enhance theSchool-to-Work Transition.”6 Although this pa-per was written for OTA’s assessment Learning toWork: Making the Transition from School toWork,7 it is also relevant.

This OTA background paper synthesizes themajor themes and ideas from these futures papersand the workshop discussion. It summarizes theviews of the contractors and workshop partici-pants about possible future visions of schoolingover the next decade. The paper considers technol-ogy and school reform in the context of the de-mands of the information age, changing views oflearning, and conflicting roles of schools. It con-siders some key issues for these future visions, in-cluding changing curriculum and assessment,changing roles for teachers and staff, an expandedview of community, and considerationsassociated with the potential negative impacts oftechnology.

This background paper does not endorse anyparticular vision. Instead it analyzes various fac-tors likely to influence the different future scenar-ios and lays out possible courses of federal actionand potential state and private roles as discussedin the papers and workshop.

SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS ANDWORKSHOP DISCUSSION� Many factors are pressuring schools to make

substantive reforms in curriculum, organiza-tion, and teacher roles. Employers are callingfor individuals who can manage large amountsof information, solve complex problems, adaptto changing requirements with flexibility andcreativity, and work in teams.8 New research onlearning supports school environments inwhich students can acquire advanced skills andknowledge by working on meaningful prob-lems.9 And parents, business, and students—the “consumers” of education—are askingschools to fill many roles, yet expressing dis-satisfaction with how schools are carryingthem out.

� Technology can be an impetus for major schoolreform or an instrument for making the currentschool system more efficient and productive.Many educational futurists advocate seizing

5 See page v for the roster of workshop participants.6 Chris Dede and Matthew Lewis, “Assessment of Emerging Educational Technologies That Might Assist and Enhance the School-to-Work

Transition,” OTA contractor report, May 1995.

7 U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Learning to Work: Making the Transition from School to Work, OTA-EHR-637 (Washing-

ton, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, September 1995).

8 See, for example, What Work Requires of Schools: A SCANS Report for America 2000, Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Labor, June 1991); William B. Johnston and Arnold H. Packer, Workforce 2000: Work and Workers forthe 21st Century (Indianapolis, IN: Hudson Institute, 1987); Anthony Patrick Carnevale, America and the New Economy (Washington, DC: TheProgram and Freedom Foundation, 1994); Committee for Economic Development, Connecting Students to a Changing World: A TechnologyStrategy for Improving Mathematics and Science Education (Washington, DC: Committee for Economic Development, September 1995);Lawrence Mishel and Jared Bernstein, The State of Working America (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1994).

9 See, for example, Ronald D. Anderson et. al., Issues of Curriculum Reform in Science, Mathematics and Higher Order Thinking Acrossthe Disciplines (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, January 1994); Barbara Means (ed.), “Using Technology to AdvanceEducation Goals,” Technology and Education Reform (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1994); and Joan Bissell et. al., “Nation-al Geographic Kids Network and Language Minority Students (Irvine, CA: University of California, Department of Education, July 1994).


the former opportunity, suggesting that majorreform is required and that technology offers aunique and powerful resource to bring aboutsuch change.

� One of the most promising aspects of technolo-gy for education is how it can link schools,homes, workplaces, and neighborhoods intoinnovative communities that value learningand offer rich learning experiences. This en-hanced network of human resources that canparticipate in educating students may be themost significant technological offshoot. As theinstitutional framework shifts from an empha-sis on “schools” to one on “learning communi-ties,” and as learning is distributed acrossmultiple locations, questions about educationgovernance and the traditional school structurewill need to be addressed.

� Technology teaching and learning tools allowstudents and their teachers to contribute to theinformation base with their own research andproducts. If teachers and students are consid-ered not just consumers of information but alsocreators of information, new opportunitiescould be made available for funding education-al activities through the products and servicesthey provide to the broader community.

� Schools and communities will have to confrontconcerns about the “down side” of technology,including possible reductions and changes inteaching staff, disparities in technology access,potential exposure of students to harmful mate-rial, and a de-emphasis of traditional instruc-tional methods that work well for somechildren.

� The federal government’s role could be mostimportant in articulating a vision of howtechnologies can support improved communi-ties of learning. Federal support could take theform of seeding innovation, showcasing themost promising local initiatives, and helping tocross-pollinate the best practices. Telecommu-nications and other technologies can them-

selves be resources for showing, sharing, anddiscussing innovation. Support from all seg-ments of society, public and private, will be re-quired if these resources are to be madeavailable to all learners regardless of locationor economic situation.

TECHNOLOGY AND SCHOOL REFORM:SETTING THE CONTEXTThe future visions discussed in most of the papersand at the workshop assume a strong and symbiot-ic relationship between educational technologyand educational reform. The contractors andworkshop participants view technology not somuch as a means for making the existing educa-tion system more productive or efficient than as ameans for encouraging and facilitating broader re-forms in school structure, curriculum, teaching,and learning. Schools grappling with how to in-corporate technology and how to encourage teach-ers to use it effectively can treat these primarily asengineering challenges—which can be remediedwith more equipment and training—or, as theOTA commissioned papers suggest, as school de-sign and organization challenges to be remediedwith substantive reforms. They maintain thattechnology creates an impetus for major trans-formation in the institution of schooling, and italso offers new tools for carrying out this trans-formation in ways not possible before.

Several forces are converging to encourageschool reform though technology. These include:demands and tools of the information age, chang-ing views of learning, and the conflicting roles ofschools.

❚ Demands of the Information AgeA major driving force in school reform is thetransformation of the American economy fromone based on industrial production to one based oninformation creation and exchange. In their paper,Dede and Lewis describe this change:10

10 Chris Dede and Matt Lewis, op. cit., footnote 6.


In the past, preparing learners to compete ef-fectively with other Americans in our domesticeconomy was sufficient to ensure their prosperi-ty. However, the evolution of world-wide mar-kets means that U.S. employers and employeesmust be more adept than their global competi-tors at meeting the needs of a very diverse rangeof customers. In this new economic “ecology,”each nation is seeking a range of specializedniches based on its financial, human, and naturalresources. Developed countries, which no long-er have easily available natural resources andcheap labor, have difficulty competing with ris-ing-star developing nations in manufacturingstandardized industrial commodities. However,America is utilizing her strengths (technologicalexpertise, an advanced industrial base, and edu-cated citizenry) to develop an economy that usessophisticated people and information tools toproduce customized, value-added products.

In the popular book Future Shock11 and subse-quent works,12 futurists Alvin and Heidi Toffleruse the metaphor of waves to describe the histori-cal transformation of American society from anagricultural society (the First Wave), to an indus-trial one (the Second Wave), and most recently, toan information society (the Third Wave)—each arevolution of major proportions. Many, includingsome of the OTA authors and workshop partici-pants, would agree with the Tofflers’ view that thecurrent school system, with its factory-like orga-nization and inflexible boxes of space and time,13

is a vestige of the Second Wave industrial societyand is quickly becoming outdated by the ThirdWave technological world. Without major re-forms in school organization and missions, theymaintain, schools will continue to prepare stu-dents for a world that no longer exists, developingin students yesterday’s skills for tomorrow’sworld.

A shift to Third Wave schooling is reflected inthe kinds of institutions described in most of thecontractors’ scenarios. These new kinds ofschools have a “flat” organizational structure,whereby clusters of teachers and students work ingroups on substantive group projects, bringing ininformation and expertise from resources outsidethe organization, with more shared responsibilityfor decisionmaking and initiative—a stark con-trast to the closed, bureaucratic, hierarchical struc-ture found in many of today’s school districts,buildings, and individual classrooms with theirproduction line approaches to education.

❚ Developing Views of LearningOther influences on school reform and the adop-tion of new technologies are emerging views fromresearch about how children learn. Increasingly,attention is being paid to one strain of cognitivetheory known as constructivism, a view that:

. . . advanced skills of comprehension, reading,composition, and experimentation are acquirednot through the transmission of facts but throughthe learner’s interacting with content. Thisconstructivist view of learning is the wellspringof ideas for many of the current curriculum andinstruction reform efforts, calling upon schoolsto teach basic skills within authentic and, hence,more complex contexts in order to model expertthought processes and encourage the use of col-laboration and external supports so that studentsthus can achieve intellectual accomplishmentsthey could not attain on their own.14

Authentic learning is emphasized in the scenar-ios presented in several of the commissioned pa-pers. Hunter and Goldberg describe what theymean by authentic instruction:15

11 Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (New York, NY: Random House, 1970).

12 Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave (New York, NY: Morrow, 1980); Alvin and Heidi Toffler, op. cit., footnote 8.13 See, U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Teachers and Technology, op. cit., footnote 4.14 Barbara Means (ed.), op. cit., footnote 11, p. 5.15 Beverly Hunter and Bruce Goldberg, “Learning and Teaching in 2004: The Big Dig,” OTA contractor report, November 1994.


� Working on projects and problems of intrinsicinterest to the learner or a group of learners,rather than learning what everyone else of thesame age is expected to learn at the time.

� Working in a hands-on mode with the physicaland social world, in addition to and in interac-tion with abstract symbols and words and elec-tronic representations.

� Learning something at the time a learner isready and motivated to learn it—perhapsbecause it is needed to solve a problem or com-plete a project, or perhaps just from develop-mental readiness, or curiosity, or socialpressure—rather than in a preset curriculum se-quence.

� Continual learning.� Learning in an interdisciplinary context, rather

than in separate subjects and isolated topics;working on a project in depth, rather than cov-ering many topics superficially.

� Working directly with people from other placesand cultures, rather than only indirectlythrough books.

� Learning through teamwork.� Producing something of real value to someone.� Using the real tools for intellectual work that

are used in the workplace, rather than oversim-plified textbook techniques.

� Basing assessment of student progress on per-formance of real tasks, rather than artificialtests.

Contructivism also takes advantage of the stu-dent’s natural inclination to learn through experi-ence and to “create mental structures. . .whichorganize and synthesize the information and expe-rience which the individual encounters in theworld.”16 Workshop participants discussedwhether constructivism might just be anothereducational fad, but most agreed that the abilitiesto construct knowledge, value complexity, and

solve complex problems are skills that all studentswill need to succeed in an information-based soci-ety. It was suggested that constructivism is flex-ible enough to co-exist with other instructionalphilosophies. As Nancy Hechinger said, “It’s noteither direct instruction or contructivism or col-laborative [work] . . . we know a lot about learn-ing and sometimes one is appropriate andsometimes another is appropriate.”17

The importance of nurturing in children thekind of learning that they undertake naturally out-side of school is not a new idea. Eighty years agoJohn Dewey said:

What is learned in school is at best only asmall part of education, a relatively superficialpart of education; and yet what is learned inschool makes artificial distinctions in societyand marks persons off from one another. Conse-quently we exaggerate school learning com-pared to what is gained in the ordinary course ofliving. Rousseau was almost the first to see thatlearning is a matter of necessity; it is a part of theprocess of self-preservation and of growth. If wewant, then, to find out how education takes placemost successfully, let us go to the experiences ofchildren where learning is a necessity, and not tothe practices of schools where it is largely anadornment, a superfluity, and even an unwel-come imposition.18

Futurist George Leonard described learning asan “ecstatic” process that changes the learner.19

Believing that this kind of learning occurs natural-ly, Leonard saw no reason why schools cannotproduce “ecstatic education,” a view shared byseveral OTA workshop participants who notedthat their views of education had been strongly in-fluenced by Leonard’s work. These beliefs arecentral to several scenarios presented in the OTAcommissioned papers.

Some reformers have taken these ideas to theextreme of suggesting that education can and

16 James Bosco, “Schooling and Learning in an Information Society,” OTA contractor report, November 1994, NTIS No. 95-172227.17 Transcript of OTA workshop, June 9, 1995, p. 173.18 John Dewey, School of Tomorrow (New York, NY: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1915), cited in Bosco.19 George Leonard, Education and Ecstasy (New York, NY: Delacorte Press, 1968).


should occur independently of schools. LewisPerelman, for example, suggests, “If learning iseverything, everywhere, how do we confine it tothe box of a classroom? We can’t. Then what’s thepoint of having schools at all? There isn’t any.”20

The commissioned papers and workshop par-ticipants rejected this concept, primarily becauseit ignores the teacher’s role in guiding learningand helping students put their understanding incontext. Furthermore, to say that schools are ex-traneous ignores other inherently valuable fea-tures of the institution of school and neglects theopportunities that schools provide for students tolearn and work together as a community. Work-shop participant Bruce Goldberg said, “We forgetthat schooling is a whole lot more about workingwith people than it is about working withideas. . .the only value of an idea is in a communi-ty.”21

❚ Conflicting Roles of SchoolThroughout history, public schools have beenasked to assume many social and cultural roles inaddition to their academic functions. As one edu-cator has stated, schools are “the mainstay of ourpublicly determined means of rearing our children. . . our all-purpose institution for children.”22

Over the years, schools have struggled to assimi-late a large immigrant population into the Ameri-can culture, prepare all students for the roles thatthey will play in society, and provide a level play-ing field for economic attainment through equalaccess to education. American schools have beenremarkably successful in meeting these goals,considering the vast challenges involved.

Today, schools are being asked to assume stillmore responsibilities and are blamed unfairlywhen they cannot solve all social problems. Work-shop participants identified the following impor-tant, but often conflicting, roles of schools:

� Custodianship—giving parents a safe place tosend their children, a nurturing home awayfrom home.

� Credentialing and work preparation—prepar-ing graduates to meet the requirements of high-er education and employment.

� Cultural conservation—transmitting the valuesand shared traditions of the society.

� Intellectual nourishment—producing peoplewith well-rounded minds, a love of learning,and a sense of themselves as creative, lifelonglearners.

These multiple and sometimes conflictingroles create tensions among educators who arehaving trouble satisfying any of them fully. Manysuggest that schools are not fulfilling these roleswhen:

� children bring weapons to school and are shoton playgrounds;23

� American students no longer score at the top ofinternational academic comparisons;

� high school and even college graduates find itdifficult to find jobs using the education andskills they learned in school;

� individuals and communities cannot agree on acommon set of values; and

� many children are no longer being challengedin school.

20 Lewis J. Perelman, School’s Out: Hyperlearning, the New Technology, and the End of Education (New York, NY: William Morrow and Co.,

1992), p. 55.

21 Workshop transcript, p. 78.22 Patricia Graham, “Assimilation, Adjustment, and Access: An Antiquarian View of American Education,” Learning from the Past, Diane

Ravitch and Maris A. Vinovskis (eds.) (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 4.

23 See, for example, Office of Technology Assessment, Adolescent Health, OTA-H-467 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office,June 1991); and U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Risks to Students in Schools OTA-ENV-632 (Washington, DC: U.S. Govern-ment Printing Office, September 1995).


These perceptions exist in public discourse andthe popular press and are causing many people toquestion the mission of schools today.

Workshop participants agreed that the protec-tive, custodial function is often the most central ofthe various demands placed on schools. Today,with most parents holding jobs outside the home,schools are the places children go while their par-ents work. But as crime and violence have in-creased, infiltrating the schools in manycommunities, confidence in the schools’ ability toprovide quality care has dropped. As one work-shop participant said, “They’re not safe enough,and if you put in more metal detectors, that’s notgoing to help it. And if [students] get to school andthere is no social fabric within the school itself, theparents aren’t going to believe in the inherent con-serving guardianship, custodial nature ofschools.”24

Schools are also charged with providing stu-dents with the knowledge and skills they need tosucceed after graduation. Education has long beenthe key to the American dream, and a high schooldegree a passport to a decent job. Increasingly, thisis not the case, as even college graduates struggleto find jobs commensurate with their credentials.As the value of the educational credential be-comes less clear or less potent, the educationalsystem as a whole is called into question. JamesBosco explained this dynamic as follows:25

If they are there [at a university] because theybelieve that if they do it right and follow therules, that somehow or other, good things hap-pen as a result of this, then many of them are infor a very, very disconcerting realization. Whathappens when there is a growing realization thatthe currency that we issue in schools no longerhas value?

This issue of diminishing value is even more aproblem for the high school graduates who do notgo on to college. There is widespread concern thatmany high school graduates do not possess theacademic and entry-level occupational skills nec-essary to succeed in the changing U.S. work-place.26

Schools are also responsible for transmittingthe social and cultural values of society, the cus-toms and “rational myths” that define the commu-nity.27 Today this is increasingly difficult, with somany different views of what our culture is, hasbeen, or should be. As Robert Kozma observed,“The culture is becoming fractionated and soschools are going to be fractionated. There’s lessconsensus and there’s less impetus to move for-ward in some kind of systemic way.”28

Finally, as discussed above, schools have amission to help children learn, in the purest senseof the word—to acquire knowledge for its ownsake, build good habits of mind, develop a passionfor learning. This function of schooling has some-times taken a back seat to others.

Questions of educational reform are com-pounded not just by the multiple roles of schools,but also by the multiple “customers” for school-ing, as workshop participant Stephen Marcus ex-plained:29

To the extent that we talk in terms of theschools providing a custodial function, it seemsthat the customer for the school is the parentsomehow, whereas if we talk about schoolsbuilding community, then the customer for theschool is the student somehow. . . . To the extentthat we talk about preparing students for thework force, sometimes it seems as if we’re talk-ing about the good of the employer a little

24 Workshop transcript, p. 77.25 Workshop transcript, p. 101.

26 See, for example, U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Learning to Work, op. cit., footnote 7.27 James Bosco, op. cit., footnote 16.28 Workshop transcript, p. 54.29 Workshop transcript, p. 109.


more. . . . Who’s the key customer in theschool? Whom is the school there to serve?

KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE VISIONS OFEDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGYThe scenarios in the commissioned papers and theworkshop discussion suggest that technologicaladvances could ease the transition toward a formof teaching and learning more appropriate for theinformation age. The technologies that can facili-tate this change are available today; however, thefuture scenarios assume a much more seamless in-frastructure of computer, telecommunications,and connecting technologies that allows studentsand teachers decentralized control over theireducational environment. The commissioned pa-pers and workshop discussion focused on ways inwhich technology could affect such key reform is-sues as: changing curriculum and assessment,new teacher roles and staffing patterns, and ex-panded views of the learning community. Theynoted, however, the importance of paying carefulattention to the potential “dark side of technolo-gy.”

❚ Technological Advances and TheirPotential for Education

In their paper, Christopher Dede and Matt Lewisdefined several categories of technologies (basicas well as more advanced) that can help with theschool-to-work transition process; these areequally applicable to the general teaching andlearning process:30

� Presentational computer-based training andcomputer-assisted instruction. These pro-grams are predominantly tutorial or drill-and-practice and use the computer to displayinformation and monitor student reaction.

� Intelligent tutoring and coaching systems.These mimic some of a teacher’s cognitive abi-lities. These systems rely on artificial intelli-

gence, which appears to “understand” who,what, and how it is teaching.

� Multimedia and hypermedia programs. Multi-media programs are designed to present in-formation in the way that the mind assimilatesit, then allow the student to interact with thematerial. In addition, hypermedia programs in-terrelate data through concept maps based onrelated ideas and material.

� Computer-supported collaborative learningtechnologies. Although these technologies are“not as effective as face-to-face group learn-ing,” according to Dede and Lewis, they “pro-vide a strong surrogate for actual cooperativelearning.”

� Modeling and experiential simulations. Theserange from “models that mirror the simplifiedessence of reality to elaborate synthetic envi-ronments that place students inside alternatevirtual worlds.”

� Computer-based tools as learning enablers.According to Dede and Lewis, these tools seekto develop “distributed intelligence, in whichthe learner is free to focus on the concepts andskills to be acquired” because the technologyassumes part of the cognitive load.

� Central to all the visions of expanded technolo-gy use for education are affordable, user-friend-ly, telecommunications networks to which allstudents and teachers have easy access.

The visions discussed in the futures papers de-pend on technologies that, by and large, are al-ready available today (e.g., personal digitalassistants, small cellular phones and integratedpersonal communications systems, simulationand modeling systems, collaborative computingenvironments, high performance work stations,and extensive use of networks) or are under devel-opment and likely to be affordable for schools inthe not-too-distant future (e.g., interactive digitalvideo and large flat-screen display technologies).However, a major difference between the present

30 Chris Dede and Matt Lewis op. cit., footnote 6.


state of technology and the future visions is the ex-tent and fluency of integration among variouskinds of technologies. For example, in “The BigDig” vignette, Hunter and Goldberg use a varietyof technological tools that are present today; whatdistinguishes their vignette from the present real-ity is the “seamless environment of technologyand information infrastructure and the fluencywith which these tools are used to design and en-hance learning experiences.”31 In “The Big Dig”scenario administrative and instructional technol-ogies are integrated in ways that enable decentral-ized learning communities to access information(be it student health records or electronic studentportfolios) where and when they need it.

Students in the Kozma and Grant scenario usea combination of technological and social sup-ports to “scaffold” their efforts to solve new kindsof problems or address new content domains.Much like the learning enablers in the Dede andLewis typography, the computer-based projecttool in the Kozma and Grant paper “steps studentsthrough the planning process, asking them to de-fine their goals, prompting them to select activi-ties to accomplish these [goals], guiding them toresources, and structuring their assessment.”32

The tool also gives guidance and feedback on thedesign, development, and execution of their proj-ects. This tool uses embedded coaching and intel-ligent critic capabilities that are currently beingdeveloped for advanced technologies. The toolskeep plans and goals visible so students do notlose track. As students learn the process, they areexpected to internalize the necessary skills. Theteacher is the important social “scaffold,” prompt-ing, encouraging, and guiding the studentsthrough the process, and helping them put thelearning in context.

Integrated digital and wireless telecommunica-tion technologies are also key in the Kozma andGrant model, as their first scenario shows:33

As he does every morning, Steve Early eatsbreakfast in front of the teleputer. While hewatches a program in one window, his personalcommunication service relays a video messagefrom his South African friend, Nelson, in anoth-er window. . . . This software agent presents thestory as it originated in Nelson’s community andthen goes off to search for additional informa-tion about the train accident on GlobalNet. AfterSteve checks out the Net pointers, he constructshis own agent to search the local and nationalvideo news service to find video clips that runless than three minutes, sort them chronolog-ically, and store them on the school server so hecan access them later.

Access to technology in school is particularlyimportant in light of increasing disparities intechnology access outside of school. Families thatcan afford to purchase computers are giving theirchildren an educational advantage, through sup-plementary learning activities and additional op-portunities to do school work at home. Todayabout half of college graduates and two-thirds ofthose with incomes higher than $50,000 reportthat their children use a computer at home,compared with 17 percent of parents with a highschool education or less.34 The papers commis-sioned by OTA deal with this challenge by advo-cating increased support for technologies for allstudents and teachers that facilitate better links be-tween school and home and increased parental in-volvement. These could include take-homecomputers for students, voice mail in schools andhomes, dedicated school video channels and inter-active video links between school and home, per-

31 Beverly Hunter and Bruce Goldberg, op. cit., footnote 15.32 Robert Kozma and Wayne Grant, “Year 2005: Using Technology to Build Communities of Understanding,” OTA contractor report, Novem-

ber 1994, NTIS No. 95-172235.

33 Ibid.34 Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press, “Technology in the American Household,” Washington, DC, May 24, 1994.


sonal digital assistants, and wireless modems. Tobe fully integrated now would require each stu-dent or family and classroom to have thesetechnologies. Further developments of integratedcomputing and communication systems may ob-viate the need for this variety of separate compo-nents.

❚ Changing Curriculum and AssessmentJust as the future visions are based on informationtechnologies that already exist (even if they arenot widely available in schools and homes), mostare also based on changes already underway in theareas of curriculum and assessment that are tied todeveloping views of learning. Many states andprofessional organizations have developed curric-ulum standards in many subjects that incorporatethe skills of gathering, assessing, and handlingcomplex information and that call for instructionbased on challenging tasks and complex problemsgrounded in the real world. These approachesoften require students to work in teams on projectsthat cross traditional curriculum lines and to de-velop collaborative problem-solving approaches.As schools are attempting to provide more “au-thentic” instruction, many states and school dis-tricts are also developing new methods of“authentic” assessment designed to provide morein-depth demonstrations of what students knowand can do than traditional standardized tests.These performance-based assessments often re-quire the use of technological tools from simplewordprocessing to advanced multimedia.35

The scenario in “Year 2005: Using Technologyto Build Communities of Understanding” by Koz-ma and Grant is based on authentic, or “project-based,” learning, in which teams of students withdifferent strengths work together on real-life is-sues of their choosing. By collaborating withpeople in the working world on specific issues,students expand their pool of resources and in-

formation. In this scenario, information technolo-gy also opens communication between schoolsand parents and provides new forms of documen-tation and products that can be used to assess stu-dent progress.

In Riel’s scenario, the traditional classroomwould be replaced by learning centers, which takeadvantage of what Riel calls the most significanttechnological off-shoot: a rich network of humanresources. Multi-aged groups of students wouldwork in these centers, each of which would havea specific theme, and would learn to draw on theirvarying strengths for success. Assessment isbased on a final exhibition of student works thatis attended by the school and community. Riel’sfictional narrator explains the process:36

We find that creating a museum exhibit that isenjoyed by the community provides more intrin-sic motivation to learn. At the end of every ses-sion, the students spend time reflecting on theirwork as they get ready for the exhibition. Theyselect their best work to display in the exhibi-tion. But they also have to see how they mea-sured up to the goals they set for themselves. Theexhibition provides a time for parents and com-munity members to see what students have ac-complished. Parents can see how their child’swork compares with that of children of differentages and abilities. The exhibition provides stu-dents an opportunity to teach their parents.

In “The Big Dig,” Hunter and Goldberg proposeanother kind of model built around project-basedlearning, interdisciplinary studies, and group acti-vities, many of which use technological tools.Students, educators, parents, the community, andthe workforce collaborate to complete a real proj-ect and prepare exhibits about particular aspects ofthe project. Students in this vignette are assessedon the basis of their performance of real tasks andthe students’ contributions to the team. Teachersalso develop assessment plans that are evaluated

35 See, for example, U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Testing in American Schools: Asking the Right Questions, OTA-SET-519

(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, February 1991).

36 Margaret Riel, “The Future of Teaching,” OTA contractor report, November 1994, NTIS No. 95-172219.


by the outside experts who work with the stu-dents.37

One of the teachers, the student assessmentspecialist, and one of the children form a groupto review and formalize the evaluation plans.They begin by locating the assessment archivesfrom last year’s Tunnel Team exhibition. Theysee there were some complaints from parentslast year that the evaluators had too narrow a fo-cus and missed some important evidence of theteam’s creativity and communication skills.They decide to avoid that problem by havingtwo levels of evaluation of the exhibition. Theycall the two levels “Quick” and “Deep.” The“Quick” evaluations will be made by interview-ing visitors to the exhibition who would haveunpredictable kinds of backgrounds, skills, andinterests but who would represent a wide rangeof viewpoints. The “Deep” evaluations will bemade by a panel of ten people chosen from theschool communities’ database of teachers andexpert reviewers. In creating the evaluationplan, the group makes links in the database to theindividual Tunnel Team students’ personal de-velopment plans, the Tunnel Team’s education-al goals, and the emerging exhibit componentplans. From these sources, they create packets ofbackground information and draft assessmentassignments tailored for each of the ten panel-ists—depending on their specialty areas—learning, basic competence, communicationsand collaboration, personal management, in-formation management, mathematics, engi-neering, inquiry methods, etc.

The students then evaluate the plan and makesuggestions to ensure that it reflects all of theirwork. Without the technology, it would be muchmore difficult to collect, manipulate, and drawupon these databases of information and personaldevelopment plans.

Despite their emphasis on authentic, project-based learning experiences, Hunter and Goldbergrecognize the need for other kinds of instructionalexperiences:38

Learning is not always fun, engaging, or re-lentlessly faithful to the real world. It can on oc-casion require the repetitive performance oftasks or intellectual battle with concepts andtheories that are unfamiliar, removed from“reality,” even somewhat contrived. That is onereason we believe that paying attention to stan-dards, to what students are expected to know andbe able to do, is critical. Unlike past attempts atmaking education “relevant,” contemporarypreoccupation with authentic learning isgrounded in the belief that there should be ex-plicit habits of mind, competencies and coreknowledge that all student are expected to mas-ter.

❚ New Roles for Teachers and Other StaffExtensive use of technology in the classroom typi-cally changes teachers’ roles.39 Some futuristshave even maintained that technology, by allow-ing students to interact directly and individuallywith content, makes it possible to eliminate theteacher.40 Some teachers themselves fear that lim-ited educational resources may be used to pur-chase technologies in the expectation that fewerhuman resources will be required. However, theOTA commissioned papers and workshop partici-pants suggest that technology will always be justone part of the learning equation. While techno-logical advances may make it possible for stu-dents to progress at their own pace with materialsgeared to their individual learning style, interests,understanding, and needs, teachers are the cruciallink between students and technology.41 Withoutthe teacher’s guidance and enthusiasm for tech-

37 Beverly Hunter and Bruce Goldberg, op. cit., footnote 15.

38 Ibid.39 U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Teachers and Technology, op. cit., footnote 4.40 See, for example, Lewis Perelman, op. cit., footnote 20.41 U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Teachers and Technology, op. cit., footnote 4.


nology in the classroom, technology in schools islittle used and poorly used.42 If education is to bereformed with support from technology, and if in-vestments in technology are to pay off, OTA findsthat more, rather than less, attention should bepaid to teachers and their roles.

This is not to say that teachers’ roles should notchange. Margaret Riel gave one major reason whychanges in this area are needed: “Teachers rightnow do about six different jobs, and there’s no rea-son why one person has to do all six of thosejobs.”43 Carrying out custodial and disciplinarytasks, collecting milk money, completing reportsand paperwork often take more time than the moreintellectually challenging functions that attractedpeople to teaching in the first place—inspiring,guiding, advising, and coaching students and im-parting expertise.

Most of the experts consulted by OTA recom-mend significant changes in teacher roles andschool staffing patterns. Some commissioned pa-pers envision a transformation in the relationshipsbetween teacher and student, and some call for acomplete reconfiguring of instructional and ad-ministrative personnel. Several commissionedpapers also propose that people in the school’s lo-cal community (or networked community) play amuch larger role in teaching and learning by con-tributing their talents, knowledge, and energies toworking with students and teachers. All the com-missioned papers demonstrate how technologycan bring local or distant experts, advisors, par-ents, colleagues, or friends into the school settingto provide additional teaching and learning re-sources.

Student-Teacher InteractionsThe Kozma and Grant paper describes a new kindof interaction between teachers and students:44

To fulfill our vision, teachers would need tolearn not only to use the various technologies de-scribed in our scenarios, but also to design,structure, guide and assess progress in learningcentered around student projects. This kind ofteaching, which most teachers have rarely expe-rienced in their own education, requires wide-ranging subject matter expertise, creativity andintellectual confidence. Teachers need to becomfortable letting their students move into do-mains of knowledge where the teachers them-selves lack expertise; teachers need to have theintellectual confidence to be willing to modeltheir own reasoning process when they encoun-ter phenomena they do not understand or ques-tions they cannot answer. Teachers must be ableto roam from group to group physically andelectronically, providing stimulation and coach-ing without dominating the group process.

Workshop participant Stephen Marcus re-marked that we all have mental images of the“bad” teacher (the school marm or pedagogue) butquestioned why there are no “indelible iconicimages for the best kinds of education.”45 In re-sponse, Bruce Goldberg related a story aboutchanges in student perceptions of teacher roles. Ina collaborative project with Boston College, re-searchers at Bolt Beranek and Newman workedwith a classroom over the course of a year, inte-grating a range of technology-based innovations.At the beginning of the year, the students haddrawn pictures of their classroom that featured theteacher as the dominant figure. By the end of theproject, the students drew themselves—workingin groups and helping each other—as the domi-nant figures, although in discussion with the re-searchers, the students also identified the teacheras exceedingly important. “The visual image ofwhat their life was like was not dominated by theteacher, and that’s the distinction,” Goldberg ex-

42 Ibid.43 Workshop transcript, p. 247.44 Robert Kozma and Wayne Grant, op. cit., footnote 32.45 Workshop transcript, p. 257.


plained. “The world that they inhabited was notteacher directed, but the world that they inhabitedwas impossible to conceive of without the facili-tating work and nurturing care of that teacher.”46

School Staffing Structures for InstructionMargaret Riel’s model calls for major changes inschool staffing structures for instructional posi-tions. She sets forth four new levels: learningguides (para-professionals), entry-level teachers,mentor teachers, and master teachers.47

Learning guides don’t require a great deal ofacademic preparation, but they need to havegood skills in working with and motivating stu-dents. . . . We wanted to arrive at a system thatincluded those who wanted a fast entry intoworking with kids, but also provided a system ofrewards, a career ladder that would attract tal-ented men and women into the challenge of con-tinually assessing and evolving the best possibleeducational system. . . .

Entry teachers are beginning teachers. Inpractice, most have full credentials, but they canbe hired with a provisional credential and finishtheir credential work while they teach. . . . Thedifference between a learning guide and an entryteacher is time rather than money. Entry teach-ers have much more time for planning and fordeveloping ties in the professional communityof educators. It is these ties that will lead to pro-fessional work and pay.

The transition to mentor teacher will bebased on the productive use of this time. . . .Mentor teacher positions are very different thantraditional teaching positions—one-third oftheir time is free for them to take on other tasksthat are related to their developing area of exper-tise. These might be consulting contracts, dis-trict resource positions, foundations andgovernment grants, or work at the university ineither research or education. . . .

After five years of teaching as a mentorteacher, a teacher can request or be recom-

mended for a peer review for the position ofmaster teacher. . .. There is no pressure for allmentor teachers to be master teachers. . . . Youhave to be at the rank of master teacher to be amember of the principal or superintendentteams. But master teachers don’t have to be ad-ministrators.

Riel’s approach is designed to allow instructorswith different motives and capabilities to work atthe level of their interest and to create opportuni-ties for teachers to advance without giving upclassroom instruction.

Community InvolvementBeverly Hunter and Bruce Goldberg predict a veryhigh degree of involvement by community mem-bers in learning and teaching. In their scenario, theconcept of lifelong learning is valued by all mem-bers of the community and almost every job in-volves a great deal of teaching and learning. In thissetting, teachers are responsible for coordinatinglearning both inside and outside the traditionalschool environment and gain greater respect fromthe community. Hunter and Goldberg note addi-tional benefits that occur when teachers work withteacher colleagues and other community mem-bers:48

In all these instances teaching roles are richerand more vibrant than teachers now occupy.Teachers are guides and mentors and learners,rather than mere dispensers of knowledge. In-formation resource facilitator, assessment spe-cialist, technology expert, team manager andfacilitator, child development expert, subjectmatter specialist—all these multiple rolesteachers are now beginning to assume must beunderstood as unfolding within a team environ-ment. Not every teacher need be an expert ineach role. What is necessary, however, arechanged expectations for, and conditions with-in, the profession of teaching.

46 Workshop transcript, p. 259.47 Margaret Riel, op. cit., footnote 3648 Beverly Hunter and Bruce Goldberg, op. cit., footnote 15.


How Technology HelpsWhile these changes in teacher roles, staffing, andpedagogy can occur without technology, they areall easier to accomplish with technology. On themost basic level, technology can help with paper-work management, thereby freeing up valuabletime for teachers to work more directly with stu-dents. Technology can also facilitate other moreprofound transformations by opening the teach-er’s world to new experts and resources throughtelecommunications networks, by creating newopportunities for collaborative teaching, learning,and curriculum design, and by offering creativelearning environments, simulations, and experi-ences, as shown in the scenarios.

The new roles, techniques, and teaching stylesproposed in the scenarios would require thatteachers receive significant training and continu-ing support in such areas as project-based learn-ing, authentic assessment, community outreach,and technology integration. As OTA found inTeachers and Technology: Making the Connec-tion, this kind of preparation is far from the normin most teacher education programs and is seldomprovided as a part of continuing professional de-velopment for those already in the classroom.49

❚ An Expanded View of theLearning Community

An expanded concept of a learning community,with stronger links among school, home, work-place, and neighborhood, is central to several ofthe future visions discussed in the papers and theworkshop. In these future visions, technologyprovides schools with access to many more re-sources beyond the constraints of the traditional“closed” classroom, to the point that, as workshopparticipant Ted Kahn suggested, “the notion of

school as a building drops away. . .the school be-comes a consortium of available resources,people, teachers, and kids who can provide valueto others.”50

In their paper, Kozma and Grant suggest thisdefinition of community:51

A community is a collection of individualswho are bonded together either by geography orby common purpose, shared values and expecta-tions, and a web of meaningful relationships. Inthe communities that we envision in this pa-per—what we call “communities of understand-ing”—education is the common purpose,learning is highly valued, and a high level ofacademic achievement is expected of studentsand their schools. . . . Today, schools, homes,and workplaces function separately—con-nected by geography and circumstances butinfrequently by common purpose and collabora-tive action. But in our vision of communities ofunderstanding, digital technologies are used tointerweave schools, homes, workplaces, li-braries, museums, and social services to re-inte-grate education into the fabric of thecommunity.

Margaret Riel, on the other hand, reinforced theimportance of both local and virtual communities:“I see community in two ways, both the geograph-ic community and the virtual communities that wecan create on-line. In the virtual communities, weneed to bring together the educational community,find ways for them to talk more with one anotherand share what they’re doing.”52 In Riel’s scenar-io, the local community plays a significant role ineducation, connecting the school to the workingworld and supporting the teachers through aschool-community council. The global communi-ty offers additional resources, accessible throughelectronic and telecommunications technology.

49 U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Teachers and Technology, op. cit., footnote 4, pp. 165-206.50 Workshop transcript, p. 224.51 Robert Kozma and Wayne Grant, op. cit., footnote 32.52 Workshop transcript, p. 323.


One of Riel’s fictional narrators explains howschools interact with both kinds of communi-ties:53

Many of the ideas for our plan have comefrom our work on-line with schools around theworld. Working with distant teachers has re-sulted in many new ideas that I don’t think wewould have had without electronic connec-tions. . . . By making it possible for our teachersto work with the larger educational community,they have developed expertise in national andinternational arenas which enriches their teach-ing and brings many rewards to the whole dis-trict.

[In the local community] our CommunityCouncil is a combination of our former PTA andschool site council. One of the things we do aspart of the council is to encourage all communi-ty members to come to our exhibitions—even ifthey don’t have children. We want them to seethe school as their school. Everyone needs to beinvolved, not just parents.

The model presented by Hunter and Goldbergin “The Big Dig” emphasizes how technology canbring together learning, work, family, and neigh-borhood in ways that are far from typical inschools today:54

Ten years ago [in 1995], teachers and stu-dents spent all their time in “school buildings,”sealed away from the vital life of learning andinformation their communities offered. On theother hand, the majority of adults were not a partof the formal educational system and thus hadlittle opportunity to participate in organizedlearning activities. Advances in communica-tions technology had helped break down someof the walls.

[As an outgrowth of several federal and stateinitiatives] the Boston Metropolitan EducationRegion (BMER) was funded by a combination

of these federal, state, industry, and localfunds. . . . As its first pilot project, BMER is-sued a Request for Proposal to students, teach-ers, and community members inviting them todesign a nine-week project that would engageall the participants in collaborative projectswithout regard to the political boundaries oftheir school districts.

Participants and contractors suggested thattechnology is the key to making schools more in-clusive and more connected with the home, theworkplace, and the local or global learning com-munity. Otherwise, the scheduling, security,transportation, and other realities make the con-cept of an interconnected community of learningseem “totally unworkable.”55 “The Big Dig” con-tinues:56

[After a few years of juggling schedules tocontinue supporting both individual schools andthe new collaborative projects] the very conten-tious issue of scheduling had come to a head inthe BMER. It had been extremely frustrating totry to conduct city-wide learning activities thatwere constantly competing with the rigid classschedules of the separate schools. The separateschools were also at a point of crisis about sched-uling because they were also attempting to con-duct interdisciplinary project-based learningactivities that could not function in 45-minuteclass periods. . . . [T]hey realized that thetechnology they were using could free themfrom some of the time constraints of their schooltraditions.

Telecommunications technology makes it pos-sible to “knock down walls” between schools andthe community. Group projects can involvepeople from very different areas, even differentcountries, and teachers and students can interacton more equal footing with others in the outside

53 Margaret Riel, op. cit., footnote 36.54 Beverly Hunter and Wayne Goldberg, op. cit., footnote 15.55 Robert Kozma, workshop transcript, p. 82.56 Beverly Hunter and Bruce Goldberg, op. cit., footnote 15.


world. In the GLOBE program57 and similar tele-communications projects, students around theworld become researchers, collecting, sharing,and analyzing data on meaningful topics identi-fied by international scientists, who then use thedata as part of a growing database on scientifictopics such as worldwide ecological change. Forexample, one group is analyzing the effects ofozone layer depletion on various species of pinetrees around the world. When the school and thecommunity beyond its walls, whether local orglobal, become partners in the advancement ofknowledge and understanding of issues of com-mon concern, the work of each of the partnerswithin the learning community is valued by allmembers.

Similarly, in the vision of Kozma and Grant,technology links students not just to their localcommunity, but to the global community. In theirscenario, a hazardous railroad fuel spill in SouthAfrica prompts students in a California school tobegin a project about how to make tank cars safer.The project has immediacy for the students be-cause they can communicate with people directlyaffected by the spill.58

The students decide to make an interactivemultimedia report as their final product. “Youneed to think about your audience for the re-port,” comments Mr. Shepherd, their languagearts teacher, “and what they would want to knowabout your topic.”

The students decide they will interviewSteve’s South African friend Nelson [a “tele-communications-pal”] and ask his schoolmatesto collaborate with them by gathering videoimages and other local information about thetrain accident that can be integrated with the in-formation they create. They will also talk tocommunity members in the McAuliffe neigh-borhood and see whether there have been anyfuel spills in the area during the past year. Final-

ly, they will come up with some suggestions forhow to stop fuel spills. They will store their re-port on the community video server and make itavailable throughout the community-accesscable channel and send it to Nelson and hisSouth African classmates. The report will con-clude by taking viewers to the EnvironmentalChat Room on the GlobalNet, where they cantalk to scientists, environmentalists, and othersabout the problem and potential solutions.

A sense of community, which is fostered andmaintained by technology, drives the interest ofthe students in this scenario and pushes them to in-vestigate difficult subjects. Technology makes therest of the world newly accessible and newly rele-vant to them.

❚ Is There A “Down Side” to Technology?Not all contractors and workshop participantswere fully optimistic about the impact of techno-logical advancements on education. The “darkside of technology” could include several areas:59

� Downsizing of the teaching force as staffingpatterns are altered. (Many workshop partici-pants felt that major changes in staffing, suchas those proposed by Riel in her paper, wouldbe challenged by teachers and administratorswho faced possible job loss.)

� Greater inequalities in knowledge and skillsamong different groups of students due to dif-ferential access to technological resources.Will adding more technology to the most tech-nologically advanced schools exacerbate dis-crepancies between the technology “haves”and “have nots,” creating inequalities in accessto information between students who attend the“have not” schools and students who attend the“have” schools?

� Concerns about whether learning throughtechnology is always the best way for students

57 Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE), 744 Jackson Place, NW, Washington, DC 20503. For more

information contact [email protected].

58 Robert Kozma and Wayne Grant, op. cit., footnote 32.59 Workshop transcript, p. 150.


to learn. Will an over-emphasis on technologymean that students who would benefit from di-rect, traditional instruction get lost in theshuffle of changing approaches to teaching andlearning?

� Potential harmful influences from opening thesheltered class to the outside world. Telecom-munications networks could give students eas-ier access to questionable or dangerouselements, such as pornography on the Internet.

Proponents of rapid technology integrationcounter by saying that the education reformersshare this concern to avoid the “down sides” oftechnology. One participant noted: “It’s largelybecause we understand the dark side of technolo-gy that we feel such a responsibility to ensure thebeneficial applications and to try to minimize thedark side.”60

IS THERE A FEDERAL ROLE?The viability of many of the future scenarios willdepend largely on value choices and economic in-vestment decisions made by Congress, state andlocal policymakers, and the American public.Realizing the most promising of these future vi-sions will entail a greater commitment to educa-tion—in both funding and energy—than theUnited States is making today. However, advance-ments in educational technology and develop-ments in educational reforms are taking place atthe same time the nation is undergoing a very criti-cal debate about government and other institution-al responsibilities in education. The next five to 10years are likely to see major changes in federal,state, and local roles in education. Congress isconsidering decisions that will greatly affect theamount of federal funding for education, the num-ber and type of federal education programs, andthe nature of federal education requirements. Con-gress is also making decisions in the area oftelecommunications infrastructure policy andregulation that will have an enormous impact on

whether schools have access to technology and adefined place in the National Information Infra-structure.

The current movement in education appearsheaded toward decreased federal funding, fewerfederal programs and requirements, and shifts ofeducation responsibilities from the federal to thestate and local levels. Together these develop-ments suggest the need for policy discussions thatexamine the federal role in conjunction with state,local, and private sector roles and that look at cre-ative options for providing financing and leader-ship from a variety of sources, not just the federallevel. State and local policies for education, tele-communications regulations, and the policies oflocal public utilities commissions are also critical.

Workshop participants devoted much discus-sion to the roles the federal government mightplay in advancing appropriate uses of technologyto support learning. Many of the options men-tioned were consistent with the realities of limitedfederal funding and fewer requirements on localschools. The options suggested include support-ing and disseminating models of effectivepractice, providing research and development ac-tivities, assuring equity, and encouraging newfunding sources. These federal options are notnovel. What was unique was the considerationgiven to how technology itself might improvetraditional federal models of evaluation, disse-mination, funding, and equity.

❚ Support for Models of Effective PracticeOne clear federal role suggested by workshop par-ticipants was that of evaluating, promoting, anddisseminating the innovative and promising acti-vities already being undertaken by local centers oftechnology excellence. The federal governmentcould support and encourage the “scaling up” ofthese kinds of innovative learning communities.“Innovation is local,” said Beverly Hunter. “Wehave to be locally opportunistic about the natureof innovation. Because each locality has different

60 Beverly Hunter, workshop transcript, p. 156.


resources and different expertise. . .[consider] thepossibilities of getting synergy from sharingacross localities both know-how and re-sources.”61

Some participants suggested that the federalgovernment establish mechanisms that encouragecreation and sharing of local processes in supportof education—empowerment zones—that pro-vide incentives for business to develop strongerrelationships with schools, hospitals, or others;perhaps relationships in which shared invest-ments in telecommunications networks benefit allusers.

❚ Research and Development ActivitiesConsistent with the old saying about giving ahungry man a rod and teaching him to fish, the fed-eral government might subsidize the educationalequivalent of the “better fishing rod” or “specialworms”—development support for technologicaltools that help make localized activities more ef-fective, such as software tools for better networkaccess, curriculum materials using the capabilitiesof newer technologies, pornography firewalls, ornew teaching tools such as those used in scienceexperiments, mathematical reasoning, or designactivities.

❚ Promoting EquityParticipants also expressed concern that issues ofequity remain central to the federal vision. Whilemost welcomed the developments that are bring-ing powerful learning technologies into the home,many pointed out the possibility of even greaterimbalances in learning opportunities among vari-ous groups, including parents who can afford acurriculum-based multimedia learning system fortheir children and those who cannot. How can im-balances be corrected between the community thatcommits an $8 million local bond to wiring theschools and the one next door that does not?

❚ Funding SourcesParticipants in OTA’s workshop debated wherefunding might come from that could provide allchildren with equal access to the best availablelearning and communication tools. One sugges-tion was that the federal government provide sig-nificant start-up support for infrastructuredevelopment, as was done with the interstatehighway system. Another suggestion was to en-courage private sector investment in schoolsthrough innovative tax policy. As Nancy He-chinger suggested, “What if you say to corpora-tions that you could [choose to] not pay 10 percentof your corporate tax if it goes to education? Or letevery corporation in the community elect, like thefederal income tax check off for Presidential elec-tions, to allow a portion of their taxes to go direct-ly to a school?”62

Others suggested that schools pay for reformand technology investments the way that busi-nesses have: by reducing labor costs through elim-inating teaching or administrative positions,reshuffling staff, or automating certain duties withtechnology, and investing the savings in technolo-gy. This option is similar to the funding mecha-nisms proposed in Margaret Riel’s scenario,which eliminates some administrative positionsin favor of collaborative teacher leadership andcreates a new salary scale for the four levels ofinstructional positions. Her scenario projected rel-atively low yearly costs for reform despite sub-stantial technology investments.

The Hunter and Goldberg scenario also as-sumes some cuts in personnel costs through work-force restructuring. The main funding for “TheBig Dig” project, however, is envisioned to comefrom a cooperative venture of local, state, and fed-eral governments and private industry, workingthrough a hypothetical “Boston MetropolitanEducational Region.” Hunter and Goldberg sug-

61 Workshop transcript, p. 280.62 Workshop transcript, p. 295.


gest that entities such as the BMER could be fi-nanced through a combination of such means as:

� money drawn from a “lifelong learning ac-count,” created for each citizen at birth and ex-pended throughout an individual’s life for avariety of learning activities;

� revenues earned by non-profit educational cor-porations from the creation and sale of sociallyuseful products or services and from leasingspace during off-hours;

� income from “entrepreneurial education zone”activities, in which teachers and students pro-duce knowledge with economic value, such asselling information on Web pages, workingwith local businesses, or generating ideas,products, and information of value to commu-nities; and

� support from the biotechnology, finance, soft-ware, and other industries for learning centersthat train people and provide school-to-worktransition services.

In addition, the Hunter and Goldberg vignettespresume innovative use of space and facilities, in-cluding:

� satellite learning centers, such as the publiceducational facilities that businesses in DadeCounty, Florida and elsewhere have built ontheir premises;

� shared use of public and private facilities, suchas municipal buildings, libraries, and corporatejob retraining centers;

� neglected buildings that could be renovated foreducational use by public-private partnerships,with incentives from federal enterprise zonelegislation; and

� new and renovated schools designed with ad-vice on best design practices from communityexperts, foundations, or federally disseminatedresearch sources.

Hunter and Goldberg also suggest that researchand development about technology-based learn-ing and cognition could be supported by requiringa percentage of funding in support of schoolreform to be devoted to conducting and dissemi-nating research on the learning outcomes of alter-native approaches to teaching and curriculum,including the integration of technology into theseactivities.

WILL PROMISING VISIONSBECOME A REALITY?Can the technological changes presented in themost promising of these visions become reality?Workshop participants were divided on how muchchange can be expected in schooling. They con-curred that change usually comes slowly toschools but they agreed that when required,schools can and do change.

As one analyst wrote, “Like battleships, theschools are large, powerful, cumbersome institu-tions, difficult to maneuver” and slow to changedirection.63 Nevertheless, schools have changedwhen there is strong pressure or good reason;schools today are the result of several generationsof reform in such areas as desegregation, curricu-lar emphasis, and special education. Reformbased on technology presents many unique chal-lenges, however. Past reforms were not dependentupon instructional technologies, and it was not un-til the 1980s that school reformers began to seizeon electronic technologies as a way of “unfreezingthe perceived inefficiencies and rigidities ofAmerican schooling.”64

In his early work, Alvin Toffler believed theeducational system would be a leader in embrac-ing technology, incorporating it long before in-dustry and private organizations. He believed thatschools by nature were more likely to embracechange, citing a “venturesome spirit which stands

63 Patricia Graham, op. cit., footnote 22, p. 4.64 Larry Cuban, “Public School Teachers Using Machines in the Next Decade,” OTA contractor report, November 1994, NTIS No. 95-172243.


in total contrast to the security-minded orthodoxyand conformity associated with the organiza-tion.”65 This optimism about school change wasmisplaced; 25 years after this prediction, businessand industry are technologically far ahead of theschools, and schools are struggling to keep up de-spite the benefits that technology offers them.

Workshop participants and contractors cau-tioned against easy comparisons with business.“Schools differ substantially from other institu-tions in their workplace characteristics, in the na-ture of teaching children, and in publicexpectations . . . [school structures are] profound-ly difficult to change.”66 Others noted the funda-mental difference between business, in which thegoal is to “do” and the bottom line is profit, andschools, in which the goal is to “be” and the bot-tom lines are many (e.g., meeting the social man-date). They suggested that schools find their ownmodels for restructuring and not take their guid-ance from business.

Larry Cuban explains his view of why the in-tegration of technology will not occur at the rapidpace many envision:67

Technophiles . . . often minimize the powerof social beliefs that have endured for centuriesand perform important functions in society. Be-liefs that teaching is telling, learning is listening,knowledge is subject matter taught by teachersand books, and the teacher-student relationshipis crucial to any learning dominate much popu-lar and practitioner thinking. Most parents ex-pect their schools to reflect those centuries-oldbeliefs.

Larry Cuban’s paper offers three scenarios ofpossible educational change involving technolo-gy: the technophile’s vision in which electronicschools of the future become widespread ratherquickly; the preservationist’s scenario in which

schools maintain their current features but addtechnology as an important yet peripheral compo-nent; and the cautious optimist’s scenario, inwhich schools move slowly toward fundamentalchanges in teaching and schooling using technolo-gies. He argues that the time and rate of technolo-gy-based school reform may vary by grade andkind of school. At the high school level, changemay be relatively slow, more in keeping with thepreservationist’s model, in which “policy makersand administrators put computers and telecom-munication technologies into school largely toimprove productivity but not to alter substantiallyexisting ways of organizing a school for instruc-tion.”68 At the elementary school level, the cau-tious optimist’s model may be more likely.

Cuban bases these different predictions onwhat he sees as fundamental differences betweenelementary schools and secondary schools:69

Public elementary and secondary schools dif-fer markedly in the complexity of content stu-dents face in classrooms, teachers’ formaltraining, allocation of time to instruction, andexternal arrangements imposed upon both levelsfrom other institutions. . . . The point that I wishto make is that how the age-graded school is or-ganized for instruction at the two levels deter-mines to a large degree which scenario will mostlikely occur. The preservationist’s scenario ismost likely in high schools where academic sub-jects reign, teachers’ training was in disciplinarycontent, and the number of classes and studentsteachers teach remains high. The cautious opti-mist’s scenario is more likely to occur inelementary schools where organizational differ-ences make shifts in practice possible and wherehybrids of teacher-centered and student-cen-tered instruction have, indeed, evolved slowlyover the last century.

65 Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, op. cit., footnote 11, p. 148.

66 Larry Cuban, op. cit., footnote 64.67 Ibid.68 Ibid.69 Ibid.


The problem, suggested some workshop par-ticipants, is not so much in getting schools toadopt something new, but rather in getting them togive up the old, thereby creating time, resources,and enthusiasm for the new. Far too often,technology is an add-on rather than an “insteadof.” Similarly, in order for teachers to take on newroles, they must be allowed to drop some of theold; otherwise, they end up with an unbearableload of responsibilities on their shoulders.

The papers by Bosco, Riel, Kozma and Grant,and Hunter and Goldberg anticipate faster changeand more radical revisions in schooling than doesCuban’s. As described (box 1), the future is diffi-cult to predict, and more promising futures do notjust happen.

CHOOSING A FUTUREThe American educational system is at a cross-roads as regards both technology and broadereducation reform. More and more people insideand outside the schools are calling for deep andfundamental changes in school organization,instruction, content, and processes. This climatecreates an opportunity for innovation that has per-haps not been present for over a century. Techno-logical advances provide additional impetus forreform and also offer new tools for implementingtheir reform.

Whether the nation will have the vision andcommitment needed to make courageous choicesabout education reform remains to be seen. Onone hand, the cumulative evidence over the past25 years suggests that schools are more resistantto change and have less of the “venturesome spir-it” that Alvin Toffler saw in them in 1970.70 Andon a national level, there is no clear agreementabout the kinds of reforms needed in education,

the level of commitment required to achievemeaningful reform, or the role of technology ineducation reform. On the one hand, there are thosewho suggest what is needed are traditional ap-proaches: a return to basics and greater investmentin staff and textbooks rather than investments innew information technologies. On the other hand,many communities around the nation are demon-strating how technology and reform can come to-gether and produce effective results.71 The statedcommitment of the Administration to put all thenation’s schools on the National InformationInfrastructure and the expressed interest of con-gressional leaders in increasing the use of tech-nologies in education are promising steps, butwhether these goals will be fulfilled remains to beseen. There is no guarantee that this vision will notbecome another casualty of shifting culture andpolitical winds.

Perhaps the real factor that will determine thefuture of technology in education reform will bethe extent of the national commitment to a highlevel of learning for all students. As one leadingeducator observed, providing only data, even onan information superhighway, may not be enough.He distinguished among data, information (datawith a context), knowledge (information with use-fulness), and wisdom (knowledge informed bysensibility and experience).72 How do we Ameri-cans define knowledge, let alone wisdom? Howdo we recognize it? What kinds of learning do wereally want for our children? How do colleges,universities, and employers characterize and re-ward different levels of learning? In 1948 Vanne-var Bush and his contemporaries were concernedwith the creation of information, and in that con-

70 Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, op. cit., footnote 11.71 For a brief review of the state of the art in technology effectiveness research, see U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Teachers

and Technology, op. cit., footnote 4.

72 Stephen Marcus, panel discussion on, “Hypermedia and Lifelong Learning. . .50 Years After Vannevar Bush. . . And Beyond,” National

Educational Computing Conference, 1995.

Education and Technology: Future Visions 123

Technological advances always invite speculation about their impact on the future Often projec-

tions about technology are wildly optimistic or utopian, and just as often they vastly underestimate the

impact of a technology An example of the tendency toward optimism IS Thomas Edison’s claim that the

motion picture would result in the elimination of textbooks from schools. ’ And a famous example of the

tendency toward underplaying IS the reaction of the chief engineer of the British Post Off Ice who, upon

hearing news of the invention of the telephone, reportedly told his colleagues, “The Americans have

need of the telephone, but we do not We have plenty of messenger boys “2 More recently, even presi-

dents of major computer companies have failed to foresee the huge demand for computers Shortly

after World War II, Thomas J Watson, Sr., founder of IBM, “predicted that five machines would make up

the world market for computers “3 And in 1970, Kenneth Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment, stated he

saw “no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home “

Other predictions have been close to the mark; in 1945, Vannevar Bush predicted the invention of

a device he called the “memex, ” in which “an individual stores all his books, records and communica-

tions, and which IS mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility’’4—not

far removed from today’s computers with CD-ROMs and Internet connections

Similarly, past predictions about the future of education have also tended toward the utopian or

the dire, and have generally overestimated how quickly schools would change Futurists such as

George Leonard in his 1968 book Education and Ecstasy5 share a view that schools and technologies

wiII advance together Many of today’s education futurists, including most of the OTA contractors and

workshop participants, also suggest that the impact of technology on education could be profound For

example, in his paper “Schooling and Learning in an Information Society, ” James Bosco describes

what he sees as the climate for change set in place by Information technology: 6

There is little reason to believe that information technology wiII bring either heaven or hell to earth, but It IS

clear that information technology IS causing profound changes in how we Iive, work, play, and learn Many wiII

continue to debate whether Information technology IS making our Iives better or worse, but there IS little argument

that information technology IS making our Iives very different than they were before this technology was Invented

The changes caused by Information technology in what and how children, youth, and adults learn are not

something we await in the future, we are in the midst of these changes Information technology IS transforming

the amount and nature of the Information content of civilization as well as the processes whereby this Information

IS acquired The modest changes in the nature and conduct of schooling in recent decades stand amidst monu-

mental changes in how, when, where and what Iearning occurs in our society As Information technology-based

learning opportunities become increasingly ubiquitous and efficacious, schooling, teaching, and Iearning wiII

take on a new character and a new balance between school and non-school Iearning wiII be established

1 Larry Cuban, Teachers and Machines The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920 (New York, NY: Teachers CollegePress. 1986), p. 9.

2 A.C. Clarke, How the World Was Won (New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1992), p. 224, as cited in J. Bosco, p. 1.3 D. Leebaert, “Later Than We Think: How the Future Has Arrived,” Technology 2001 The Future of Computing and

Communications, D. Leebaert (ed.) (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), cited in Bosco, p. 2.4 Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think, “ Life, Sept. 10, 1945.5 George Leonard, op. cit., footnote 8.6 James Bosco, op. cit., footnote 33, pp. 2-3.

text, machines are capable of success. But the ulti- These papers and workshop created a basis formate goal—instilling wisdom—is a much harder discussion. The issues they raise for the future forone to meet. America’s children are too important to ignore.

Appendix ASchooling and

Learning in anInformation Society

“We have now reached the stage when virtually anything we want to do in the field ofcommunications is possible: the constraints are no longer technical, but economic, legal,or political.” Arthur C. Clarke (3)

hether one considers it a curse or a blessing to be born in“interesting” times, such is the plight or good fortune ofthe current generation. Events and inventions of the pastseveral years strain credulity even for those accustomed

to seeing the unlikely occur. There is little doubt that the years atthe later part of the 20th century will provide a rich subject for his-torians as they explain to future generations the remarkableevents of today. Those of us living amid this period of monumen-tal change are faced with the difficult task of pulling back to gainperspective to see what is so close to us.

No developments among those of the past several decades areof greater consequence than those pertaining to information andcommunications technology. We have come to the point whereindeed as Arthur Clarke says, “anything we want to do in the fieldof communications is possible.” This audacious statement is cor-rect even when we broaden the scope to include information/com-puter technology; for indeed, the line between communicationsand information technologies is sufficiently blurred so that it isimpossible to know where one ends and the other begins.

The relevance for students and teachers of a technology that isused by scientists, technicians, business people, public officials,and others as the dominant means to create, store, and distributeinformation is obvious. As computer applications for personalproductivity become increasingly powerful and prevalent, and asnetworks become the “places” where scientific, technical, andcultural information is stored, there is little reason to wonder if | 25

by

James BoscoWestern Michigan University


such technology belongs in schools. Schools, noless than other agencies, and more than many,need to take advantage of information technology.The essence of the issue for schools is this: If any-thing is possible, what should we make probablein schools? What should be done to make the im-mense capability of information technology ameans for improving the lives of our children andfor enabling them to live productive and satisfyinglives in an increasingly complex and changingworld?

Every new technology brings with it specula-tion about the impact of the technology on the fu-ture. Looking back, it is not difficult to find thosewho look silly because they badly underestimatedthe significance of a major technological advance.Arthur Clarke tells of the reaction of the chief en-gineer of the British Post Office upon hearing ofthe news of Alexander Graham Bell’s invention.He told his colleagues, “The Americans have needof the telephone—but we do not. We have plentyof messenger boys . . . ” (3). This British PostalOfficial made the mistake of thinking that the tele-phone would fit—or fail to fit—into the world ashe knew it. He did not allow the possibility that thetelephone would generate other developmentswhich, in a sense, would remake the world so asto create a place for itself. Similarly the impact ofcomputer technology has been misunderstoodeven by some who we might think would havebeen unlikely to do so. Shortly after World War II,Thomas J. Watson Sr. predicted that five machineswould make up the world market for computersand, as recently as 1970, Kenneth Olsen, thefounder of Digital Equipment Company, wasquoted as saying that he saw “no reason for any in-dividual to have a computer in their home”(17).“Solemn prophesy,” J. B. Priestly is reported tohave said, “is obviously a futile proceeding, ex-cept insofar as it makes our descendants laugh”(16).

Speculation about the impact of technologyoften takes a utopian tone; the technology is seenas the means to achieve whatever lofty goals theproponent espouses. Ralph Waldo Emerson, whobelieved that America was destined to be a pasto-ral republic, hailed the advent of the steam loco-

motive. Railroad travel, he believed, woulddisperse the population to rural communities. Asa result of the invention of the steam locomotive,Emerson believed that the time was coming when,in his words, “the whole land is a garden and thepeople have grown up in the bowers of a paradise”(14). Emerson’s prediction reads no more quaintor mistaken than the statements from computerproponents which abounded in the early 1980sabout a “computer revolution” which would trans-form the schools and turn them into their own real-ization of an educational paradise by the end ofthat decade.

New technologies typically also generate abody of apocalyptic commentary. While Emersongreeted railroad technology as a means for im-proving the human condition, his contemporaryHerman Melville was among those who fearedthat the machines emerging during this timewould undermine the human condition. Thetheme of technology as a nefarious force which re-duces human control and denigrates human valuesis longstanding. This has been the case with com-puters and information technology. Many personshave expressed the fear that computers would de-personalize schools as children sat before a screenwithout any human contact from teacher or peers.

The record of past technologies suggests thatthe consequences of technology are seldom, ifever, so consistent or unambiguous to warrant ei-ther the utopian or apocalyptic characterization.There is little reason to believe that informationtechnology will bring either heaven or hell toearth; but it is clear that information technology iscausing profound changes in how we live, work,play, and learn. Many will continue to debatewhether information technology is making ourlives better or worse, but there is little argumentthat information technology is making our livesvery different from what they were before thistechnology was invented.

The changes caused by information technologyin what and how children, youth, and adults learnare not something we await in the future; we arein the midst of these changes. Informationtechnology is transforming the amount and natureof the informational content of civilization as well

Appendix A Schooling and Learning in an Information Society | 27

as the processes whereby this information is ac-quired. The modest changes in the nature and con-duct of schooling in recent decades stand amidstmonumental changes in how, when, where, andwhat learning occurs in our society. As informa-tion technology-based learning opportunities be-come increasingly ubiquitous and efficacious,schooling, teaching, and learning will take on anew character and the establishment of a new bal-ance between school and nonschool learning willbe established.

CURRENT CONDITIONS IN SCHOOLSIn the past couple of decades, the plight of UnitedStates public schools has been documented inmany books and articles; thus, a detailed accountis not necessary here. A brief recapitulation of keyaspects of the current status of schools will pro-vide the context for the ensuing discussion.

� Widespread dissatisfaction. With the publica-tion of A Nation at Risk, concerns which hadbeen building in the preceding years about theAmerican public schools coalesced andachieved prominence. Concerns about declin-ing test scores, the fitness of American youngpeople to provide the skills required by Ameri-can business and industry, and the prevalenceof drugs and violence in American publicschools became a major issue in federal andstate political campaigns, as well as a popularstory in the print and broadcast media.

� Federal, state, and local reform efforts. Dis-satisfaction about the status of the schools ledto the creation of America 2000 which was thefederal response to the need for a national re-form of American schools. Many state legisla-tures enacted reform legislation of varioustypes, such as charter schools, mandated schoolreform plans from local districts, lengtheningof the school day or the school year, etc. At thelocal level, thousands of reform projects wereinitiated. While most of these were modest inintent and scope, a number of more extensiveefforts were launched.

� Privatization. A number of school districts en-tered into contracts with private corporations to

provide services previously provided by publicemployees, such as custodial work, transporta-tion, special education, etc. The most extensiveuse of “contracting out” by a public school wasannounced in October 1994, when Minneapo-lis-based Education Alternatives, Inc. enteredinto a contract with the Hartford Public SchoolDistrict to run its schools. The Edison Projectled by Frank Whittle was an even more ambi-tious plan for school privatization. This proj-ect, which began as an effort to develop anationwide network of schools under the aegisof a private, for-profit corporation, more re-cently has entered into negotiations with schooldistricts to develop contracts to provideinstructional programs in a manner similar toEducation Alternatives, Inc. By the later part of1944, fiscal distress in the Whittle empire madethe future of the Edison project tenuous.

� Constraints. Even though school reform lawshave been enacted in states throughout the na-tion, state law and policy is frequently a barrierto change. Collective bargaining agreementsalso offer a substantial obstacle to change. Col-lege entrance requirements form yet anotherbarrier since entrance requirements play a sub-stantial role in setting curriculum requirementsfor high schools. Parents who may support cur-riculum changes at the high school become lesssupportive if it appears that the changes willcompromise their child’s college entrance. Theclimate and morale of schools provides yetanother barrier. In some cases teachers and ad-ministrators may resist change, but it is not un-common to find instances wherein teacherssupportive of the need for change “do them-selves in” with a self-fulfilling prophesy of fail-ure based on past experiences.

� Technology integration. Much of the discus-sion about schools and information technologyin the 1980s and 1990s has focused on how thetechnology could be integrated with the exist-ing fabric of life in schools. From a political, aswell as from a business point of view, this maybe a plausible stance. If the task is to sell com-puters to schools or to persuade teachers to usethem, then it is sensible to try to make them fit


into schools as they are now. If, however, thetask is to use information technology to reno-vate schools, then the disintegrative aspect ofthe technology becomes the focus. Informationtechnology becomes a means for disrupting ex-isting practices and for creating a new way ofschooling rather than becoming an accouter-ment to the existing practices.

PURPOSE AND FOCUSThis paper is written for the United States Con-gress, Office of Technology Assessment study en-titled “Teachers and Technology.” The purpose ofthe paper is to analyze the opportunities, pros-pects, problems, and barriers for technologicalchange and its impact on K-12 schooling in thenext five to 10 years. The question which servesas the focal point of this paper is: What are the im-plications of information technology for schoolsand learning in American society?

The use of the two terms “schooling” and“learning” in the title of this paper is not a redun-dancy. The pivotal point in this paper is the dis-tinction between schooling and learning.Learning refers to the fundamental human processby which individuals acquire the knowledge,skills, attitudes, and perspectives which enablethem to function in society. Functionality requiresa range of complex skills such as language, under-standing of rules of conduct and social interaction,life skills such as required by the specifics of theenvironment wherein the individual lives, and anarray of cognitive skills such as reading, writing,etc. Schooling refers to the institution which, forthe past century and a half in the United States, hasbeen expected to accomplish the preponderance oflearning outcomes for children and youth.Schools operate within a framework of well-es-tablished, and until recently, well-accepted poli-cies, practices, and conventions. The educationalimpact of information technology is not confinedto schools, and it is only when the broader im-plications of information technology for whereand how learning takes place in society beyond theboundaries of the school are considered that we

can understand what can and should done inschools.

Information technology, which has caused atransformation in so much of how life is lived inthe waning days of the 20th century, has not by-passed how learning occurs in American societyand will affect schooling, even though such hasnot occurred to any appreciable extent at present.Many persons have called for schools to be proac-tive with regard to the implications of informationtechnology for school practices. There is less rea-son to be concerned about the lack of proactive-ness in schools on this matter than their lack ofreactivity. Teachers, administrators, and policy-makers need to understand what is happening allaround them and react to cause the changes tomake schooling harmonious with a new way ofliving, working, playing, and learning.

In order to understand the full significance ofthe impact of information technology on humanlife and learning in particular, it is necessary tostep back and take a quick journey through a halfmillion years of human existence.

THE THREE GREAT CODES AND THECREATION OF HUMAN CULTUREOver the span of human history, from the dawn oftime to the present moment, there have been threegreat inventions which have shaped the develop-ment of human culture. Each of these inventionshas been an innovation in communication, and ineach instance a new chapter was begun in the storyof civilization. The current generation is in themidst of the invention of one of these codes andis witness to changes of a magnitude which arerare; only a handful of generations among thethousands who have walked on earth have ever ex-perienced events such as these.

In the beginning was the thought. Certainly,there could not have been the word had there notbeen the thought. Human beings have an inner lifeof the mind. They think, and it is the ability ofhomo sapiens to be conscious of what he or she isthinking about which is the basis for the creationof human culture. As a human being we can


“look” into our own mind and “reflect” on ourthoughts. We see the faces of those whom we en-counter, but we are not privy to their inner life un-less they choose to tell us about it. Nevertheless,we know that their minds, like ours, are spinninga tapestry woven of thoughts and feelings. Writerssuch as Proust tried to present a representation of“stream of consciousness” in their work, but it isterribly difficult to provide a completely faithfulrepresentation of human consciousness becauseof the dynamic and amorphous nature of con-sciousness.

Human beings had consciousness long beforethey had any particularly effective language sys-tem to tell others about it unless a scream of pain,a sigh of ecstasy, or a grunt of approbation is to beconsidered a language system. The initial step inthe story of the creation of human culture was theinvention of the first great code which was used toput what was in the mind into a form which en-abled the transmission of the inner world of themind to others. Sounds produced in the larynxwere used to represent cognition, and as languagedeveloped, increasing richness and subtlety of ex-pression was possible.

The invention of speech changed the humancondition. Even with the fullest power of ourimagination, it is difficult to get a good sense ofhow different life must have been when human be-ings existed together without the ability to talk toone another. With speech it became possible notonly for one person to see another’s face, but alsoto hear what was in their mind. Unlike the changesresulting from information technology which areoccurring in the world at present, changes whichare propelling us from one era to a new one in thespan of a generation, the development of speechoccurred over thousands of years. Thus, thechanges in how the increasing sophistication ofspeech affected the nature of human existencewere so gradual as to be scarcely noticed.

Speech provided a new dimension to human in-teraction. Speech made thought a social commod-ity. With speech it became possible to make publicand to store human cognition. The knowledge ofindividuals could be accumulated and the accu-mulated knowledge of the society was stored in

the brains of the elders. By memorizing the accu-mulated knowledge of the society and by passingit to successive generations by word of mouth, theproducts of human minds achieved a durabilitybeyond the life span of the humans “who thoughtthem up.” Just as a person could leave the productof their hands such as a bowl or an ax to their prog-eny, speech now enabled them to leave behind theproducts of their mind—their stories, their truths,their ideas.

Speech was responsible for the first and, in asense, the most important information revolution.The spoken word provided a means for humans toput structure to thought and to transmit it to others.By so doing, information was created. Speechmade it possible for one person to tell somethingto another person, i.e., for one person to informanother. Information may be significant or trivial,true or false, valuable or worthless, but in eachcase the transference of information requires ashared coding system which makes the informa-tion intelligible to those who know the code. Thenature of the coding system and the second orderconsequences which result from it create distinctconventions, processes, and beliefs pertaining tothe accumulated information of the culture.

The second great step occurred with the devel-opment of a code which made use of graphic sym-bols to record speech. The earliest known use ofgraphics was the cave drawings of the Upper Pa-leolithic period, c. 30,000 - 10,000 BC, in south-western France. The earliest use of writinginvolved the use of written symbols for numericalinformation such as calendars, inventories ofproperty, etc. These cave drawings were probablynot a primitive form of writing but were represen-tational of important aspects of the life of early hu-mans in a way similar to primitive music anddance. The first use of graphic symbols as a meansto code speech occurred around 3500 BC afterabout 500,000 years of human experience with anoral tradition (27). The literate tradition was born.

Several millennia later, the advent of printingproviding a means for information to becomemore popularized because of the favorableeconomics of movable type as contrasted to man-uscript production. Early printing simply auto-


mated manuscript production. The form of themodern book did not fully evolve until about acentury after the invention of printing. A series ofinventive and generally unknown printers createdthe form of the modern book with a title, author,and publication information page, a table of con-tents, an index, and page numbers. An additionalline of developments created the modern library,which initially was private but later (largely stim-ulated by private philanthropy) became public. Asmore and more books become available, it becamenecessary to devise ways to retrieve information.Earlier such was not necessary since a literate per-son would know of all of the books for which theyhad use. The information explosion caused by theinvention of printing necessitated the develop-ment of systems for cataloging books, such as theDewey Decimal System. The economics of print-ing along with the invention of new processes forthe manufacturing of paper were sufficiently fa-vorable so as to make printed material—books,newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias—avail-able to everyone who could read.

For most of the era of literacy, written informa-tion was available to only a small number ofpeople. It is only in the past few centuries thatpeople other than an educated elite have access towritten material. This fact is generally known.Less well recognized is the fact that until the de-velopment of cheap papermaking processes in the14th century (a development stimulated by the in-vention of the printing press) pictures were ascarce commodity. Artists were available to thenobility to depict historical scenes as well as por-traits. For the ordinary people, pictures in thestained glass windows of the great cathedrals ofEurope were used to provide information aboutthe life of Christ and the saints. Pictures, likewords, are means of storing and distributing in-formation, but their value and their use as a com-munication or learning resource has often beenminimized. Cheap paper opened an iconic as wellas a literate domain to a greater number of people,but reading pictures requires no training and thefact that pictures are so universally accessible may

explain why the value of pictures as an informa-tion source has been underestimated.

While both the oral and literate traditions aremeans of constructing and storing the informationof the society, there are significant differences be-tween oral and literate traditions. Writing madeknowledge much less precarious than it had beenin the era of dependence on the spoken word.Enormous effort was required simply to maintainthe existing knowledge so that the subsistenceeconomies of early societies could devote few re-sources into the expansion of knowledge. In pre-literate societies the advances of knowledge, evensubstantial advances when they occurred, wereoften not noticed. The advancement of knowledgewithin the oral tradition occurred though gradualevolution as it was transferred from person to per-son or as it was publicly talked out. The advance-ment of knowledge was a communal process;there were no Newtons or Einsteins in oral cul-tures (27).

Writing stabilized, depersonalized, and objec-tified knowledge. In the oral tradition, the elder isvenerated since it is he who is the source and re-ceptacle of knowledge. There is no such thing asa fallacy of an “argument to authority” in oral cul-ture. Words, and the information they constitute,take on a different character in an oral as con-trasted with a literate tradition. For example, inBiblical times:

The Israelite conception of “word” and par-ticularly the “word of God” was not consideredto be the mere verbalization or articulation ofthought. Rather it was God himself, communi-cating and giving himself in self-realization.Dabar (the Hebrew equivalent of “word”) istherefore a manifestation of God. In otherwords, “word” to the Israelites was somethingextremely personal, so that it would be correct tosay that the communication of the word is actu-ally the communication of the speaker him/her-self (32).

Writing existed when Socrates was born in 499BC, but the sprit of the oral tradition was stillstrong. Socrates spoke; Plato wrote. In the Phae-


drus Plato recounts how Socrates inveighedagainst writing as a means of advancing humanknowledge. Knowledge, for Socrates, was notsomething which resided in the inert written wordbut only in the minds of humans. Socratescompared writing to a painting. While the artist’sportrait stands before us as if alive, we cannotquestion it. In the same way, we cannot interrogatethe book. The faces in a good artist’s painting ap-pear alive and:

. . . seem to talk to you as though they were intel-ligent, but if you question them they maintain amost majestic silence. It is the same with words:they seem to talk to you as though they were in-telligent, but if you ask them anything aboutwhat they say, from a desire to be instructed,they go on telling you just the same thing forever. And once a thing is put in writing, the com-position, whatever it may be, drifts all over theplace, getting into the hands not only of thosewho understand it, but equally of those who haveno business with it; it doesn’t know how to ad-dress the right people, and address the wrong.And when it is ill-treated and unfairly abused italways needs its parent to come to its help.

After several centuries of life within a literatetradition, the disconnection of words from the liv-ing sentient being that produced them is acceptedand even appreciated since it objectifies the in-formation presented. Indeed, as citizens of a liter-ate world we often turn Socrates’ argumentupside-down and tell the person who is concernedthat their message may be misunderstood or mis-interpreted to “get it in writing.”

Writing did not eliminate talking but, as Ongpoints out, writing caused both an expansion oftalking and a transformation of it. Writing was aphenomenon of urbanization. Writing occurred incompact settlements and people in these environ-ments talked with one another more than those inscattered settlements; writing gave them more totalk about. Writing also transformed speech. Itmade possible highly complex and deeply orga-nized treatises on topics which were not possiblein an oral tradition and enabled a use of languageto manipulate and organize thought in ways which

were quite different and more powerful than thatwhich could be done with speech. Having learnedto express oneself in the manner which could beaccommodated by writing, individuals could, anddid, emulate these conceptual and semantic struc-tures in speech (26).

The invention of school was a consequence ofliteracy. The development of schools as places re-moved from the primary productive processes ofsociety is closely connected with the developmentof writing. Records of the first known schools dateto 2000 BC in Sumer. These schools were a directconsequence of the need to teach cuneiform writ-ing to a scribe class (26). Goody speaks about thecreation of schools where children were removedfrom their families and placed under special au-thorities as “decontextualization” (10). In oral cul-tures, learning was largely experiential andintegrated into daily life. One did not learn byreading written procedures and instructions but byobservation and practice. A person could learn tospeak by listening to others speak and by imitatingtheir behavior, but learning to read and write couldnot be accomplished in the same way since writ-ing and reading were activities confined to a scribeclass. Thus, schools as places where learning wasdecontextualized or disassociated from the every-day natural life tasks of the individuals were re-quired to provide the development of skills whichrequired extraordinary means for them to belearned. With the advent of writing, words—bothspoken and written—became more central tolearning in contrast to learning by observing anddoing.

It is fitting that like the invention of the first andsecond great codes, the time and place of the in-vention of the third and most recent code is alsouncertain. The popular choice (at least in theUnited States) is Samuel Morse who on May 24,1844, sent the message “What hast God wrought!”via telegraph. But there are other candidates inRussia, Germany, and England. Possibly the firstwas in Germany where in 1809 a “chemical tele-graph” was displayed in Munich which sent elec-trical current through wires in a water container


with each wire indicating a particular letter of thealphabet.

Around the time that Samuel Morse was work-ing on his invention, an Englishman namedCharles Babbage was deep at work on his AnalyticEngine, the precursor of the modern computer;however, Babbage’s Analytic Engine operatedmechanically rather than electronically. Babbagesaw a type of telegraphy similar to the one devel-oped in Munich and understood the relevance ofthe use of electronics in his machine. But given thestate of the art, this was impractical for him (13).In a little more than a century, however, the pathsinitiated by these two inventions would convergein the form of the ENIAC computer. This comput-er, which is generally acknowledged to be the firstdigital electronic computer, was developed byMauchly and Eckard during World War II at theUniversity of Pennsylvania. The information agehad begun.

The terms “information society” or “informa-tion age” are buzzwords. They are widely usedoften with only a casual effort to unpack the mean-ing from them. Probably, for many, these termsmean little more than that computers and otherassociated technologies are an omnipresent fea-ture of life and that most people will need to usethem with considerable regularity. Yet, it is clearthat a new manifestation of the human conditionhas emerged which is of a magnitude comparableto the two earlier advances in the construction ofhuman culture.

The rapid advancement of information technol-ogy over the past few decades is one of the mostdramatic episodes in the history of human ingenu-ity. As is well known, the power and performanceof the laptop computer of today which sells forless than $2,000, is substantially more powerfulthan the mainframe computers of a couple of de-cades which sold for hundreds of thousands ofdollars. Scholarship such as that provided by Ong(26) and Goody (10) shows clearly that the pro-gression from an oral to a literate and from a liter-ate to an electronic tradition changed the humancondition. Each step has altered the relationshipbetween the person and his/her own inner mentallife. Also, each step has had enormous conse-

quences on the amount and nature of the informa-tion within the culture. It is not difficult torecognize that a person living in rural Oklahomahas a different type of existence than one living inthe inner city of Manhattan because of the differ-ence in the physical environments. Similarly,changes in the intellectual environment of themagnitude that has occurred with the creation ofspeech, writing, and electronic information havehad immense impact in shaping the way in whichhumans live their lives.

The most obvious implication of the informa-tion revolution is the expansion of knowledge.Walter Ong estimated that at the beginning of hu-man history knowledge took from 10,000 to100,000 years to double. Later it took from 500 to1000 years to double. Currently, it is doubling in15 years or less (27). Within the oral tradition, oneperson could, and did, commit to memory thetotality of the knowledge of the society. Where isthe person who could memorize all of what isknown in our time? Within the literate tradition,it was possible for sensible people to take on thetask of creating a set of books which contained thetotality of human knowledge in an organized fash-ion. Who would set out to construct an encyclope-dia which purported to be everything which isknown in all fields of human endeavor? Asknowledge expands because of informationtechnology, it is information technology which of-fers the means to cope with the massive expansionof knowledge which is occurring. The knowledgewhich an individual has committed to memory, orthe books he or she has read, are less and less a de-terminant of functional ability. Increasingly, it isone’s ability to interact with the words, numbers,and pictures stored in computers in ways which re-sult in informing (in the fullest sense of that word)him/herself which determines functional ability.

As was the case with the progression from anoral to a literate tradition, the new tradition doesnot replace but transforms the old. Word proces-sing does not merely automate the process of writ-ing; it transforms it. Jay David Bolter provides adetailed and thoughtful analysis of the impact ofword processing on writing:


How the writer and the reader understandwriting is conditioned by the physical and visualcharacter of the books they use. Each physicalwriting space fosters a particular understandingboth of the act of writing and of the product, thewritten text. In this late age of print, writers andreaders still conceive of all texts, of text itself, aslocated in the space of a printed book. The con-ceptual space of a printed book is one in whichwriting is stable, monumental, and controlledexclusively by the author. It is the space definedby perfect printed volumes that exist in thou-sands of identical copies. The conceptual spaceof electronic writing, on the other hand, is char-acterized by fluidity and an interactive relation-ship between writer and reader. These differentconceptual spaces foster different styles andgenres of writing and different theories of litera-ture (1).

While epistemology, the study of the philoso-phy of knowledge, is an active interest of a smallpercentage of people, everyone carries with thema conception of the nature of knowledge. Writing,and more specifically the technology of the book,profoundly influenced the way in which peoplehave thought about knowledge for several centu-ries. The structure of the book became the struc-ture of knowledge. The book is linear. It is dividedinto chapters, each of which contains a unified andcohesive segment of the totality. The order of thepresentation is governed by logic which yieldsone order of presentation. The book has heft andthe words printed on a page have a permanenceand a physical presence. These characteristics ofthe book became transposed to the conception ofknowledge with cohesive and distinct disciplines,with a logical order to the structure of the disci-pline, and with durability.

Just as the traditions of the literate culture andthe structure of the book shaped the conception ofthe nature of knowledge, the emerging traditionsof the information culture are providing a newconception of the nature of knowledge. The meta-phor for knowledge changes from that of the bookto that of a colossal hypermedia stack. Knowledgebecomes a network of concepts with many con-nective pathways. Linkages between concepts areformed on the basis of functional utility rather

than on immutable and intrinsic logic. In the con-text of an electronic information tradition, knowl-edge is dynamic. Textbooks or reference bookswhich are used for several years before a new edi-tion is produced seem inappropriate, but editing oradding to an information in an electronic formatis easily accomplished. The electronic tradition,like the oral tradition, is much more congenial toa communal approach to the construction ofknowledge than is the print tradition. Just as therewere no Einsteins or Newtons in oral cultures, theadvance of knowledge in an electronic tradition islikely to involve fewer advances which are attrib-utable to the work of a solitary genius.

Information technology not only affects whatwe know and how we come to know it, it also af-fects what we do. The need for any particular skillis contingent on the context of individuals. In-formation technology is causing some skills to be-come less valuable at the same time that new skillsare becoming more valuable. Few people in oursociety rely on their ability to hunt for food to feedthemselves. Today, one requires skills at being aneffective shopper at the local supermarket. Oldskills pass and new ones emerge. Many factoryworkers who worked with their hands andwrenches, drills, and welding tools no longer re-quire skills with those tools but must now teachtheir hands keyboarding skills or work with com-puter programs that control machines that do whatthey once did with their hands. The value of beingable to spell by memory every word a person usesin writing is less important when the individualwrites on a word processor with spell check. Thetask of searching information bases did not existin any significant fashion a few decades ago. It isnow a skill of great value.

At the heart of the difference between a literateand an electronic culture (and certainly at the heartof the issue as it pertains to learning and schools)is the shift from a contemplative to an experientialmethod of learning. In a writing culture, humanbeings learn by pulling away from what is happen-ing around them and reading about events, con-cepts, facts which another person has abstractedand structured. An electronic culture, on the other


hand, puts the person in the midst of the experi-ences which often are raw, unprocessed and, to usecomputer lingo, are real-time. The orderliness and“one step back” character of reading is in contrastto the untidy and “plunge into it” nature of elec-tronic experiences. Thus, we do not read about thePersian Gulf War; we experience it on CNN. Theconcern of many is that what comes to the personin electronic formats are only pictures which mayhave no meaning beyond the momentary visual orauditory stimulation. Such a criticism goes be-yond television or multimedia and pertains to ex-perience itself. Experience is nothing more—orless—than the images, sounds, smells, and feel ofwhat is occurring. The old saying is: Experienceis the best teacher. But experience is not an infal-lible teacher. Thinking and reflecting do not go outof the picture in experiential learning. Thinking,evaluating, and reflecting are all part of “learningfrom experience,” but they are blended into thelearning process in a more subtle, less conspicu-ous way than in instances of “book learning.” Thetexture and rhythm of learning when mediated byelectronic resources is in sharp contrast to thatwhich occurs in the environment of the printedword. This is the fundamental “two cultures”problem of schools at present as literate traditionteachers try and too often fail to teach electronictradition students.

Information technology has substantially ele-vated the importance of pictures in learning.Today most people learn about their world in pic-torial form through television. Pictures are partic-ularly potent in engendering an emotionalresponse. A pictures of a starving child in Mogadi-shu or of students resisting repression in Tiana-men Square has an immediacy of impact whichsurpasses many columns of print in a newspaperaccount of the same story. Increasing attention hasbeen devoted to the use of visualization as a meansof presenting in pictorial form vast quantities ofinformation. The user of such information mightdrown in the sea of this information in verbal orquantitative forms. The use of pictures in learningis troubling to some people since there is fear thatlooking at pictures is an act which can be donewithout the mind engaged. Picture books are con-

sidered acceptable for very young children, butcomic books have been discouraged, usually morebecause of their use of pictures to tell the storythan because of the content of the story. Neverthe-less, there is a rich tradition of scientists, design-ers, and artists who think with images, and thecapacity of information technology to present stilland moving pictures expands the palette for devel-opers of learning resources. For those of us whohave lived and learned in a literate culture, thereis something unsettling if not invalid in the migra-tion from learning with text to learning with pic-tures, but it is quite likely that people in the futurewill look back on the limitations of our bias to-ward text in much the same way that we have ob-served the bias of earlier generations to the spokenrather than the written word.

There is little in contemporary life which is nottouched in some significant way by informationtechnology. Clearly, it has caused a fundamentaltransformation of the way people work. In onesense the computer is the most recent of a long se-ries of machines such as the cropping machinesused in textile manufacturing in the early 19thcentury at the outset of the Industrial Revolution.Cropping machines (which incidentally were de-stroyed by the skilled workers in England whowere being displaced by these machines in theLuddite incidents) and other machines such as thecotton gin, the steamshovel, and the drill press au-tomated work that had required a strong back or asteady and trained hand. The computer is quitedifferent from the machines of the Industrial Rev-olution. To use the words of Shoshana Zuboff(40), who provided a thoughtful analysis of theimpact of information technology on work, it is a“smart machine” and as such began a new chapterwith regard to the nature of work.

The “Management in the 1990s Research Pro-gram” at MIT issued a report called The Corpora-tion in the 1990s (23). This report contains richdetail about the nature of the changes at the levelsof production, coordination, and management ofthe workplace. The sweeping changes are visibleto anyone who walks on the floor of a factory. Onefinds fewer people, and many of the workers areusing robotics, process control instrumentation,


and intelligent sensors. Less conspicuous are thechanges in how those responsible for generatinga profit think about their business. There is an ex-pression used by some in the media productionbusiness, “I can give it to you cheap, quick, orgood. Pick two!” What the business person hearsis, “Our company needs to produce a quality prod-uct at low cost, and make a profit. Pick three!” In-formation technology is at the heart of the newconceptions about how to flourish—or at leastsurvive—in a world of new expectations with re-gard to cost and quality. In the words of the editorof The Corporation in the 1990s, “Informationtechnology has important general-purpose powerto manipulate symbols used in all classes of workand, therefore, as an ‘information engine’ it can dofor business what the steam engine did in the daysof the Industrial Revolution.”

Just as information technology is the influen-tial work tool of society, information technologyis also the dominant source of recreation. Parentsand teachers commonly decry the great amount oftime which children and young people spendwatching TV. But looking at a screen, be it a TVor a video game screen, is the overwhelmingsource of recreation for children and youngpeople, just as TV is the major recreational activ-ity of adults. Video games, like TV, are often criti-cized. But someone, and the someone is often aparent, likes video games enough to make Segaand Nintendo a multi-billion dollar industry (33).

It has been somewhat less than a half centurysince the first big and clumsy computers appearedon the scene, and in the succeeding years therehave been continuing advances and an increasingpervasiveness of the technology. There is a curi-ous similarity between the purpose of writing at itsinception several thousand years ago and the pur-pose of the first computers a half century ago.Both writing and computers began with a limitedrole in human conduct. The first writing systemsand the first computers were “number crunchers.”In both cases, they were used for numerical tasks,and also in both cases, the power of the symbolsystem which was developed gradually movedwriting or propelled computers to a vastly expand-ed role. Even after several decades of plotting the

growth of the expansion of computer technology,seasoned pros still can be surprised. Early in 1993Bill Gates of Microsoft and Andrew Grove of Intelpredicted PC sales of between 35 and 40 million,which was an increase from the 32 million salesin a good 1992 sales year. The actual sales were at50 million, 25 to 40 percent higher than forecasted(9).

Efforts to predict the world that informationtechnology will create can fall victim to a fatal trapif there is the assumption that at some point in theforeseeable future the process will have been com-pleted. There is no reason to believe that anyonealive today will see the completion of this processor the achievement of stability with regard to thedevelopment of this technology, it will continue tobe open-ended for generations to come. Neverthe-less, there are several dominant themes which arelikely to shape the expression of the technology inthe years ahead:

� Improvements in microprocessor design andreductions in cost. The capability of micropro-cessors continues to increase as costs decrease.The first microprocessor was built in 1971 andin less than 20 years, by 1989, the first micro-processor to contain more than a million tran-sistors was produced. By the year 1976, afterfive years of transistor production, the total ofall the transistors manufactured by the comput-er industry was about 100 billion which isequivalent to the number of neurons in the hu-man brain. Intel scientists predict a single chipthat can hold somewhere between 50 and 100million transistors will be produced around theturn of the century. With 100 million transistorson a chip, it would require only one 1,000 pro-cessors to produce a computer with as manytransistors as neurons in the brain. Gelsingerand his colleagues at Intel contend that whensystems with hundreds of billions of transistorsbecome available early in the next century, itwill then be possible to ask: “When will we putthe first brain on a single chip?” (8).

Even with the dramatic advances in chip de-sign over the past two decades, the capabilitiesof existing hardware is a constraint in applica-


tions design. There remains a great gap be-tween the way in which the mind processesinformation and the way in which this is doneby computers. This gap will narrow with theimprovements in chip design that will soonmake today’s supercomputers reminiscent ofthe Apple IIe. As this happens, the price ofcomputing storage and speed will decrease. Noone knows what a gigabyte of storage or 100MIPS of processing speed will cost in the year2000, but everyone knows it will be quite cheapand probably considerably cheaper than anycurrent prediction.

Increasing the processing power of chips isnot equivalent to increasing the horse-power ofan automobile which has quantitative signifi-cance in terms of the speed with which the ve-hicle can carry weight. Increases in theprocessing power have qualitative significancein enabling new applications to be developed.While it is possible to extrapolate from existingapplications and speculate about the improve-ments that will result from increases in proces-sing power, no one knows what inventors willbuild when they can hold the processing powerof hundreds of millions of transistors in theirhands.

� Networks. It was only about a decade ago thatbattles were being fought between mainframeproponents and microcomputer proponents.With the increased capability of microcomput-ers, many (myself among them) were preparedto officiate at the funeral of mainframes. Whatmany failed to see was the growth of wide areanetworks. Ultimately, in the contest betweenmicrocomputers or distributed computing andmainframes or central computing, the emer-gence of networks made both winners. The useof computers to create networks for commu-nication and access to information has movedfrom being an important to a dominant themein the use of the technology. Acronymsassociated with networks such as BBS and FTPare migrating from computer insiders to thegeneral population. By 1993, a little more thana decade after the first BBS or computer bulle-

tin boards opened up in California and Chica-go, there were more than 60,000 nationwide(34). The massive growth of the Internet dem-onstrates the rapidly growing interest in the useof networks. As of late July 1994, there were3.2 million machines worldwide reachable onthe Internet. This represents an 81 percent in-crease over the previous year. No one knowsthe number of people using the Internet, but itis many times greater than the number of at-tached machines.

� Portability. Advances in wireless technologiesin the past few years offer the prospect of mak-ing use of the virtually infinite resources of thespectrum of electromagnetic vibrations. In thenext few years advances in wireless technologyalong with the increased installation of fiberop-tics will reduce the cost of transmission of in-formation which requires larger bandwidthsuch as video and two-way communications.Andrew Grove of Intel put it succinctly, “Youthink computer prices are plummeting. Wait tillyou see what happens to bandwidth”(9).

Of course, the elimination of wires also en-hances the portability of devices that are al-ready being miniaturized because of advancesin chip technology. Smaller machines whichare not tethered by wires also will be improvedwith better display capabilities. The display ca-pability of a typical television set is roughlyequivalent to 62 dots per inch. Screens with 200to 300 dots per inch (which is equivalent to a la-ser print) will be available. Just as writing didnot eliminate reading but transformed it, in-formation technology will not eliminate read-ing on paper, but reading increasingly will bedone using small portable display screens.Screens which display information at a qualitylevel that is comparable to a well-printed colormagazine at a cost per word that is substantiallyless than the cost of the same word printed onpaper will have the effect of moving much ofwhat is read to electronic formats. Given thefact that most of the information that is pro-duced at the present time is already in electron-ic format, the extra step of printing it on paper


will be reserved for those who want paper tosatisfy emotional or particular practical needs.

� “Everything is data.” From our vantage point,it is ironic that Mr. Morse’s digital inventionwas swept away by Mr. Bell’s analog device.The future for analog signals such as those usedby television does not appear promising. Thebifurcated world of computer data in digitalformat and television signals is ending. As oneof my colleagues frequently reminds me: “Ev-erything is data.” The efficiency and utility ofstorage and transmission of information, be itpictures, sound, or words and numbers in digi-tal format is substantially greater than in analogformat. Analog is an appropriate technologyfor a 20th-century broadcast world, not a 21st-century network world. In Life After Television,Gilder puts it this way, “The computer industryis converging with the television industry in thesame sense that the automobile converged withthe horse, the TV converged with the nickel-odeon, the word-processor converged with thedrafting board, and digital publishing con-verged with the linotype machine and the letter-press”(9).

� Applications. The first applications for com-puters were directed in ways to manipulate nu-merical information. Statistical and othernumeric processing software was the dominantuse of the early computers. The computer wasa super calculating machine. As the technologydeveloped, new applications emerged. Ap-plications such as word processing and spread-sheets did not represent new ways to do oldtasks, but were new ways to do new things.Over the next several years there will be newsoftware inventions which will go beyond sim-ply improving existing applications (i.e., ad-vancing from version 3.0 to version 4.0). Newapplications will continue to emerge. For ex-ample, there are efforts to develop applicationssuch as idea processors which can be used tomanipulate concepts, ideas, and thoughts in away similar to the manner in which word pro-cessing enables the user to manipulate words.The development of specialized software to ex-ploit the full potential of computer mediated

group-work, generally referred to as group-ware, has just begun. This is an area still wait-ing for the “killer application,” or, more likely,the “killer applications.” As primitive andcumbersome as virtual reality is at present, itwill become more and more realistic and adeptat tricking the mind into believing that what ex-ists only in cyberspace exists in real space.Visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactile percep-tion of environments generated from strings ofdata will become so lifelike that the differencesbetween virtual reality and “real” reality willseem to be a trivial distinction. There is certainto be a market for virtual reality for pornogra-phy and for violence. The fondest sexual andhomicidal fantasies will be achievable withoutfear of criminal indictment. Some educationalapplications are obvious, such as the use in lan-guage learning by enabling the person to learnFrench in virtual France, or to learn about as-tronomy by taking a trip through space, or tounderstand human biology by engaging in anexpedition into the human body. Beyond suchobvious applications as these there is also anunknown continent of applications of this sim-ulation and virtual reality for learning purposesyet to be explored.

� Information technology vs. computers.Throughout this document, the term “informa-tion technology” has generally been used ratherthan “computers.” Thinking about the impactof this technology is inordinately truncated ifone thinks about it in terms of the microcom-puter. Microcomputers are only the current andmost prevalent manifestation of the handling ofelectronic information. Over the next years,multiple and diverse machines will emerge andevolve and it will be increasingly clear that in-formation processing represents a categoryrather than an entity.

The American public school has remained gen-erally impervious to the impact of informationtechnology. Much of the discussions about in-formation technology and schools has focused onthe question: How can information technologyhelp school personnel to achieve the goals and


purposes of schools? In this formulation, schoolsare the “horse” and information technology is the“cart.” Yet in reality, the horse and the cart are re-versed.

For previous generations, the American systemof schooling was seen as one of the great accom-plishments of this nation. Such is no longer thepopular perception, but in reality, it is not thatschools have deteriorated but that the world haschanged around them, making much of what oc-curs in schools anachronistic. The impact of in-formation technology on schools transcends whatschools do and affects what schools are.

THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLAS AN INSTITUTIONFew aspects of life are as commonplace asschools. School buildings are the one place whereeveryone in society has spent time, some as muchas 20 or more years. If a person becomes a parent,he or she is back in school again as they tend to theeducation of their child. Everyone knows whatgoes on in schools. In this context, it might seemquite peculiar to ask the question: what is theAmerican public school? This question needs tobe answered, not it terms of an inventory of whatstudents and teachers do inside of classrooms, butin terms of what the American public school hasmeant to people in American society with regardto the learning and socialization required by chil-dren.

The American public school is an institution,and the term “institution” is key to understandingwhat it is as well as grasping the changes whichimpinge on schools as a result of informationtechnology. Connotatively, the term “institution”carries with it a vague honorific meaning suggest-ing something of importance and permanence.Often there is little more than superficial use of theterm institution as an explanatory concept, eventhough understanding the American public schoolas an institution is very helpful in any effort tomake sense of what the public school is, why it iswhat it is, and how it fits into American society.

Many who believe that the school must be re-formed, restructured, reengineered, or reinvented

draw upon the recent experience of Americanbusiness and industry to indicate what needs to bedone. There is, however, an important distinctionbetween the school and the firm. Both the schooland the firm are organizations. As such, both arecohesive entities comprised of elements, each ofwhich performs a specialized function necessaryto accomplish the goals for which the organizationwas formed. Yet, the firm and the school representtwo different types of organizations. John Meyerand his colleagues have provided a helpful analy-sis of the difference between organizations intechnical contexts, such as the firm, and organiza-tions in institutional contexts, such as the school:

Formal organizational structures arise main-ly through two processes. First, complextechnologies and social environments with com-plex exchanges (such as markets) foster thedevelopment of rationalized bureaucratic struc-tures to efficiently coordinate technical work. . . Second, institutional structures emerge thatdefine given types of roles and programs as ra-tional and legitimate. . . . The emergence of thefactory reflects the first process, and the emer-gence of the school reflects the second (22).

The “technical organization” exists to do some-thing. The purpose of the firm as an organizationis to produce goods and services in a profitablemanner. The term “bottom line” (which has be-come a popular metaphor) is far more than a figureof speech for the firm. The figure at the bottom ofthe accounting ledger is the critical criterion, ac-cepted by all within the firm, of the organizationalhealth of the firm. The organizational structure iseffective to the extent that the organization is ableto do what it needs to do, i.e., produce marketablegoods or services at a profit. While the firm is af-fected by social values which go beyond the spe-cific production or service goals of the firm (suchas environmental concerns or racial or gender eq-uity), these are not the raison d’être of the firm,but facts of life with which it must contend, grudg-ingly or willingly.

The school as an organization exists in an insti-tutional context. The “institutional organization”exists to be something. It is in this sense that Mey-er and Rowan point out that “modern schools pro-


duce education for society, not for individuals orfamilies” (21). This is not to deny that individualteachers or administrators strive to—and do—provide services for children and their parents.Rather it means that for the school, unlike thefirm, the beliefs shared by members of the societyof the role it plays for the perceived well-being ofsociety is of critical importance. The extent towhich it is perceived to be meeting its social man-date is the “bottom line” of the organizationalhealth of the school.

Shared beliefs are more than a desired featureof a society, they are an absolute necessity. Com-munity or society disintegrates in the absence ofa core set of accepted beliefs. Sociologists refer tothe shared beliefs as the “rational myths” of soci-ety which are the structural framework of institu-tions (22). They are myths, not in the popular useof that term as being untrue, but in the sense of be-ing widely and deeply held by members of the so-ciety. The myths are the ideological sinew whichhold together the individuals as a community. Theissue of the truth or falsity of the myths is irrele-vant since the myths are value statements whichdo not lend themselves to empirical validation.“The beliefs are rational in the sense that theyidentify specific social purposes and then specifyin a rule-like manner what activities are to be car-ried out (or what types of actors must beemployed) to achieve them” (37).

One of the most important tasks of society is toensure that each successive generation acquiresthe knowledge, technologies, skills, customs, andaffects which they require to maintain the society.In the last century a belief structure was put intoplace which became accepted about the way inwhich children would be educated. Schools hadexisted from the early days of colonization, butearly in the last century the American publicschool as an institution was created.

From 1830 to 1860, the size of the UnitedStates grew by 1,234,321 square miles, and thepopulation grew from 12,866,020 to 31,443,321.Only 7.2 percent of the population lived in urbanareas in 1820, but by 1860 this had risen to 20 per-cent. In 1820 there were only 12 cities with a pop-ulation of 10,000 or greater. By 1860, there were

101 United States cities with a population of10,000 or greater, and eight of them were largerthan 100,000. In 1826, 10,837 immigrants wereadmitted to the United States. Of the 10,837, most(7,708) were from England or Ireland. During thedecade of the 1850s, more than 3,000,000 immi-grants entered the United States, with large per-centages from Southern Europe.

Industrialization, urbanization, and immigra-tion transformed American society and spawnedproblems for a nation in transition. Cities becameengines of productivity with concomitant disease,poverty, and crime. Many persons felt that home-lessness, vice, and alcoholism were out of control.In the 1830s, there were numerous acts of mobviolence. The objects of the wrath of mobs wereoften immigrants or Catholics. By mid-centurythe Know-Nothing Party, with its platform of big-otry, was the fastest growing political party inAmerica. The success of the Know-Nothing Partywas a consequence of the widely held opinion,even by many who did not affiliate with it, that the“American way of life” was in jeopardy.

Coincidentally, with the great social distress inthe nation, a fever for reform swept through thecountry. There has never been a period of more in-tense reform spirit in America than the secondquarter of the 19th century. The reform agendaranged across a wide range of causes: abolition,temperance, women’s rights, vegetarianism, pris-ons, and treatment of the insane. Organizationssprang up which reflected the fervor and optimismof those who began them: Society for the Suppres-sion of Vice and the Promotion of Good Morals;The Friends of Universal Reform; The Boston So-ciety for the Moral and Religious Instruction ofthe Poor; The New York Association for the Reliefof Respectable, Aged, Indigent Females; and theAmerican and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society toname but a few. Dorothea Dix traveled thousandsof miles in her efforts to reform the treatment ofthe insane. Susan B. Anthony worked for thecause of women’s rights and temperance. WilliamLloyd Garrison took up the cause of abolition.

The theme which transcends the specifics of thereforms of the 19th century was the establishmentof social institutions to create a more perfect


society. They believed that the welfare of the indi-vidual was enhanced and protected by social in-stitutions rather than threatened by them. Theoptimism of the reformers was extended over awide-ranging array of new institutions. The in-sane asylum was created not as a last resort to lockaway the disconcerting and frightening specimensof humanity; rather the asylum was a manifesta-tion of the belief that a properly constructed asy-lum could cure virtually any incidence of mentalillness (35). Other institutions such as the refor-matory and the penitentiary were based on thesame optimistic beliefs about the potency of theseorganizations to change people and solve socialproblems.

Education was one of the focal points of the ear-ly 19th-century reform movement. The more per-fect society which the reformers sought toconstruct had clear and obvious educational im-plications. Though the educational reform move-ment was centered in New England, there werepersons throughout the United States who dedi-cated their lives to the creation of a new and betterway to educate American youth. James G. Carterand Horace Mann in Massachusetts, Henry Bar-nard and Thomas H. Gallaudet in Connecticut,Calvin Stowe in Ohio, John D. Pierce in Michi-gan, John Swett in California, Calvin H. Wiley inNorth Carolina, and Robert J. Breckinridge inKentucky were some of the most prominenteducational reformers. They were joined, not onlyby common cause, but by association and interac-tion. They read one another’s books and speeches,corresponded, and came into contact with oneanother in the many educational organizations andassociations which flourished.

The 19th-century reforms were a reaction to theapproach to education which had prevailed in theUnited States from the earliest days of coloniza-tion to the early years of the 19th century. Educa-tion was an important theme in the earliest days ofAmerican colonization. The first European set-tlers in America came to the New World at a timeof a great information revolution in Europe. Theyhad left England in the midst of an information ex-plosion. In the century prior to the emigration to

America there had been a tremendous expansionof the literacy with the rapidly spreading avail-ability of books in the vernacular. As a conse-quence there was less dependence on the oraltradition and a greater reliance on books for everyfacet of life. There was a profusion of books per-taining to all aspects of life, from agriculture topersonal conduct. The cost of books was such thatfor the first time in history the recorded word wasaccessible to a mass market. The abundance ofvaluable information which became availablethrough the advances in printing technologyplaced increasing importance on literacy. Literacywas required if one was to be able to read the vari-ous manuals, almanacs and technical informationin all fields which was becoming increasinglyabundant.

The attitude of people in the 16th century to-ward their information revolution was similar tothe attitude of people in the 20th century to ourown. Some rued it, some were oblivious to it, butmany, especially middle class townspeople, sawit as a basis for a better life. Robert Ryece, a friendof John Winthrop, the great Puritan leader, wroteto him on the eve of his trip to American on theArbella, “How hard it will be for one brought upamong books and learned men to live in a barba-rous place where there is no learning and less civi-lization” (4). As they left civilized England for theuntamed New World, there was fear of losing theculture of the homeland. Education was the pro-phylactic against barbarism. Thus, the Puritansbrought their books with them to the New World,but of even more significance, they brought withthem a belief that education was an importantmeans in achieving prosperity on earth and salva-tion in heaven.

The home was the prime educational agency ofearly American society, and the prime agent foreducation in the Puritan community was not thestate or the church but the family. This did notmean that the parents were the sole teachers oftheir children; rather, many arrangements weremade, depending on the circumstances, for educa-tion to occur, and indeed the colonists were proneto establishing schools. In essence, everyone in


the Puritan community was potentially a teacher.Children acquired instruction:

Anywhere and everywhere, not only inschoolrooms, but in kitchens, manses, churches,meetinghouse, sheds erected in fields, and shopserected in towns . . . pupils were taught byparents, tutors, clergymen, layreaders, precep-tors, physicians, lawyers, artisans, and shop-keepers . . . (4).

The manner in which education in the home orthe workplace occurred was informal and had tobe worked into one’s own life as the rhythm of dai-ly life permitted. It was common for children tolearn to read, write and cipher within the homewith parents, older brothers or sisters, other rela-tives, or neighbors providing the instruction. Forexample, as a young child near the beginning ofthe 18th century, Horace Mann learned to read byfollowing his sister around the house as she didher chores reciting from a copy of Noah Webster’sgrammar (20). Ministers, who had skills in classi-cal languages, would frequently tutor childrenwho sought entrance to college since knowledgeof classical language was the 19th-century equiva-lent of the SAT for college admission.

Proprietary schooling abounded. There weremany persons available to those who were able topay for schooling or tutoring. Tutoring could bepurchased for primary instruction in reading, writ-ing, and arithmetic, and for more advancedinstruction in Greek, Latin, geometry, surveying,navigation, and bookkeeping. Wealthy parentsmight hire a teacher to extend, supplement, or re-place their own instruction. The private masterwould provide instruction for all of the employ-er’s children along with the children of other rela-tives or friends. Those who wished to advancetheir position through more advanced learningcould secure the services of a teacher, either as aprivate student or in a school in the tutor’s homeor business.

Apprenticing was also a very important meansof professional and vocational training. Appren-ticeship was the way in which persons weretrained in agriculture, shopkeeping, manufactur-ing, the skilled trades, and the professions of med-icine and law. In the case of medicine, there was

a rather standard form of apprenticeship. In thecase of law, the apprenticeship was varied depend-ing on the proclivities of the master (5).

Thus, the flavor of education in the 17th andearly 18th centuries was characterized by two ele-ments: personal responsibility and diverse means.It was up to the individual to determine the extentof education necessary for self and children. It wasincumbent on the individual to achieve the re-quired education in a manner which provided thebest fit between one’s life circumstances andeducational goals. Writing about the colonial andearly national era, Cremin says, “Variegation,then, was the rule, and with it improvisation,imitation, trial and error—whatever historical de-velopment there was ended up anything but uni-form and linear” (6). But then over the span of 30or so years at the mid-point of the 19th century aradically different form of education emerged inAmerica:

The haphazard arrangements of the 17th,18th, and early 19th centuries cannot be consid-ered true progenitors of the school systems weknow today. For by the latter part of the 19thcentury the organization, scope and role ofschooling had been fundamentally transformed.In place of a few casual schools dotted abouttown and country there existed in most citiestrue educational systems: fatefully articulated,age graded, hierarchically structured groupingsof schools, primarily free and often compulsory,administered by full-time experts and progres-sively taught by specially trained staff. No long-er casual adjuncts to the home or apprenticeship,schools were highly formal institutions de-signed to play a critical role in the socializationof the young, the maintenance of social order,and the promotion of economic development(15).

The 19th century reformers saw the variegatededucational situation of the 18th century wheneducation occurred in many venues in many waysas dysfunctional. Yet, the approach to educationwhich had prevailed from the earliest days of thecolonial era through the first years of the republichad served the American people well. The dissat-isfaction with the old approach to education was


a consequence of the great changes which wereoccurring in the nation and the emergence of newbeliefs, a new rational myth, about how childrenshould acquire the cultural legacy of their fore-bearers. If there was one word which caught theessence of the changes the reformers sought to es-tablish it was “system.” In the words of one of thereformers, James Carter, the reform movementsought a “consistent system fully developed” (2).The 19th-century reformers created “the schoolsystem” not only in the jurisdictional sense asused to refer to a particular school district but alsoas the system of schooling which was to be themanner in which the society would handle thecommonalities of human action associated withthe transmission of the knowledge, skills, disposi-tions, and sensibilities required to maintain the so-ciety.

Nineteenth-century Americans were greatly in-fluenced by European education which in the late18th century was in the early stages of the educa-tional reform which would spread to the UnitedStates. A number of reports written detailing thesuccesses of European education achieved a wideand influential readership in the United States.The fundamental conception of the reform move-ment in Europe was the establishment of theschool as the primary social agency for educationof the young. This belief grew out of the concernabout the neglect of education of the children ofthe peasants. Concomitantly, there was a sharedbelief among those involved with school reformthat schooling, if systemic and systematic, couldproduce young people with the knowledge anddisposition which were requisite to ensuring eco-nomic prosperity and domestic tranquillity. Therewas, they believed, a pedagogy which rested on ascientific foundation which could ensure that thecontent the state needed to inculcate in each childcould be accomplished. The weak laws requiringparental or citizen support of schools were re-placed by laws which established state support ofschools and, by the turn of the 20th century, com-pulsory school attendance.

The idea that the school has had more responsi-bility thrust on it over the years is inaccurate. Thebroad nature of the mission of the school was not

constituted by accretion but by charter. CalvinStowe, the husband of Harriet Beecher Stowe,was one of a number of Americans who went toEurope to examine European education and to re-port on it to the Ohio legislature. His report waspresented to the governor of Ohio in 1837. It waswidely distributed and became quite popular. Hewrote as follows:

The children must be given up implicitly tothe discipline of the school. Nothing can be doneunless the teacher has the entire control of hispupils in school hours, and out of school too, sofar as the rules of the school are concerned. If theparent in any way interferes with, or overrulesthe arrangements of the teacher, he may attrib-ute it to himself if the school is not successful(38).

Similarly the words of Horace Mann from histhird annual report to the Massachusetts Board ofEducation express the conviction that the schoolwas the instrument to be used by society to main-tain society:

Common Schools derive their value from thefact that they are an instrument, more extensive-ly applicable to the whole mass of the children,than any other instrument ever yet devised.They are an instrument, by which the good menin society can send redeeming influences tothose children, who suffer under the calamity ofvicious parentage and evil domestic associa-tions. The world is full of lamentable proofs,that the institution of the family may exist for anindefinite number of generations, without miti-gating the horrors of barbarism. But the institu-tion of Common Schools is the offspring of anadvanced state of civilization, and is incapableof coexisting with barbarian life, because,should barbarism prevail, it would destroy theschools, should the schools prevail, they woulddestroy barbarism (19).

The belief that the school could accomplish theintellectual and socializing functions of educationwas quite functional to a nation increasingly in-dustrial and urban. The conception of schooling asthe place rather than a place where children ac-quire the knowledge and skill they will require tobecome effective members of society has re-mained the prevalent belief for a century. Even


though the existence of many nonschool learningresources exist, and even though many individu-als can speak of the impact of these resources intheir own lives, they have typically been per-ceived as ancillary to schooling as the means foreducating children and youth. The educated per-son has been the schooled person. We even lackgood terms to refer to the array of educational re-sources such as books, TV, clubs, movies, friends,parents, and other adults which may make impor-tant contributions in terms of the individual’sknowledge, skills, and attitudes. They are referredto as “nonformal education” and are thus definedin terms of what they are not in reference toschooling. Even those who do not esteem theirschooling tend to answer the question, “Where didyou get your education?” by naming a school. Lifeis divided into two segments. The first segment isthe period of schooling. Then there is a com-mencement or a beginning of the second segmentwhen the individual is expected to become an ac-tive and productive member of society.

Much as the economic structure of society restson the belief that coins and bills are more than bitsof metal and paper, so too a sustaining belief main-taining the school structure is that certificates, di-plomas, and degrees are more than attractivedocuments and that they certify competence. Theissuance of official certificates as social passportsboth validates the school and is validated by theschool. Certification informs the individual of hisor her abilities as assessed by the school, but also,and most importantly, informs society. As long asthe school is empowered to issue certificateswhich affect social status and economic mobility,the school will need to be taken seriously whetheror not the individual or their parent perceives heor she has received adequate services. The powerof schools to “mint” social currency is significantonly as long as the currency is valuable. The ac-creditation of schools, state certification of teach-ers, and standardization of the curriculumconstitutes the ways in which the state attempts toensure the value of diplomas.

The reformers believed that a critical require-ment for an effective system of education wasteacher training. In one of the most important of

the European reports which were so widely readby educational and political leaders, Victor Cous-in, who had been commissioned by the Frenchgovernment to produce a report on Prussianschools, provided a laudatory description of thePrussian school system and included a lengthy de-scription of teacher training. Cousin argued thatteacher training was an essential aspect of the ef-fectiveness of their schools. The skill and demean-or of the teacher was the critical element inachieving the change which was required.

The effort to establish state-supported normalschools in the United States began in the 1820sand many engaged in the reform effort saw this asthe keystone of the reform movement. James Cart-er, a member of the state legislature in Massachu-setts, was one of the leaders in the establishmentof normal schools in that state. In 1824 and 1825,Carter published a series of essays in the BostonPatriot arguing for normal schools and explainingwhy state support was appropriate and necessary.In his words:

It will do but little good, for example, for thelegislature of the State to make large appropri-ations directly for the support of schools, till ajudicious expenditure of them can be ensured.And in order to [do] this, we must have skillfulteachers at hand. It will do but little good to classthe children till we have instructors at hand. Itwill do absolutely no good to constitute an inde-pendent tribunal to decide on the qualificationsof teachers, while they have not had the opportu-nities necessary for coming up to the properstandard. And it will do no good to overlook andreport upon their success, when we know be-forehand, that they have not the means of suc-cess (2).

The champions for teacher training did notcome from the ranks of the current teachers andadministrators but rather were a cadre of politi-cians and religious leaders. One very conspicuousfigure in the history of normal schools was theRev. Charles Brooks, who traveled from town totown in Massachusetts lecturing for state supportof normal schools. Brooks organized a series ofconventions and provided a platform for notablessuch as Daniel Webster and John Quincy Adams,


who also spoke to the need for normal schools.Rev. Brooks, who had campaigned tirelessly fornormal schools, stated the underlying convictionthat had motivated him and the others who createdthe normal school: “As is the teacher, so is theschool” (18).

The campaign in the Massachusetts legislaturefor state support of schools to prepare teachersgathered considerable momentum in the late1820s. In 1827, Rep. Carter, who chaired theHouse Committee on Education, presented a re-port to the legislature that called for establishinga “Seminary for the Instruction of School Teach-ers.” Carter’s proposal failed by one vote. The de-bate continued, and 10 years later, on April 19,1837, the legislature established a Board ofEducation. Creation of the board proved signifi-cant in the development of normal schools be-cause Horace Mann (who was then serving asPresident of the Massachusetts Senate) was cho-sen to lead the board. Mann believed in the needto create a system to prepare teachers, and he com-mitted himself without reserve to the success ofthe normal school venture. At one point, whenfunds for the normal school effort were short, hesold books from his personal library to raise theneeded money.

There was considerable opposition to thefounding of normal schools, but with Mann’sleadership, and with a gift of $10,000 from Ed-mund Dwight, a member of the state board, theforces in the legislature arrayed against normalschools were neutralized. A year later, members ofthe Massachusetts legislature attempted to endstate support of normal schools. The opponents ofthe normal schools considered them unnecessary,arguing that anyone who had been taught wouldknow how to teach (18). In a letter to Henry Bar-nard in 1851, Cyrus Pierce, the principal of thefirst normal school at Lexington, Massachusetts,explained what he had hoped to accomplish. Heagreed that teachers may be able to acquire by trialand error over time the skills and powers they needto teach effectively, “but while teachers were thuslearning, I was sure that pupils must be suffering”(34). The normal school would ensure that “teach-ers may be prepared to enter on their work, not

only with hope, but almost with assurance of suc-cess” (34) A substantial effort in the Massachu-setts legislature to rescind the normal schools andto return the unused portion of Dwights’s fund tohim failed, and they continued to spread through-out Massachusetts and to other states.

At its inception, teacher training was disasso-ciated from higher education. The normal schoolswere more like secondary schools than colleges,and considerable emphasis was placed on equip-ping students with knowledge of the content theywere expected to teach. While a number of normalschools would eventually evolve into colleges anduniversities, the initial connection between teach-er education and higher education came througha different route. Chairs in didactics or pedagogybegan to be established in American universitiesin the last quarter of the 19th century. By 1892 theUnited States Commissioner of Education re-ported that there were chairs of pedagogy in 31institutions, chairs of pedagogy combined withother disciplines such as philosophy or mental sci-ence in 45 others, and lectureships in an additionaleight universities (28).

As early as 1890, New York University had es-tablished a School of Pedagogy which offeredcourses leading to a Master of Pedagogy and Doc-tor of Pedagogy degrees (28). The introduction ofchairs and coursework in pedagogy was met withstaunch critics in the university who consideredsuch to be insubstantial or inappropriate for uni-versity study. Abraham Flexner, who had led ef-forts to reform medical education, becameinvolved in efforts to install the study of pedagogyat the university level. In 1919 he was successfulin securing foundation funding for the founding ofa graduate school of education at Harvard. A de-cade later, however, Flexner had come to agreewith critics that the instruction being provided atschools of education lacked academic rigor andhad degenerated into a focus on simple practicalproblems which could be solved by “experience,reading, common sense, and a good generaleducation”(30). Flexner worried that the nature ofprograms in schools of education would dissuadethe intellectually competent from entering. De-spite the efforts of critics, teacher training and oth-


er related programs such as those for schooladministrators, counselors, curriculum special-ists, etc., continued to develop in universities, andmany normal schools continued on a path whichwas to make them into universities. The goal ofpeople like Mann, Carter, and Brooks for univer-sal teacher training was realized, but the benefit ofthe training in terms of the improvement ofschooling has been an issue of considerable debatefrom its inception to the present time.

So it was that the great reforms of the 19th cen-tury institutionalized schooling. Eventually all ofthe major aspects of the changes they sought wereachieved. State departments of education were es-tablished which regulated school programs by es-tablishing curriculum requirements and thelicensing of teachers. States required local dis-tricts to provide free elementary and secondaryschools and enacted compulsory attendance laws.Standards for the school buildings and their fur-nishings became established. Specialized trainingand licensing was required for those seeking towork as teachers. Districts developed standard-ized and age-graded curricula. Grouped instruc-tion replaced the method of recitation. Textbookswere provided to students. Centralized control atthe district level over building school sites was in-augurated. The concept of a public school systemwas new and strange to many a 150 years ago. Itcame to be taken for granted, even axiomatic. Yet,new beliefs about the nature of knowledge, whichwere a consequence of information technology(discussed above) and changes in understandingabout learning, which also are stimulated by de-velopments in information technology (discussedbelow), both challenge the structure which Mannand his colleagues put in place.

THE HUMAN AS A NATURAL LEARNERThere have been many answers to the question:What distinguishes human beings from otherforms of animate life? For Plato, the human wascharacterized as a featherless biped. For the Eng-lish essayist William Hazlitt, the human was theonly creature that laughs and weeps. In technicalterms, the human species is called homo sapiens,

man the wise. The capability of the human tothink, learn, and acquire knowledge was deter-mined to be the characteristic that distinguishedthe human being from other primates. Other ani-mals learn, as is evident from any trip to the circus,but no other form of life on earth exhibits cogni-tive capability comparable to the human being.Humanness resides in the central nervous system.

The ability to learn is not an acquired but a natu-ral capability for humans. The human being is alearner from the moment of birth until the momentof death unless such is precluded by some brainabnormality. In the first hours after birth, the in-fant learns to suckle at the breast or bottle. Veryquickly, the baby learns to discriminate his or hermother’s face from other faces. The child willlearn motor skills such as eating with table uten-sils, walking, and cognitive skills such as speak-ing, and social skills such as acceptable andnonacceptable ways of dealing with others as wellas distinctions in behavior appropriate for the dif-ferent people with whom he or she comes intocontact. The small child learns a language, and, inmany societies, may learn more than one lan-guage. Children acquire information and skillswhether or not they are prodded or deliberately as-sisted by parents or other adults. Anyone who hasspent any time watching a child cannot help butconclude that learning is a natural process.

In thinking about the human as a natural learnerit is important to keep two things in mind. First,“learning” is not an honorific but a descriptiveterm. To say that the human being is a learner isnot per se to pay a compliment. People learn badthings as well as good things. Children learn lan-guage, mathematics, how to play the piano, etc.,but they can also learn prejudice, pot smoking,how to hot wire and steal cars, etc. Learning thewrong things is not necessarily a less impressivetask when judged from the complexity of thelearning task. It is, for example, probably easier tolearn the occupation of a sales person in a fast foodrestaurant than to learn the occupation of a suc-cessful car thief. Second, to say that individualsare natural learners is not to imply that all demon-strate this capability to the same extent. People do


learn how to learn and can become more or less in-terested in learning and more or less effective inthe process.

In the past century there have been thousandsof studies of human learning. The vast preponder-ance of these studies has focused on learning inschools, and since a substantial proportion of thepopulation of school-aged children have prob-lems learning in school, it is understandable thatmuch of the literature has been directed to the na-ture of learning pathologies. Much less attentionhas been devoted to understanding natural learn-ing, or learning in those instances when the pro-cess is not structured and regulated by others butis woven into the life situation of the person. Inthese situations, learning occurs even thoughthere is not someone formally designated as teach-er directing the process.

In a small book written three decades ago calledHow Children Learn (12), John Holt discusseshow children learn when there is minimal or noadult intervention. Holt drew upon his experi-ences as a teacher in a fifth-grade classroom, buthe was less interested in understanding how chil-dren learn when the process is prescribed to themby their teachers than in observing how childrenlearn when they are not required to follow rules ofthe process established by the adults in their envi-ronment. Holt sums up his conception about thenatural learning style of young children in the fol-lowing passage from his book:

The child is curious. He wants to make senseout of things, find out how things work, gaincompetence and control over himself and his en-vironment, do what he can see other people do-ing. He is open, receptive and perceptive. Hedoes not shut himself off from the strange, con-fused, complicated world around him. He ob-serves it closely and sharply, tries to take it in.He is experimental. He does not merely observethe world around him, but tastes it, touches it,hefts it, bends it, breaks it. To find out how real-ity works, he works on it. He is bold. He is notafraid of making mistakes. And he is patient. Hecan tolerate an extraordinary amount of uncer-tainly, confusion, ignorance. He does not have tohave instant meaning in any new situation. He is

willing and able to wait for meaning to come tohim—even if it comes very slowly, which it usu-ally does (12).

One of the places where there is substantial andserious work currently underway to understandlearning as a natural process is the Institute forLearning Sciences at Northwestern University.The Institute was established in 1989 with spon-sorship provided by Anderson Consulting andAmeritech. The staff includes 21 faculty and re-searchers, 42 content specialists and program-mers, 50 graduate students, and 20 interns andvisiting staff. The Institute is dedicated to the taskof investigations of human learning as a naturalprocess and to make use of the knowledge ob-tained from these investigations to construct newmeans for improving learning in the workplaceand then in the schools.

Roger Schank, the Institute director, along withChip Cleary, one of his graduate students, au-thored a “hyper-book” which is available on theWorld Wide Web titled “Engines for Education.”This book presents their ideas about what is wrongwith education, and the role of educationaltechnology in reforming schools. The book’s per-spective on natural learning is similar to Holt’s.Like Holt they see the type of learning which oc-curs in schools as dysfunctional:

In public schools from first through twelfthgrade, much of the classroom routine is shapedby an emphasis on rote learning, a strict adher-ence to standardized textbooks and workbooks,and a curriculum that is often enforced with drilland practice. The methods and the curriculumare molded by the questions that appear on thestandardized achievement tests administered toevery child from the fourth grade on. Success nolonger means being able to do. Success comes tomean “academic success,” a matter of learningto function within the system of learning the“correct” answer, and of doing well at multiplechoice exams. Success also means, sadly, learn-ing not to ask difficult questions. When we askhow our children are doing in school, we usuallymean, “are they measuring up to the prevailingstandard?” rather than, “are they having a goodtime and feeling excited about learning?” (36).


Some caution must be exercised in overdraw-ing the distinction between school and non-schoollearning or in romanticizing the child as Holtdoes. There are classrooms where what is happen-ing for children looks much like a natural learningsituation, and it is much easier to know what iswrong about schools than it is to do what is right.Nevertheless, the conditions listed by Schank andCleary such as standardized curriculum, gradelevel expectations, as well as an increasingly ex-tensive amount of information which teachers areexpected to “cover” create an environment forlearning which, too frequently, does create a situa-tion where there is so much to teach that there isno time to learn.

It is not a coincidence that two recent books onlearning and technology, one by Donald Normanand the other by Seymour Papert, give consider-able attention to informal or natural learning. Forthose accustomed to “cruising the Internet,” “justin time learning,” hypermedia, and virtual com-munities, school or formal learning is far too con-fining. Interest in using technology ininstructional applications is not new. Sixty-eightyears ago S.L. Pressey published a paper called “Asimple apparatus which gives tests and scores andteaches” (31). In this paper Pressey described theplan for a machine which would be used as an “au-tomatic teacher.” It makes use of a typewriter ap-paratus to display questions and to providefeedback for correct or incorrect answers. Com-puter technology enables the production of moresophisticated versions of Pressey’s “automaticteachers.” These applications, while employingmore elaborate graphics and more advanced inter-active procedures, are fundamentally similar toPressey’s “automatic teacher” and many come outof a behaviorist, programmed learning, orienta-tion. Increases in storage, display, and processingpower of computers systems provides developerswith the capability to go beyond the design ofteaching machines and to create “learning ma-chines” or, to use Papert’s term, “knowledge ma-chines.” Such applications put in the hand of theuser a rich informational environment which is ac-cessible in a way which accommodates the inter-ests of the user. “Learning machines” are based on

an orientation which put the learner in control ofthe learning process and which is compatible withthe orientation of natural learning. Early examplesof these applications have appeared in the past fewyears in the form of various multimedia applica-tions.

In his book called Things That Make Us Smart(24), Donald A. Norman cautions that multimediatechnology can be used to provide applicationsthat epitomize the worst of what is wrong withschool learning or the best of what is possible withnatural learning. Norman distinguishes betweenschool learning and natural or informal learning(Table 1).

Norman cites the work of Mihaly Csikszentmi-halyi who writes about “flow experiences.” Flowexperiences occur when the person is totally en-gaged in the task at hand. Teachers may tell theirstudents to “Pay attention!,” and while such an ad-monition may cause the student to look attentive,there is no assurance that the student will be atten-tive. The flow experience can only happen whenthe goals and challenge of the task captures theattention of the individual. Many observers of lifein classrooms as well as teachers have expressedconcern about the lack of engagement of studentsin what they are being told to learn. The lack of en-gagement of students in their instruction evidentin many formal learning situations, kindergartenthrough college, is the antithesis of the “flow ex-periences.”

Seymour Papert’s book, the Children’s Ma-chine (29), is subtitled “Rethinking School in theAge of the Computer.” Papert contrasts two differ-ent orientations to education—“instructionism”and “constructionism.” Instructionism is the be-lief that the way to achieve better learning is toteach better. Constructionism, on the other hand,conceives of learning as a manipulative and build-ing process. It draws a direct connection betweenconstruction in the physical and mental domains,and sees learning to be an activity involving thecreation of mental structures by the learner whichorganize and synthesize the information and expe-rience which the individual encounters in theworld. Papert, similar to others who have dealtwith the topic of natural learning, emphasizes con-


crete or experiential learning. He calls for learningwhich is rooted in concrete experiences ratherthan that which exists as free-floating abstrac-tions. Perhaps one of the most radical of the as-sumptions of this perspective is that children canbe trusted to find the knowledge they need. If oneconceives of learning as an activity which is re-pugnant to the individual or if one believes thatthat there is a package of content which can andmust be installed into the minds of all students,then trust in the learner is unwarranted. If thesetwo conceptions are rejected, as they are by peoplelike Papert, Holt, and Schank, then trust in thelearner is quite appropriate. The task for those in-volved with the education of the young, as Papertpresents it, is to see to it that children are sup-ported materially, psychologically, and intellectu-ally in their efforts to learn. He contends, “Thekind of knowledge children need most is theknowledge that will help them get more knowl-edge”(29).

Holt, Schank, and Papert are only the most re-cent of a long line of persons to be aware of the dis-crepancies between school learning and learningas a natural human phenomena. Rousseau pub-lished Emile in 1762 and Pestolozzi opened aschool at Yverdon in 1805. Rousseau as a theoreti-cian and Pestolozzi as a practitioner gained a highdegree of recognition for their work. In both cases,they presented a conception of learning whichplaced emphasis on the interest and experience ofthe child and saw the learning of the child ratherthan the didactics of the teacher as the key to theprocess. Pestolozzi’s school was visited by theczar of Russia and by the kings of Spain, Holland,Prussia, Denmark, Wurtenberg, and Saxony.

John Dewey, who had the misfortune of havinghis work become popular mainly in the form of in-terpretations developed by his disciples who “wa-tered-down” and sanitized his ideas, saw this issueclearer than most and presented it as forthrightlyas anyone almost a century ago:

What is learned in school is at best only asmall part of education, a relatively superficialpart of education; and yet what is learned inschool makes artificial distinctions in societyand marks persons off from one another. Con-

sequently we exaggerate school learning com-pared to what is gained in the ordinary course ofliving. We are, however, to correct this exag-geration, not by despising school learning, butby looking into that extensive and more efficienttraining given by the ordinary course of eventsfor light upon the best ways of teaching withinschool walls. The first years of learning proceedrapidly and securely before children go toschool, because that learning is so closely re-lated with the motives that are furnished by theirown powers and the needs that are dictated bytheir own conditions. Rousseau was almost thefirst to see that learning is a matter of necessity;it is a part of the process of self-preservation andof growth. If we want, then, to find out howeducation takes place most successfully, let usgo to the experiences of children where learningis a necessity, and not to the practices of schoolswhere it is largely an adornment, a superfluity,and even an unwelcome imposition (7).

It is not remarkable that the contrast betweenlearning inside and outside of schools has beenobserved by a long line of educational practitio-ners and theoreticians since the differences areconspicuous to the reasonably careful observer.John Dewey’s disciples, most notably William H.Kilpatrick, attempted — and generally failed — tohave their cake and eat it too. They sought to im-plement the conceptions of Dewey about naturaland experiential learning while keeping intact theessential conventions of the system of schoolingwhich by the early part of this century was well ac-cepted. As information technology causes moreand more of the agenda for learning in our societyto transcend the domain of school, the orientationexpressed by Dewey a century ago or by peoplelike Papert and Schank in recent months becomesever more plausible as a basis for the design oflearning experiences. The constraints of formaleducation do not hamper the person who is de-signing learning opportunities for individuals inthe workplace or the home.

This brief summary of thinking on naturallearning leads to three key points. First, schoolsdo not own the child’s learning. Children are con-tinuously engaged in learning, and even thoughthe learning which occurs in their life outside of


school may be woven into their environment inways which may make it less conspicuous thanwhen they are sitting in a classroom with a teacherstanding before them presenting some concept orinformation, it is learning nonetheless. Throughthe span of civilization schooling has been onlyone of the ways by which humans have learnedwhat they needed to learn in order to function. Un-til quite recently (when put in the context of hu-man civilization) the extent of the schooledpopulation was quite limited.

Second, information technology has generatedinterest in natural learning and provided means tocreate new learning environments. While there isone cadre of developers and vendors of informa-tion technology who are intent upon developinguses of technology that fit into the existing condi-tions, traditions, and procedures of schools as theyare, there is another and more important cadre whoare attempting to make use of the technology topromote learning with less commitment to wherethe learning takes place or how well it conformsto expectations of the educational establishmentas to its validity. This orientation emphasizes themotivational, attitudinal aspect of learning. Thestudent may not be able to walk out of the boringclass, but he or she can certainly switch off the bor-ing multimedia program. Information technologyis particularly compatible with the nonlinearityand experiential texture of natural learning.

Third, many who are inadequate learners in theschool context seem to have no particular disabil-ity when they are learning in out-of-school con-texts. The ability to learn is not an esoteric humancharacteristic; it is quite normal. The high inci-dence of learning pathologies in schools hasmuch, much less to do with any organic or func-tion disability of learners than it does with whatstudents are told to learn and how they are told tolearn it. Designers of educational materials usinginformation technology can focus their attentionon the learning requirements of the users ratherthan on the needs and requirements of the orga-nizations within which the learning is supposed totake place.

THE FUTURE OF LEARNING ANDSCHOOLING IN AMERICAN SOCIETY:CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONSThe 19th century was a period of institution build-ing. It was a time of a great changes in the UnitedStates and a time when men and women believedin their power to create institutions to solve thepressing problems caused by the changes. Prisonswould eliminate crime. Insane asylums would putan end to mental illness. Reformatories wouldabolish juvenile delinquency. Schools financedby the state would stamp out ignorance, create aliterate populace, and mold upright citizens for theRepublic. The state-supported system of schoolswould be the “melting pot” where children fromdiverse backgrounds would meet and beinstructed in a manner which would ensure themaintenance of the “American way of life.”

The reformers were successful in realizing theirvision of schooling throughout the United States.They enacted the laws and policies which were re-quired to institutionalize public schools. As a re-sult of the work of the reformers, schools becamethe place—rather than a place—designated by so-ciety to transmit the cultural tradition to eachsuccessive generation. Public policy tolerated, butdid not encourage, the formation of alternate ap-proaches such as parochial or private schools. Thebasic features of the schools put in place by the19th-century reformers have endured, much to thechagrin of scores of later-day reformers. The dura-bility of the American system of schooling is afunction of an architecture which was particularlyharmonious with the ideological context of thetimes. But times have changed.

Information technology is the principal forcegenerating the great transformation of economic,political, and social life in recent years. Informa-tion has become central to every domain of humanlife and pervasive in every venue of human exis-tence. Human beings have always had the task ofobtaining, integrating, and using information as abasis for their thoughts and actions, but at no pointin human history has day-to-day life for the pre-


ponderance of the population put them in suchproximity with the informational resources of theculture. The economic and social value of beinginformed was never greater than it is now andthere is no reason to expect this to abate. The print-ing press did not turn everyone into an author, butit did substantially expand the number of such per-sons. Not even desktop publishing and networkswill turn everyone into information producers, butwe are already experiencing an explosion in thenumbers of persons who are producing and pub-lishing information, and more access to thesetools can only further expand the percentage of thepopulation who will produce as well as consumeinformation. Within this context, schooling andlearning take on a different character than has beenthe case in the past. The role of schooling in gener-al and the American public school in particular arebeing changed.

As discussed earlier, one of the consequencesof literacy was the establishment of schools as en-claves separated from the ongoing economic andsocial life of the community. Learning was “de-contextualized” and provided in terms of genericskills or as information to be stored in one’s mindfor later use when the individual was again en-gaged in activities outside of school. The funda-mental implication of an information technologyculture for learning and schooling is that learningbecomes “contextualized” and becomes part andparcel of daily life. This does not mean thatschools will disappear, but it does mean that theywill no longer have the dominant presence in soci-ety with regard to the transference of the culturefrom one generation to the next. Schools person-nel who do not understand this new world of learn-ing within which they live are likely to lead theirown organizations into oblivion or irrelevance.

More specifically with regard to the Americanpublic school, it is becoming ever more clear thatwe are experiencing a deinstitutionalization ofeducation in the sense that the public school is lessand less accepted as the essential and principalinstrumentality of educating American youth.While home schooling is not a mass movement,a considerable number of children are being edu-cated in their homes. Charter schools have been

established in a number of states. Television hasbecome the dominant source of learning about theworld. Millions of people are using the Internet asa means of accessing information and learningabout an almost infinite variety of topics. Thereseem to be few people, beyond the circle of publiceducators, who contest the idea of establishingschools apart from the control of local educationalauthorities.

The belief in the power of institutions is not asprevalent among the citizens of the later part of the20th century. Much of the rationale for the estab-lishment of the American public school symstemmed from the belief that a state-supportedsystem of schooling which educated the rich,poor, immigrants and established middle classwas the means to insure a common culture conge-nial to American political, social and economiclife. The extent to which the American publicschool achieved this mission is a topic of debatebetween those who believe it did serve to bring thediverse sub-groups of American society into acohesive entity, and those who believe it servedthe purposes of a white Anglo-Protestant middleclass. The optimism of people in the 19th centuryabout the power and value of institutions over-stated the case, but the pessimism of the currentgeneration about institutions probably is alsooverstated; nevertheless, the “melting pot,” “thecommon school,” and standardization are notthemes which resonate in contemporary America.Now “choice,” “diversity,” and “deregulation” arethe bywords.

The landscape of American education in thelater part of the 20th century is looking more andmore like it was in the colonial period through theearly days of the Republic. The variegation whichso characterized the approach to education ap-pears much more compatible with the nature of aninformation society than does the uniformity andlinearity of the conditions engineered by the 19th-century reformers. The parent who is concernedabout his or her child’s intellectual developmentis able to buy learning materials at the mall orthrough a network service. School personnel whoare committed to the welfare of the young peoplethey serve need to be comfortable working with


other organizations and purveyors of learning re-sources as partners rather than as the agent in-charge.

Most people realize that information technolo-gy needs to become part of the schools in someway. People expect to see computers in class-rooms and believe that students should spendsome of their time in schools working with them.School boards and parent groups have seen to itthat there are computers in schools. There are fewschools in the United States where one does notfind computers in classrooms, media centers, orcomputer labs, and it is not difficult to identifyteachers, here and there, who are making interest-ing, and in some cases, powerful instructional useof computers. Unfortunately, there are still an ap-preciable number of proponents of technology inthe schools who seem to focus more on gettingcomputers used in schools than they do on theeducational value of how the computers are used.Success ought not be measured by how manycomputers there are in schools, how often they areused, or how well they can be integrated into exist-ing curriculum content—much of which is irrele-vant or antiquated. There is nothing to be gainedby using information technology in the schools tobecome a more efficient anachronism. The dangerof this is real since many proponents of technolo-gy in the schools have a 21st-century conceptionof technology and a 19th-century conception ofknowledge and learning. The challenge is to useinformation technology to create in schools an en-vironment conducive to the development of indi-viduals who have the capability and theinclination to use the vast resources of informa-tion technology in their own continuing intel-lectual growth and skills expansion. Schoolsshould become places where it is normal to seechildren engaged in their own learning.

Bringing schooling into an informationtechnology culture is a much more difficult taskthan doing so for businesses or factories. Whatwas required of American industry to make thechanges necessary to survive in an informationage was for the leaders of corporate America tounderstand the nature of what needed to be doneand to work with others inside the organization to

implement the changes. This was not an easy task,but corporate leaders did not have to get the gener-al public to accept the fact that they would find astrikingly different environment when theywalked into an automobile manufacturing plant in1990 as contrasted with how the plant would havelooked in 1950. The general public does not havedetailed beliefs about what it means to be a goodfactory apart from the belief that a good factoryturns out a good product. The general public doeshave beliefs (or, to use the terminology of the ear-lier discussion, “rational myths”) pertaining toschools which are often strongly held. The beliefsabout the nature of schools and schooling held byparents, citizens, and policymakers whether artic-ulated or not set the parameters for what is per-ceived to be legitimate and appropriate activitiesin classrooms. The crux of the crisis for schools isthe discordance between existent beliefs aboutschools and schooling and the conceptions ofknowledge and learning engendered by develop-ments in information technology. A new rationalmyth needs to be created.

The history of audio-visual technology inschools has established a precedent that needs tobe overcome. Radio, telephones, audio tape, film-strip projectors, slides, television, etc., were allseen as means to be used by teachers to assist themin improving teaching. A popular shibboleth isthat the computer is a “tool.” While computer ap-plications are tools, the idea that computers arejust means to an end is a serious misunderstandingabout the extent to which information technologyrepresents essential changes in the creation andtransmission of the culture. Those who wish to de-termine the extent to which schools are using in-formation technology to change more than merelythe cosmetic aspects of schools need to begin byasking school personnel what they no longer do orwhat they have eliminated from the school be-cause of their use of information technology. Thenext question is: What is happening in this schoolwhich did not, or could not have happened, in thepast without the use of information technology?The least important question is: What was done inthe past and is now being done in a different way


because of the availability of information technol-ogy?

At the heart of the way schooling has been car-ried out for the past century and a half is a concep-tion of knowledge as an historic product. In thisformulation, knowledge is something whichcomes from the past work of scholars, scientists,and artists rather than being a work in progress.The dissemination of knowledge using print hasobscured the dynamic and even disorderly natureof the process by which it is created. The schoolcurriculum carves knowledge into subjects and ar-ranges the content of the subjects in a sequential,hierarchical order corresponding to the grade lev-els. Teachers in the first grade know what math,language skills, etc., they are supposed to teachand they understand that they are not to infringeon what will be taught in second grade. The sys-tematic processes of curriculum standardizationand age grading of instruction, as well as the es-tablishment of diploma requirements, is based onthe assumption that there is a collection of facts,concepts, and skills which need to be installed intothe minds of students and that this needs to bedone in a orderly manner which conforms to thelogic of the discipline.

Information technology shifts the conceptionof knowledge from something one has learned tosomething one uses. This is not a new way ofthinking about knowledge. The great philosopherand mathematician Alfred Whitehead referred toknowledge as only something one had to learn andwhich had no utility for the individual as “inertknowledge.” Whitehead wrote with great passionabout the need for learning to have connection tothe lives, interests, and contexts of the learner.“Ideas,” he wrote, “which are not utilized are posi-tively harmful. By utilizing an idea, I mean relat-ing it to that stream, compounded of senseperceptions, feelings, hopes, desires, and of men-tal activities adjusting thought to thought whichforms our life” (39). In Papert’s terms, this is aconstructionist point of view. The work of indi-viduals such as Whitehead and Dewey make itclear that a dynamic and utilitarian conception ofknowledge is not a recent understanding, but in-formation technology elevates the need to recog-

nize this reality because there is less benefitgained by remembering knowledge and morebenefit to those who can produce it, find it, or useit.

The 19th-century reformers were inventors.They saw themselves in the tradition of the othergreat inventors of their day who had constructedmachines to do wonderful things. The conceptionof schooling which they established involved theinvention of a social mechanism which they be-lieved would do what it was constructed to do withthe same assurance as the other inventions whichwere transforming American life. Their socialmechanism was a carefully crafted system whichwould produce an educated populace for society.System is no less a popular word in educationalparlance in 1994 than it was a 150 years ago, andthe term “systemic reform” is also fashionable.Yet, the analyses presented in earlier pages of thispaper suggest that it is time to move beyond thesystem metaphor. Certainly, from a social scienceperspective, the concept of the school as a socialsystem remains a useful analytic framework withwhich to define the key structural elements and theroles and relationships of the people who maintainthe system. Yet, system, in the context of schools,brings with it much “baggage” which is dysfunc-tional. It keeps us linked with the 19th-century re-formers’ belief that it was possible to create asystem of schools within which a proper arrange-ment of the elements of the system and an effec-tive pedagogy could ensure the accomplishmentof the expected instructional objectives. There isnothing to be served by continuing a quest for theMagic Fountain of Schooling, since there is noneto be found. The time has come to abandon theidea that it is possible to create a social mechanismwhich can act on the students who are in it in wayswhich ensure the desired outcome.

Efforts which approach the task of school re-form from the perspective of the design of envi-ronments offer a better footing for an attack on theproblem than those which set out to figure out howto substitute one system for another. More of thementality of the architect is needed to design envi-ronments which incline those who share theseplaces to create learning communities which take


full advantage of personal productivity and net-working resources. Ironically, the surest way toincrease the likelihood of desired outcomes maybe to concentrate on the design of environmentswhich make desired processes more likely. Think-ing about schools in this way requires less com-pulsiveness with regard to content objectives andmore focus on the factors which support learningactivities. Such environments would be placeswhich no longer fought the losing battle to enforcean unnatural form of learning. Touting thisorientation would be an act of futility (as it was forDewey and Whitehead) were it not for the fact thatthere are serious and increasing efforts to developlearning processes which understand the central-ity of the learners’ own interest and involvementin their learning and which respect the natural pro-cesses of learning. These efforts are centeredmainly outside of formal education and are led bythose who are interested in reaching the market forlearning in the home and the private sector. Thoseconcerned about learning for children in our soci-ety should also participate in the exploration ofnew forms of learning environments and re-sources.

In the 1950s and 1960s, in the era of the ascen-dancy of broadcast technology, there was fear ofan informational monolith as three powerful tele-vision networks emerged and as fewer cities hadmore than one newspaper. In the 1990s, in the eraof network technology, these fears no longer pre-vail. Developments in the use of informationtechnology over the next years provide a growingnumber of new educational alternatives. There isno doubt that there will be great progress in thenext decade in the development of learning re-sources which make use of the capabilities of thetechnology. Commercial networks such as Prodi-gy and America On-Line carry educational offer-ings for young children. They will be joined byother networks bringing learning opportunitieswherever there are children. The quality of the of-ferings will vary. Some, possibly many, will bepoor, but there are certain to be very appealing andeffective resources as well. With increasing capa-bility in networks and with the development ofsmall, inexpensive devices with multimedia capa-

bility, designers of learning resources will havethe resources they need to develop attractive andeffective learning environments. The federal gov-ernment, states, and the private sector need towork together to support the development of net-work resources for children and youth. Childrenof reasonably affluent parents will have access tonetwork resources, but the concerns, frequentlyaddressed, of a bifurcated society based on in-formation access are real. There is no one solutionto the problem of the gap between the rich and thepoor with regard to access to information, but pub-lic policy needs to be continuously attentive andresponsive to this problem.

It is impossible to conceive of how to bringschools into the information age without a verysubstantial expansion of equipment available tolearners. Computer labs or the availability of a fewmachines in classrooms are hardly adequate.Many schools have had to struggle to provide arelatively small amount of equipment, and theyhave been provided little funding for applicationssoftware, support, maintenance, training, or up-grades. Unless one expects very significant newmoney to come to school districts (an expectationwhich few hold), the money needed to make in-formation technology a dominant element in thelives of children in classrooms is not availablegiven existing conditions in school districts. Spe-cial millage or bonding initiatives to purchasehardware represents a way for schools to take asignificant step forward, but special funding doesnot address the issue of maintaining informationtechnology as a major and continuing element inthe operation of the schools.

The option of having a sufficient deployment ofinformation technology so that it becomes main-stream in schools while maintaining everythingelse schools currently fund is unrealistic. Thefunding for substantial increases in technology onan ongoing basis can only be accomplished bychanging the way the existing funds are beingspent in a substantial way. This may also includelabor costs. The painful reality faced by other or-ganizations which have moved to make informa-tion technology a major aspect of how theyfunction is that the technology is purchased with


the money recovered from reduced labor costs.Any changes in the way in which school districtsspend their money will be sharply contested byteacher unions and, in many cases, by parents andother residents of the district. If public schools donot find ways to move in this direction they willfind themselves in competition with other educa-tional entities such as private schools, charterschools, educational networks, and the other neworganizations which provide technology-basededucational services for children. The restructur-ing of the public schools and especially the re-structuring which entails the effective use ofinformation technology can only occur if schoolleaders have the courage and political skill to ac-complish the task of fiscal restructuring.

The availability of applications software withregard to learning opportunities for children andyoung people is a mixed situation. There are twokinds of applications which children and youthneed to encounter. One type is the various produc-tivity and information utility applications such asword processing, quantitative modeling, biblio-graphic and informational data bases. Of course,the quality of these applications continues to im-prove and children and young people need to haveaccess to them as a conventional element in theireducation. The only problem which needs to besolved with regard to this type of application isseeing to it that children and youth have access tothe same tools as those being used in the world be-yond the schools and not antiquated applications.

The other type of applications pertains to thoseprograms which are devised as learning resourcesfor children and youth. Most of the programswhich are marketed as learning resources for chil-dren and youth are of poor quality, even whenjudged on their own terms as quite conventionaldrill-and-practice or tutorial programs. Even moreproblematic is the situation with regard to innova-tive materials which begin to exploit the designopportunities provided by equipment of increas-ing capability. Private as well as public funds needto be provided to support the development of ap-plications which furnish concrete and usable ver-

sions of the type of rich learning environmentsdiscussed earlier.

The creation of colleges of education was aconsequence of the school reform movement ofthe last century. The perceived value of collegesof education was contentious at the point teachertraining entered the university and has remainedso to the present. The radical changes which in-formation technology is generating in Americaneducation creates a need and opportunity for col-leges of education. Within colleges of educationthrough-out the United States there are individualfaculty members who are involved in efforts tomake new technology improve the lives of chil-dren and youth. Unfortunately, there are fewerexamples of colleges of education which havegrasped the significance of information technolo-gy for how they are to function and for the viabil-ity of their future.

There are two elements to the formation of a fu-ture for colleges of education. The first is that col-leges of education need to be involved in thedevelopment and use of information technologyas it improves the educational opportunities forchildren in the broad array of venues wherein thiswill occur. For the most part, colleges of educationhave been “colleges of schooling.” The econom-ics and ideology of the past have forged a tightconnection between them and schooling, whichwas usually public schooling. The value of col-leges of education will be even more suspect ifthey attempt to hold to an orientation to educationwhich is less and less an accurate depiction of real-ity. A misplaced sense of loyalty to formal educa-tion will not even serve the needs of schools sinceschools are faced with the need to function withina new educational world. Colleges of educationneed to be seen as places where knowledge andskills reside to assist schools in making effectiveuse of information technology. If colleges ofeducation are “on the sideline” on the unfolding ofinformational technology in teaching and learn-ing, then the future of colleges of education maybe increasingly tenuous.


The second element pertains to the long-stand-ing complaint about the disconnection betweenthe training which occurs in colleges of educationand the realities of life and learning in the placeswhere teachers and other educational personnelwork. Information technology provides a basis fora reconstruction of teacher education. There areobvious but not fully realized implications of theuse of networking as a means of establishing link-age between colleges of education and schoolsand other places where education occurs. Also,colleges of education which produce credible anduseful research or development products canmake use of information linkages to enable theirproducts to be used.

A new era of the human condition has begun.This transformation will bring with it problemsand opportunities. No area of human existencewill be more affected than the processes of educa-tion. The question of how well the resources of in-formation technology will be used to improve thelives of our children is as yet unanswered. The re-sponsibility to begin the construction of theanswer to this question falls upon this generation.

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Appendix BLearning and

Teaching in 2004:The BIG DIG

hen we consider the confluence of trends and pace ofchange in the economy, society, and technology, it isrelatively easy to envision systems of schooling, learn-ing, and teaching a decade hence that are very different

from those of the past 100 years. It is not clear, however, whetherall current educational reform movements are consonant withsuch a vision.

Our vision of teaching and learning 10 years hence is informedby current and past experiences of technology-using innovatorswithin education, combined with trends outside of the education-al system that drive the requirements and opportunities for learn-ing and teaching. One set of external drivers includes global andnational trends in economy and demographics (31,32,79). An-other set of external drivers includes the rapidly changing in-formation technologies and information infrastructure (11).These changes in the larger society are imposing requirements forchange in the skills, knowledge, and learning capabilities of citi-zens (17, 78, 83). Consonant with the requirements is the trendwithin education toward constructivist approaches to learningand teaching (65, 80).

Nearly every element of our future vision exists today for somepeople at some times and in some places. What makes our visiondifferent is the pervasive extent of participation and the seamlessinteraction of the human, institutional, and technological compo-nents. In reality, the shape this convergence of trends takes will bethe result of political leadership and policy decisions over thiscoming decade.

A general theme of our vision is that learning, teaching, andschooling all will have a closer relationship and interaction withpeople, places and knowledge outside of schools than has been | 57

by

Beverly Hunter andBruce Goldberg

Bolt Beranek and Newman


typical in the past 100 years or so (103). The“learners” and the “teachers” are people of allages, in all walks of life (17, 40). In this vision, ev-ery person considers himself both a learner and ateacher. Some people will play a teaching roleonly part of the time, while others will beemployed as professional teachers.

Numerous reports from stakeholders as variedas mathematics teachers and industrial leadershave directed our attention to various facets of thisgeneral theme. Most recently, for example, theU.S. Congress, in the School to Work Opportuni-ties Act of 1994, addressed many of the cultural,economic, technological and cognitive factors inits findings:

� three-fourths of high school students in the U.S.enter the workforce without baccalaureate de-grees, and many do not possess the academicand entry-level occupational skills necessary tosucceed in the changing U.S. workplace;

� a substantial number of youths in the U.S., stu-dents of diverse racial, ethnic, and culturalbackgrounds, students with disabilities and es-pecially disadvantaged students, do not com-plete high school;

� the workplace in the U.S. is changing in re-sponse to heightened international competitionand new technologies, and such forces, whichare ultimately beneficial to the nation, areshrinking the demand for and undermining theearning power of unskilled labor;

� the U.S. lacks a comprehensive and coherentsystem to help its youths acquire the knowl-edge, skills, abilities, and information aboutand access to the labor market necessary tomake an effective transition from school to ca-reer-oriented work or to further education andtraining;

� students in the U.S. can achieve high academicand occupational standards, and may learn bet-ter and retain more when the students learn incontext, rather than in the abstract; and

� the work-based learning approach, which ismodeled after the time-honored apprenticeshipconcept, integrates theoretical instruction with

structured on-the-job training. This approach,combined with school-based learning, can bevery effective in engaging student interest, en-hancing skill acquisition, developing positivework attitudes, and preparing youths for high-skill, high-wage careers.

In an increasingly globalized environment,both public and private enterprise must be agile todeal with rapid changes in markets, customer andclient, and community requirements. Innovationrequires rapid adaptability. Agility must beachieved by a combination of technological andorganizational changes. One important change isthe delegation of substantial autonomy to reconfi-gurable, relatively autonomous teams of workers(46). Work reorganization and new technologiespropel employees and citizens to take more re-sponsibility, cooperate more with each other, un-derstand their roles in the production system, andact on that knowledge (17, 40, 79). Rather than thepredetermined curriculum sequence of the indus-trial era, people need to learn new subjects andskills at the time they are needed on the job or incivic life.

VIGNETTE: “THE BIG DIG”We illustrate key elements of our vision througha vignette that takes place in the year 2004 in met-ropolitan Boston. The Big Dig is a real project.Boston’s Big Dig—or Central Artery Tunnel(CAT) project, as it is officially known—is thelargest single civil construction project ever un-dertaken in the United States. A 10-year, $7.7-bil-lion effort, it will include depression of the CentralArtery an elevated highway through the heart ofBoston construction of a new system of off and onramps, and the construction of a third tunnel underBoston Harbor. Today, in 1994, the project isscheduled for completion by the year 2004.

The “Big Dig” educational vignette presumesthat in the mid-1990s, educators began to build asignificant body of exemplary learning resourcesand activities based upon the Central Artery Tun-nel project. Through existing and emergingeducational reforms, telecommunications net-

Appendix B Learning and Teaching in 2004: the BIG DIG | 59

works, and the evolving National Information In-frastructure (NII), an educational collaborative ofteachers and learners of all ages was built.

❚ Vignette PrologueIt’s a beautiful spring morning in April 2004. Tenyears ago, Massachusetts began its evolutionaryeffort to restructure the entire way it organized, de-livered, and financed education. It’s also a specialday in Mercedes Banzon’s life.

Crossing the street to the Boston Museum ofScience, Mercedes reflects on some of the changesshe’s seen and undergone over the past 10 years.She smiles and shakes her head. Ten years ago,she was “just a teacher”—a self-disparagingphrase she often replied with when asked what shedid for a living. Nowadays, in 2004, almost everyjob involves at least some teaching and a lot oflearning. Every industry and public organizationnow routinely employs teachers. Mercedes recallsone of the most revolutionary aspects of Massa-chusetts’ belief statements of the Goals for theNext Century document: “In the world of the year2000, there will no longer be possible or desirablethe radical separation of civic life, work and con-tinuing education. Education must cease to be aninstitution, and become instead, a way of life.”

Mercedes is now proud to proclaim that she isan “educator.” The transformation telescoped inher mind. Ten years ago, she volunteered on aGoals 2000 school/community committee in Dor-chester. Today is her first day as Chief EducationOfficer for the Boston Metropolitan EducationRegion (BMER). Her visit to the Boston ScienceMuseum will help remind her how all the changesin education over the past ten years have takenroot in the lives of students, teachers, parent andcommunity members—in short, everyone.

Mercedes remembers that 10 years ago, teach-ers and students spent all their time in “schoolbuildings,” sealed away from the vital life oflearning and information their communities of-fered. On the other hand, the majority of adultswere not a part of the formal educational systemand thus had little opportunity to participate in

organized learning activities. Advances in com-munications technology had helped break downsome of the walls. That was what first got Mer-cedes going. As technology coordinator in herschool, she worked on a project initiated by the lo-cal phone company to start the first school voice-mail system in the Boston area. The systemenabled parents to more easily communicate withtheir children’s teachers. The next step was a log-ical one- connecting this phone system with com-puter dial-up access. At that point, parents coulduse their computers to access local social serviceagencies, discover employment possibilities, andenhance their own education. In the late 1990s,businesses in Massachusetts had begun donatingand loaning computers to workers and parents aspart of a major “ lifelong learning” initiative thatevolved out of a convergence of federal and stateprograms. These programs included: Goals 2000,statue and urban systemic initiatives, enterprisezones, and a bipartisan Massachusetts industrialcompetitiveness effort to make the state more at-tractive to business and industry.

The creation of the Boston MetropolitanEducation Region (BMER) was an institutionaloutgrowth of these initiatives. Many school sys-tem jurisdictions found common ground with the“lifelong learning” initiative proposed by indus-try-education partnerships and coalitions in thearea. The BMER was funded by a combination ofthese federal, state, industry, and local funds. It ishighly dependent upon the CWEIS (CommunityWide Education and Information Services)formed in 1994 to take advantage of computer net-working in the region.

Mercedes recalls that as its first pilot project,BMER issued a Request for Proposal to students,teachers and community members inviting them todesign a nine-week project that would engage allthe participants in collaborative projects withoutregard to the political boundaries of their schooldistricts. Mercedes organized a group of teachers,parents, community center leaders and profes-sionals from health and human services. Thisgroup developed a winning proposal and con-ducted a successful community-wide educational


project called “Using Your Brain,” that took ad-vantage of many resources across the area includ-ing television, radio, computer networks, andnewspapers. This was one of several projects thatachieved city-wide citizen awareness of theeducational value of many different institutionsand groups.

❚ The Tunnel TeamMercedes walks through the front door of the Bos-ton Science Museum and sees the brightly coloredsign “To the Dig” directing her down the hallwayon the left.

Fourteen-year-old Azikwe Jackson-Hu hasalso arrived early at the Boston Museum of Sci-ence this Monday morning. There’s a special all-day work session with his Tunnel Team. By 9 a.m.about 30 people have arrived.

The session facilitator is Elaine Corzini, ateacher from the Mather school in Boston. Sheintroduces the goals for today’s work—preparingfor their Tunnel Team exhibition at Big Dig Weekto be held next month. Several thousand visitorsare expected at this Boston-wide event. It will alsobe viewed by many more people through televi-sion and computer networks.

To set a high standard and expectations for theTunnel Team’s exhibit, Elaine shows a brief videoof last year’s exhibition. In it, one team had devel-oped a mathematically interesting analysis ofhourly carbon monoxide and temperature read-ings at several points in the tunnel, over an eight-year period. The large poster display of theirinsightful charts and graphs had resulted in exten-sive publicity and, eventually, in improvementsbeing made in the tunnel ventilation systems.

Elaine reminds the group that this exhibition isan important opportunity to get feedback andevaluation for their work on the tunnel project.They need to make careful plans to take advantageof this opportunity to assess their progress inlearning.

Although this project team has been workingtogether for many weeks, there are as usual some

newcomers at this session. They begin withintroductions:

� 20 children, ranging in age from about 10 to 16,who attend three different schools in Boston,Charleston, and Somerville;

� an undergraduate teacher-in-preparation from alocal college;

� a graduate student in engineering from MIT;� an engineer from Bechtel, the Big Dig contrac-

tor, and parent of one of the children;� another teacher from Elaine’s school;� a member of the exhibit staff of the Boston Sci-

ence Museum;� a staff member from the Metro Boston Transit

Authority (MBTA);� a faculty member and student from Roxbury

Community College;� a member of the Urban District Assessment

Consortium, who specializes in student assess-ment; and

� also present via video conference are teachersand students from four schools in the Bostonarea, and Azikwe’s mother who is on travel ather company’s office in another city.

Because Azikwe’s mother has to leave themeeting by 10 a.m., it is agreed that they will be-gin with the demonstration. Azikwe is impatientlywaiting to get started. His mother says,

“Azikwe and I would like to show you someparts of the tunnel simulation and control systemthat I have been working with as an engineer forthe CivTech company. We are subcontractors toBechtel for tunnel monitoring and maintenance.By the way, Calvin is our contract monitor—Hi,Calvin. Calvin might explain to you later how wemanaged, after three years of fighting our bureau-cracies, to get permission to make this tunnelsimulation software publicly available on the net-work.”

While his mother is talking, Azikwe has beenoperating the computer, getting the tunnel simula-tion program up on the large screen in the front ofthe room next to the video conference screen. The


teachers and students at the remote locations usea shared workspace tool on their computers sothey can see the same computer screen thatAzikwe is demonstrating.

She continues, “Azikwe, if you will put themain screen up there, I’ll explain the four maincomponents of this system. Then we’ll take a lookat the structural design part that I use in my work.”

About 20 minutes into the demonstration, oneof the children asks, “Mrs. Hu, can I ask you aquestion? How come your tunnel looks really dif-ferent from our tunnel simulation? Isn’t this thesame tunnel? The only thing that looks the sameto me is that the tunnel is made of 300-foot-longtubes.”

Azikwe’s mother replies, “Meera, you ask anexcellent question. Azikwe has shown me yourteam’s tunnel simulation many times, and I knowthat these programs do look very different fromeach other. This is because we have different pur-poses, and are using different software. Your teamhas been building your tunnel simulation to helpyou learn and understand and share your under-standing of the design principles, and the mathe-matics and physics needed to understand thedesign. My program, on the other hand, is used byprofessional engineers responsible for monitoringand maintenance. So we engineers need differentinformation than you do. Azikwe, would youshow the cross-section view again? Notice, for ex-ample, that we have much more detail about theelectrical system in this cross-section than youwould need in your simulation.”

Several children, and adults, are now wavingtheir hands for attention. Andy preempts the oth-ers. “Mrs. Hu, I have an idea for our exhibition.We could have two screens side by side where weshow the differences between yours and our simu-lation.”

Mrs. Hu starts to reply but Jewelle interrupts,“But we can’t do that! Her program is too compli-cated! I don’t even know what any of those iconsmean up there.” She runs over to the screen andpoints to the icon menu across the bottom.

The community college professor speaks up, “Ihave some students in my classes who are techni-cians with the transit authority. They could really

sink their teeth into this program. Is it okay for meto introduce it to them?”

Mrs. Hu says, “I think that that’ll be okay...I’msorry, I have to leave for another meeting rightnow. I’m sure Azikwe will tell me tonight whatyou decided. If you do decide to work on this,there is a new engineer here on our staff who is justlearning this system. He might volunteer to helpyou learn along with him. Bye, all. See you at theairport at six tonight, Azikwe.”

The session suddenly becomes chaotic, ex-ploding with a dozen simultaneous conversations.The teachers and students on the video screen lookconfused, since they can’t understand what any-one is saying. Mrs. Corzini tries to get more disci-pline into this creative firestorm.

“Let’s capture all these ideas in the collabora-tive notebook, right now,” she says. “Make groupsof four or five people and enter your ideas into thenotebook file Tunnel Session Nine.”

About eight small groups form spontaneously,entering their ideas into their notebook computersat the work tables. One of the students gets the col-laborative software up on the large screen so ev-eryone can see the emerging comments. Mercedesnotices one small group that includes only youn-ger children and asks Lew Girshalt from theMBTA and Ana Julia, a teenager from Somerville,to join them.

The teachers and students at the remote sitesjoin in from their own computers, so everyone canshare in the swirl of ideas, exclamations, argu-ments, sketches.

Here is a sampling of the comments the groupsare entering into the collaborative notebook:

“What about our traffic data? We wanted tomake a game where people have to correlate trafficstatistics with days and times.”

“Mrs. Hu’s program is too complicated for theyounger kids.

“We could connect her tunnel program to ourGIS maps of the neighborhood.”

“I could help the students ferret out assump-tions in Mrs. Hu’s model about the structuralproperties of the tubes and compare it to the onethey’ve been using.”


“We were going to videotape the inside of thetunnel and show how to image process a compari-son with our simulation.”

“We don’t have enough time to learn her pro-gram before the exhibition. And besides,Azikwe’s just showing off.”

“Does anyone realize that that system cost thetaxpayers two million dollars to develop?”

“That program will not demo well at a publicexhibit. The screens are too busy and complicated,the user interface is arcane, we’d need a full-timeengineer to handle the booth, who could explainit?”

“We wanted to show the hypermedia we made,where we took that old Big Dig video from 1994and showed how things really are now, and all themistakes they made back then.”

“We built a model of traffic congestion, andcompared the behavior of our simulated trafficjams to real traffic jams in the tunnel. We want tomake an exhibit of our program.”

Mercedes observes with pride the skills, knowl-edge, creativity and insight reflected in thesespontaneous comments. She walks from group togroup, observing the contributions being made bydifferent members of the team. She reflects uponthose early attempts at project work 10 years ago.So many of the prerequisite skills-both so-called“basic” as well as metacognitive skills—weresimply not present back then, in either teachers orstudents, so project work was painfully slow andoften unproductive. Attention to “basic” skillscame first. Clear and concise formulations ofwhat students should know and be able to do-stan-dards—were combined with strong strategies forimplementing these ideas within school settings.This prompted more complex assessments and en-abled teachers to tie instruction to the diverseneeds of their students. Now, even the youngestmember of this team has had several years of ex-perience and training in teamwork, investigation,observation, analysis, synthesis, and communica-tion. Even the oldest adult had by now severalyears’ experience in using many computer-basedtools including those they used for writing, multi-media creation, data storage and analysis, model-

ing, communication and collaboration, and manyspecialized tools for their particular work andpleasure. In 1996, the BMER had recommended acommon core suite of tools, and had taken steps tomake the software available at very low costacross the area, in all community centers, schools,libraries, homes, government offices. This actionwas the landmark event that enabled the rapid de-velopment of fluency in computer use and in-formation literacy among most people.

After lunch, Elaine facilitates as the group dis-cusses the goals for the exhibit. On the largescreen she points one by one to each of the com-ments made earlier in the collaborative notebook.As the group discusses the merits of each of thoseideas, they record these additional considerations.

As Mercedes sits back and watches Elaine’sskillful facilitation and recording of the group’sdiscussion, she recalls the BMER meeting fouryears before when the very contentious issue ofscheduling had come to a head in the BMER. Ithad been extremely frustrating to try to conductcity-wide learning activities that were constantlycompeting with the rigid class schedules of theseparate schools. The separate schools were alsoat a point of crisis about scheduling because theyalso were attempting to conduct interdisciplinaryproject-based learning activities that could notfunction in the 45-minute class periods. It was atthat meeting, while they were recording their dis-cussion in the BMER collaboratory notebook,that they realized the technology they were usingcould free them from some of the time constraintsof their school traditions. Nearly everyone—teachers, students, administrators, many par-ents—had become fluent in using projectdatabases, collaboratory notebook, videoconfer-encing, project management tools, people direc-tories. Thus it was now thinkable for people toparticipate in project teams without having to bephysically present at all face-to-face meetings. Ifeveryone would take responsibility to ensure thatall project discussions, decisions, materials andproducts were carefully documented, they couldfree themselves from some of the tyranny of sched-


ules. So, for example, at today’s Tunnel Teamworkshop only 40 of the 100 members of the teamare physically present, another 40 are present viavideo conference, and the others would have touse the electronic recording to participate vicari-ously at a time convenient to them. Hence,Elaine’s careful attention to the recording of alldiscussion here at the workshop.

The group decides on four main themes fortheir exhibition, then divide into four smallergroups to hammer out a plan of work for each ofthe parts. Mercedes and the other teachers eachwork with one of the groups. Mercedes’ main con-cern is that each member of the team make a con-tribution to the exhibition, and that the evaluationplan addresses at least one of the learning goals ofeach team member. She helps the group addressthese issues systematically by referring to theelectronic records of their learning developmentplans and the BMER assessment guides.

The experts from MIT, Bechtel, the Transit Au-thority, and the Science Museum rotate among thegroups, serving in their accustomed consultingroles. They are all volunteering their time and ex-pertise for different reasons. The MIT engineer isfocusing her graduate studies on new methods ofdesigning supports for underground structures.She is gaining valuable background knowledgethrough her work with various Big Dig education-al teams. The Bechtel engineer, rather than optingfor early retirement, has accepted as one of hisnew job responsibilities the management of theBig Dig education programs. He has been invalu-able in helping the team locate data, videos, soft-ware, and other historical records of the CATproject’s 10-year history. As lead contractor forthe CAT, Bechtel also oversees a major portion ofthe designated educational fund. The Transit Au-thority technician is working on the Tunnel Teamas part of his continuing education program, andis receiving community college credit for thisproject. All government employees are expectedto spend 5 percent of their time in educational acti-vities. While his own learning objectives are in thearea of data analysis techniques, he has also beena lively mentor for the children, fascinating them

with stories of his work life underground in thetunnel. The Science Museum exhibit designer isworking with the tunnel team as part of her officialwork duties, as the museum is an educational con-tractor to the CAT project and is the main organiz-er of the Big Dig Week.

The groups put their draft plans and sketches ofthe exhibit booth in their Tunnel Team workspaceon the network, so that everyone on the team—parents, teachers, students, and other communitymembers—can access and work on the plan.

One of the teachers, the student assessmentspecialist, and one of the children form a group toreview and formalize the evaluation plans. Theybegin by locating the assessment archives fromlast years’ Tunnel Team exhibitions. They seethere were some complaints from parents last yearthat the evaluators had too narrow a focus andmissed some important evidence of the team’s cre-ativity and communication skills. They decide toavoid that problem by having two levels of evalu-ation of the exhibition. They call the two levels“Quick” and “Deep.” The “Quick” evaluationswill be made by interviewing visitors to the ex-hibition, who would have unpredictable kinds ofbackgrounds, skills, and interests but who wouldrepresent a wide range of viewpoints. The “Deep”evaluations will be made by a panel of 10 peoplechosen from the CWEIS school communities’ da-tabase of teachers and expert reviewers.

In creating the evaluation plan, the groupmakes links in the database to the individual Tun-nel Team students’ personal development plans,the Tunnel Team’s educational goals, and theemerging exhibit component groups’ plans. Fromthese sources, they create packets of backgroundinformation and draft assessment assignments tai-lored for each of the 10 panelists. Each panelist isasked to evaluate particular dimensions of the ex-hibition, depending on their specialty areas—learning, basic competence, communications andcollaboration, personal management, informationmanagement, mathematics, engineering, inquirymethods, etc. They compose electronic mail mes-sages to the panelists, inviting them to participate,providing pointers to their packets, and requesting


a videoconference three days hence to discuss theplan. The student member of the evaluation teamtakes on the responsibility to coordinate with thepanelists and keep all team members informed ofschedules and progress.

Just as they are about to finish their work for theday, a group of students and a teacher from Somer-ville High School appears on the large videoscreen. “Can we talk about this assessment plan?”they ask.

“Yes!”The Somerville teacher explains, “We have

been reading your draft evaluation plan for the ex-hibition, and the students have a concern about it.They’ve spent a lot of time the past few weekslearning how to develop this tunnel simulation,learning how to use the simulation authoringtools, and they fear your assessment instructionsto the panelists do not reflect this.”

The assessment specialist replies, “I’m not sureI understand you...aren’t the students using thesame simulation program that was used by lastyear’s Tunnel Team?”

“No, that’s our point. When we started thisyear’s Tunnel Team, some of the students had al-ready learned how to use SimMaker, and theywanted to create their own simulation. Everyoneagreed, but this made the project much more chal-lenging than last year’s. Some people have beendeveloping some very important skills in model-ing and in mathematics that don’t seem to be re-flected in this evaluation plan.”

“Would you then please revise the assessmentassignments, and be sure to include a note that youhave provided this input to the plan?”

”Sure. The kids and I will work on this tomor-row morning. It will be a very appropriate activityfor our modeling seminar, and more interestingthan the exercises we scheduled to do anyhow.When the students reflect on how much they havelearned, I think they’ll be surprised.”

By 4:30, nearly everyone has left after a pro-ductive and exhausting day. Mercedes and Elainestay a few minutes to exchange some of their ob-servations and concerns.

“Today’s session was productive, but I wishwe’d been able to hold it three weeks ago as wehad originally planned,” Elaine says. “ I just don’tsee how we are going to get everything done intime for Big Dig Week.”

“I know,” Mercedes agrees. “Until today’smeeting, I didn’t realize just how much incrediblyrich activity had been taking place in the TunnelTeam this year. These students have enough mate-rial for many high-quality exhibitions. I’ve beenhearing reports of similar progress from otherBMER project groups, like the Harbor Ecologyteam and the CAT Economics group.”

“I’d like to hear more about those groups.”“Next week, WBGH airs on national PBS a

story about the work of the children, teachers andparents on the ecology of the harbor around thetunnel. A substantial amount of the material usedin this television show is based on data, videos,and writings of the students themselves. As fol-low-up to the PBS story, students in Boston willtake people around the world on a vicarious fieldtrip through their simulated tunnel and neighbor-hood, using video archives from the past sixyears.”

“What was that you were saying about the CATEconomics group?”

“You might remember that for several years, ina social studies course called “Building Consen-sus,” students from several Boston communitieshave been interviewing their parents and localbusiness people to learn first-hand how the projecthas affected their businesses and how they partici-pated in the Big Dig decisionmaking processesback in the mid-1990s. Today, students are post-ing on the CWEIS Big Dig forum the results oftheir interviews with Haymarket pushcart ven-dors. Their advisor helps them locate a similar setof interviews with Haymarket business peopleconducted by Globe reporters in 1995, and asksthe students to identify, describe and explain dif-ferences between their methods and findings andthat earlier study.

“Some high school seniors who worked a sur-vey of Haymarket vendors back when they were


freshmen are writing their senior project on theeconomics of the Big Dig. Because they have beenworking with Big Dig concepts and data for sever-al years, and because they have personal knowl-edge of many aspects of this project in whichthey’ve grown up, it’s possible for them to tacklethis very complex problem. They’ve identified alldirect sources of funding of the Big Dig construc-tion itself—federal, state, and local governmentsand private funds—over the past 15 years, andalso identified several alternative economic mod-els to use in describing effects on jobs, businesses,industry, individuals and communities. Theirwork will be evaluated by a team composed ofteachers, economists, academic standards special-ists, and students, as part of their qualifications forgraduation.”

“Well, they do have a couple of Harvard andMIT students working on it with them. In fact, Iwas talking with a world-renown economics pro-fessor at Harvard who says this is a precedent-set-ting analysis of such a large public works project’seconomics.”

“Like the student journalists who stirred up allthe controversy last week with their investigationof some politically questionable financial recordsof the Big Dig?” Elaine grins.

“Adolescents have been stirring up trouble foryears about the Big Dig. Students across the cityhave been publishing a weekly newsletter, BigDigger, on the CWEIS. The students’ material hascontributed to many stories in the Boston Globeand local community newspapers.”

The Science Museum staffer reappears, listen-ing to their stories and adding one of his favorites:

“A history class has been studying nativeAmerican artifacts collected from the Harbor Is-lands prior to the building of the Harbor Tunnel.They digitized many of the artifacts such as the3,000-year-old spearhead found at Spectacle Is-land, and have put these on the CWEIS Web withthe guidance of a graduate student archaeologistat a local university. They’ve been correspondingon-line with several native American historiansand students to discuss the dating and interpreta-tion of these artifacts.”

“Did you ever imagine the day would comewhen we would be complaining because our stu-dents are doing so well?” Elaine smiled as she saidit. “But it’s true. We’re seeing an explosion in pro-ductivity. The ratio of adults to children in theprojects keeps growing, now that all the govern-ment agencies, social services, and businesseshave begun actively encouraging or requiringtheir clients and employees to show continuingeducation progress, and the BMER started award-ing formal credit for participating in its projects.Now that so many more adults are involved inchildren’s learning, it is not just a few privilegedstudents who get to engage in complex, excitingprojects. Nearly every child in the Boston area isspending at least two hours a day in these chal-lenging activities. Many children spend as muchas six or seven hours a day because they work fromtheir neighborhoods and homes as well as school.Most rewarding to me is to see the teenagers whonow get recognition for their energy, creativityand focus, instead of being thought of as trouble-makers.”

“Well, there was that gang that built a video-game in which the winner blows up the tunnel,”Mercedes sighs, “but two of them got hired awayby a videogame company so I guess they’re out ofour hair for awhile.”

❚ A Few Weeks Later . . .The Tunnel Team teachers, in a videoconference,discuss the evaluation results from the Big Digexhibition. They are concerned about someweaknesses in their students’ mathematicalunderstanding as reflected in their project work.

One member of the teaching team suggeststhese students need more work with combinatorialproperties of patterns and representations of three-dimensional solids.

Another teacher searches the Big Dig learners’task bank. The Big Dig educational task bank hasbeen accumulating over the past nine years, withcontributions from teachers, students, parents,professionals in the community, and various edu-cators. The task bank began in 1995 with a grant


to the Metropolitan Boston Community-WideEducation and Information Services (CWEIS) fora multi-channel, multimedia educational project.This project launched the educational Big Dig col-laborative that has been growing since that time.

She locates three activities that might be help-ful. The others look at the activity descriptions ontheir own computer screens. These are geometrytutorials developed back in the 1980s and theydon’t take advantage of the dynamic three-dimen-sional solid modeling tools the students are al-ready accustomed to using. The teachers are notentirely happy with these tutorials, although theyagree they are worth trying.

One teacher tunes her network agent to “geom-etry education,” and finds the Geometry Forum atSwarthmore. Live at the Forum at the moment isa small group of high school teachers talking witha researcher in math education.

“Excuse me, may we interrupt for just a fewminutes to ask for some advice?” (She typesinstead of using voice, so she will make a less ob-trusive interruption of their apparently informalmeeting.)

“Sure. What’s up?” they say, using voice.She introduces herself and her team, and ex-

plains their situation.“Could you point us to a sample of the students’

work, and the panel critiques?”“Sure. Tell your navigator to go to tunnel-

team.bigdig.cweis.boston.ma.us.”“OK. We’ll take a look later this afternoon and

leave you some notes there. I recall a group in theBay Area of San Francisco was working on

something similar with one of the technologylabs. We’ll check it out for you.”

“Thanks! Talk to you soon.”“You’re welcome. I assume we may point some

other educators to your project?”“Yes. Our fair use policies are described at the

CWEIS home page.”“Thanks. Bye.”The third member of the teaching team, an ap-

plied mathematician at the civil engineering firmworking for the city, agrees to follow up with theGeometry Forum advice, introduce the TunnelTeam to the new activities, and monitor the stu-

dents’ progress with the activities over the nexttwo weeks.

The Big Dig educational task bank has evolvedand accumulated over 10 years. It is a very rich re-source, but the quality and appropriateness of thematerials for any given situation or learner’sneeds is variable. Individual teachers often havedifficulty identifying task materials suitable for aparticular learner or group. For instance, spatialsense, geometry, and visual representations havebeen focus of renewal in mathematics curriculumsince the 1989 publication of the NCTM Stan-dards (64, 90). But even in 2004 it is still difficultto find appropriate learning materials in thisarea, especially in an interdisciplinary context.

One of the many issues surrounding the taskbank—and all materials in the Big Dig distributedinformation base, including student work—hasbeen the changing rules and customs about intel-lectual property rights for these materials. Hencethe “fair use” policies are explicitly explained inthe CWEIS, and each task package includes in-formation about the developers, evaluators, users,and fair compensation policy.

❚ Same Time, at the CommunityLearning Center

Mrs. Maturana, a recent immigrant from Calí,Colombia, has learned from her daughter thatthere are jobs available on the Big Dig project. Atthe community learning center where she is takinglessons in English as a second language, she learnsabout the jobs databank that is provided byCWEIS. High school students in information sys-tems apprenticeships have been working with themetropolitan Central Artery Tunnel administra-tion to keep the job bank updated. A Spanish-speaking volunteer at the center explains to Mrs.Maturana the different programs available.

Mrs. Maturana is interested to learn more aboutthis, both so she might find a job, and because shewould like her high-school age daughter to havesuch a learning experience.

The volunteer doesn’t really know much moreabout the high school apprenticeships, so shetunes the CWEIS navigator to the CAT adminis-


tration building. The office building is also a proj-ect-based center for high school youth in aschool-to-work program for a certain number ofhours a day to work on information systems proj-ects. A receptionist appears not to be very busy, sothe volunteer asks in voice, “Hello, we’re overhere at the Somerville Community Learning Cen-ter. Can you tell us about the CAT high school in-formation system apprentices?”

“Oh yes, there are always at least a couple ofthem around, day or night. I’ll see if I can get oneof them to talk to you.”

“Wait. Can you find someone who speaksSpanish?”

“Sure, I think so. Hold on.”A few seconds later a teen-ager appears on their

screen. In Spanish she describes the apprentice-ships and the jobs bank.

The metropolitan planning authority, of whichthe CAT is one part, is working on revitalizing theinner city. It has Big Dig Jobs opportunitiescreated to permit learning to go on simultaneouslywith the work. So, for example, you might get anunskilled labor job to begin with, and take classesto increase the skills you want to develop. Thereare opportunities to use these new skills so thatyou will not be doing menial work without a fu-ture prospects once the CAT project is completed.

Mrs. Maturana, still trying to understand allthis news about her new city, asks how such a sys-tem of working and learning is possible. Whopays for it?

The student explains that his is a joint effort ofthe city government, private industry, and educa-tional institutions. Industrial firms benefit as wellas government agencies. For example, there aresome job openings at the plant where concrete sec-tions are made for the underground highway. Theworkers there are learning a new concrete moldmanufacturing technique from the onlinemanufacturers extension service (61).

“Well, Sra. Maturana,” the teenager ends,” Ithink that you and your daughter Ana Julia shouldmake an appointment to come down to the CATbuilding. I can help Ana Julia apply for an intern-ship here, while you look for jobs in the database.

Let’s find a time next week-I’m here Monday andWednesday afternoons !”

TEACHING AND LEARNING:UNDERNEATH THE BIG DIGThe Big Dig vignette weaves together manystrands of institutional change, learning activities,teacher roles, and technology applications. Allthese components currently exist in some form in1994, although they are not yet integrated as wide-ly and deeply into a community as the Big Dig vi-gnette portrays.

Why the Big Dig theme? We use this organiz-ing framework because it helps us think in a con-crete way about several elements of reformadvocated for education. One set of concepts thatcan help tie these elements together is embeddedin the term “authentic.”

❚ The Meaning of “Authentic”The notion of authentic instruction is related toour understanding of how people learn. Peoplebring their prior experience and concepts to newsituations, and construct their knowledge out oftheir interaction with the world (4, 12, 65, 80, 91,102). A community-based scenario such as theBig Dig spotlights the interaction of everyday lifeand learning. The Big Dig as an educational themeand context, draws on individual and group expe-riences at home, in their neighborhoods, fromtheir newspapers and television, so that theconstruction of new knowledge flows naturallyfrom the everyday realities of life.

The CAT project is a very large endeavor affect-ing in different ways the lives of nearly every per-son in a metropolitan area. Hence as a theme andcontext for learning and teaching, it draws uponthe real-world experiences of children, profes-sionals, parents, workers and politicians acrossthe diverse neighborhoods of a city. It acknowl-edges the great diversity of people, and the factthat they bring different backgrounds and experi-ences to a learning situation(10). Such an empha-sis and respect for diversity is a key step toequitable educational opportunity in our increas-ingly multicultural society. A city-wide context


for learning is not the only possible approach tocreating a culture of lifelong learning that offersuniversal and equitable opportunity for everyone.One could, for example, focus on a global context,or on a virtual community of people who share acommon interest and background irrespective oftheir geographic location (11, 82).

Authentic means working on projects andproblems of intrinsic interest to the learner or agroup of learners, rather than learning what every-one else of the same age is expected to learn at thetime; working collaboratively with peers andmentors; closer relationships between people in-side schools and outside in the “real world.” Thiscannot be accomplished unless there is a sustainedmotivation and interest on the part of all thepeople involved. The CAT project is so large it af-fects nearly everyone’s life. It is multidimensionaland of long duration (decades) so that it providesa sustained motivating context. The CAT projectinvolves local, state and national politics, history,ecology, finance, engineering, mathematics, sci-ence, social science, journalism, media, business,and jobs.

Authentic means working in a hands-on modewith the physical and social world, in addition toand in interaction with abstract symbols andwords, and electronic representations such as tele-vision provides. The Big Dig offers a wide varietyof places and phenomena for students and teachersto conduct empirical investigations in their ownneighborhoods—physical construction, utilitiesinfrastructure, wildlife, vehicle traffic, people’sopinions, newspaper and television and radio, his-torical artifacts. Rather than using electronic me-dia in a way that removes people from theirphysical and social community, the Big Dig sce-nario uses electronic media and tools to help re-connect people to their hands-on world. Thisfocus on the learner’s interaction with the physicalworld is important both from the perspective of in-dividual cognitive development and the from thestandpoint of the health of the planet.

Authentic means learning something at thetime a learner is ready and motivated to learn it—perhaps because it is needed to solve a problem orcomplete a project, or perhaps just from develop-

mental readiness, or curiosity, or social pres-sure—rather than in a preset curriculum sequence.This is very difficult for learners and teachers toachieve without the support and accessibility ofexperts and a large repertoire of instructional ma-terials (12). The combination of the Big Dig andthe technological and informational infrastructureprovides a set of conditions that make just-in-timelearning plausible, if not consistently achievable.In the tunnel team vignette some students neededto advance their skills in mathematics to makeprogress on their tunnel simulation. The teacherswere able to draw upon expertise from nationalsources (e.g., the Geometry Forum), local indus-try (applied mathematician from a CAT contrac-tor), higher education, and the CWEIS itself (BigDig task bank) to create appropriate just-in-timelearning opportunities for these students.

Authentic means continual learning. A basicpremise underlying our vision is that everyoneneeds to be learning in our rapidly changingworld. Recently, many studies have found far toomany adults to be woefully lacking in basic lit-eracy (19). At the same time, highly trainedprofessionals, such as engineers, need constantupgrading of their skills and knowledge.

Authentic learning often occurs in an interdis-ciplinary context, rather than in separate subjectsand isolated topics; working on a problem indepth, rather than covering many topics superfi-cially (3). Thematic, interdisciplinary investiga-tions and project-based learning are becomingmore common in schools today. They are usuallyof short duration and there is not enough time todevelop the deep underlying concepts or the skillsneeded to achieve strong discipline. Thereforemany attempts at project-based learning are super-ficial, lacking in deep understanding of underly-ing concepts or analytical discipline.

The long duration of a Big Dig theme couldprovide the years needed to build a coherent inter-disciplinary curriculum and repertoire of high-quality learning materials. In the Big Digscenario, students build an increasingly complexand deep understanding from year to year. A stu-dent gathering opinion data from local businesspeople may not have all the skills needed to ana-


lyze that data meaningfully in a short project. Inthe Big Dig scenario, that student might revisit thecumulative data on business opinions the nextyear, and would then have opportunity to learnmore advanced statistical analysis concepts andskills in the context of data with which he alreadyis familiar and personally invested. Because thereal world of the tunnel project keeps changing(e.g. perhaps opinions of the market merchantschange in a year due to changes in the parking situ-ation), the project could remain fresh and alive—unlike having to repeat a chapter in a textbook(89).

Authentic means working directly with peoplefrom other places and cultures, rather than only in-directly through books (85). In today’s large met-ropolitan areas, there are different neighborhoodsmade up of people from a range of places and cul-tures. Typically there is little interaction amongthese separate neighborhoods. A metropolitan-wide theme as encompassing as the Big Dig couldbe used to provide opportunities and motivationfor learning from each other. For instance, stu-dents in Cambridge might ask students who livebeside the entrance to the tunnel to collect samplesof traffic data for their study of the changing trafficpatterns over time. With the National and GlobalInformation Infrastructure, students can alsoreach outside their geographic region for collabo-rations and resources. The history class studyingnative American artifacts could correspond di-rectly with native American and indigenousscholars and students around the hemisphere.

Authentic learning often requires teamwork.Different members of the team have differentskills, interests, and knowledge to contribute tosolution of a complex problem (25). In a contextsuch as the Big Dig scenario, teamwork is naturaland logical because the learners bring a wide rangeof backgrounds and capabilities to the task. Team-work is becoming more typical in modern corpo-rations and business situations (8, 22, 24, 46). Intypical schools of the industrial age, where learn-ers are segregated by age and everyone in a classis expected to be achieving the same educationalobjectives at the same time, it is difficult to con-

duct meaningful, complex projects requiring awide repertoire of skills and knowledge.

In 1990, over 74 percent of women whoseyoungest child was between the ages of 6 and 13were working or looking for paid work (58). Onemight speculate that the best social arrangementfor lifelong learning of both the child and the par-ent is a community-based structure that supportsall ages of people in highly flexible ways—in-cluding opportunities for adults and children tolearn together. “Over the coming years, society’sability to adapt to the changing needs of workingmothers and their children will be increasingly es-sential to the health and vitality of families and tothe well-being of their children” (58, p.23).

Authentic means producing something of realvalue to someone. In our vignette, for instance,students produced a CAT jobs databank that hasreal value to their parents and others in the com-munity. Other students produced an exhibit thatwas visited and enjoyed by thousands of visitors.Others produced a newspaper that provided in-formation to many others across the metropolis.The ability of students and teachers to produceknowledge that is of real value to a larger audienceis perhaps the single most important change ineducation, and is the change most directly facili-tated through electronic communications technol-ogies and the information infrastructure (70, 81,96).

Authentic means using the real tools for intel-lectual work that are used in the workplace, ratherthan oversimplified textbook techniques. A realcontext such as the Big Dig could make it possiblefor educational purposes to draw upon real-worldtools such as the tunnel simulation software, thejobs data-bank, data analysis tools, that were de-veloped for work in the community. As weevinced in the Tunnel Team vignette, the toolsused by professionals are not the same as, and arenot always directly transferable, for use by chil-dren or novices. But the existence of and commit-ment to a long-term project such as the Big Digwould make it feasible to invest the time and effortin learning, modifying, and applying these real-world tools to education.


Authentic means basing assessment of studentprogress on performance of real tasks rather thanartificial tests. In 1994, many groups are workingon new methods of assessing student learning asdemonstrated in exhibitions and portfolios (14,21, 43, 54, 55, 56, 59, 60, 61). This has proved tobe a very challenging endeavor but as illustratedin the Tunnel Team vignette it becomes morefeasible under the circumstances of a large, con-tinuing, and community-wide theme. The hypo-thetical assessment specialist in the Tunnel Teamwas able to draw upon previous years’ experience,the specialized knowledge of diverse panelists,the voices of learners and teachers, and an accessi-ble base of information about the educationalgoals of individual learners and teams.

❚ New Roles for TeachersIn all these instances of “authentic” learning,teaching roles are richer and more vibrant thanteachers now occupy. Teachers are guides andmentors and learners, rather than mere dispensersof knowledge. The Big Dig is a real-world eventthat keeps growing and changing, thus it providesopportunities for teachers to continue their ownlearning. Teachers build a web of contacts in thecommunity outside of schools to which they canturn to help them in their own and their students’learning.

These new roles are already evolving. A 1990sexample is the work of Nick Haddad, a teacher inFairweather Street School in Cambridge, MA,who has been collecting data from the Boston Har-bor for seven years. His “Boston Harbor DataSheet” included weekly statistics on species offish caught, imports and exports, ships and theircargo, water and air data, and learning activitiesthat integrate the study of the Harbor into school-ing. He worked with over 100 teachers fromaround the city, and with MASSPORT authorityexperts. He works with a group of teachers fromaround the city, and with Harbor authority experts,developing educational activities that draw uponthese data. His own continuing learning about thechanging ecology and technology of the Harborsustains his motivation for this work.

In 1994 we have many pioneering projects andteachers who have created learning environmentsthat enable students both to develop skills in usingadvanced technological tools and to apply thoseskills to the production of valued products fortheir community (6, 38). For instance, RandallRaymond, a teacher at Cass Technical HighSchool, is Project Director for “Urban Environ-mental Education in Detroit.” Working with busi-nesses, government agencies, communitycolleges, universities and research institutes in theDetroit region, he has developed community part-nerships and outreach programs. These partner-ships enable his students to develop skill inapplying Geographic Information Systems (GIS)technology to problems and projects of impor-tance to the partners. The students conduct demo-graphic studies for small businesses, performresource mapping and planning for local units ofgovernment, design school transportation sys-tems, develop a complete GIS-driven manage-ment system for the entire Detroit Public Schoolsystem, digitize the Detroit Public Library sys-tem, provide GIS training for urban teachers andmembers of the community, and participate in in-ternships that help make a productive transitionfrom school to work. The students’ involvementin local environmental issues has created manyopportunities to build and apply skills such as dataanalysis and spatial analysis.

Information resource facilitator, assessmentspecialist, technology expert, team manager andfacilitator, child development expert, subject mat-ter specialist-all these multiple roles teachers arenow beginning to assume must be understood asunfolding within a team environment. Not everyteacher need be an expert in each role. What is nec-essary, however, are changed expectations for, andconditions within, the profession of teaching.

First, the isolated world of the self-containedclassroom must give way to a more open learningcommunity in which teachers have a chance towork with, observe and learn from each other aswell as from professionals in other fields. Theseteachers (and their students) will most likely re-main with each other over a period of years.


Therefore, just as families will need more powerin exercising choices over their children’s educa-tion, so teachers will need to exercise increasedchoice regarding whom they wish to teach withand under what conditions.

Second, teachers must be adequately preparedfor the new roles they will occupy, not onlythrough academic pre-service education butthrough significant clinical pre-service experi-ences as well. Those coming into the professionwill need more supervised experience with agroup of accomplished mentors than that affordedby present mostly hit and miss induction experi-ences (26). Project centers such as CWEIS andBMER can function as professional developmentschools for these prospective teachers.

Third, a restructured teaching profession andworkforce will need to be created. This workforcewill include people who come to teaching via non-traditional routes (some of the experts in the BigDig, for example), as well as different incentivesfor those who occupy differentiated roles. We willreturn to this point later in the paper.

DISCUSSION: GETTING FROMHERE TO THEREA new social compact is assumed in the Big Digvignette. In the interim, what happens to schooldistricts organizationally as technology reducesthe need for geographic continuity within a Dis-trict? In our vignette, the school and district orga-nization is in a transition phase. School districtsexist in their traditional form, and they also partic-ipate in a metropolitan collaborative based on theCWEIS. This metropolitan collaborative wouldnot have evolved without the concurrent develop-ments in the digital telecommunications infra-structure across the area in the late 1990s. TheCWEIS of 1994 had laid the organizationalfoundation across the city to take advantage of theevolving telecommunications infrastructure.Thus by 2004 the organizational and information-al mechanisms for such collaboration were wellestablished. Many community leaders, televisionand radio stations, businesses, libraries, local gov-ernments, universities, and schools were already

collaborating on the development of highly dis-tributed information services. Gradually over themid- and late-1990s these diverse institutionswould have developed the technical infrastructureand skills in order to contribute to and benefitfrom the metropolitan-wide knowledge base.

Mercedes’ “Using Your Brain” module couldhave evolved to the point where the nine-weekproject module was commonplace across the met-ropolitan area. Every student might participate inat least one such cycle during the year. Since theprojects were designed to produce and not merely“reproduce” knowledge, they were considered“value-added.” Communities might find that theprojects made good economic and civic sense.Workplace skills were being developed early; theapplication to real-life examples immediate.

Support for the project cycles came from theBoston Metropolitan Education Region, a quasi-public organization modeled after a metropolitantransit authority or the TVA (Tennessee ValleyAuthority, a regional organization). Evaluation ofthe projects were an ongoing concern of theBMER. Now, it was not only students and teach-ers who were being evaluated; it was also theeffectiveness of the various players who collabo-rated with the students and teachers. What was itthat they all agreed was important for students toknow and be able to do? How were they to mea-sure it? And what was their own responsibility inseeing to it that adequate resources and opportuni-ties were created to achieve the purposes stated?

With help from the state and federal govern-ment, the BMER-supported projects also markedthe beginnings of a new approach to educationalfinance. No longer tied to the property tax, everyfamily is given a base educational “learningaccount” to apply to a portion of its educationalservices. This community learning utility is sup-ported as part of the partnership agreement be-tween government and the private sector withinthe Boston Metropolitan Education Region.

Financing these innovations in learning andteaching and collaboration and knowledge-build-ing might have been a constant struggle over the10 years from 1994 to 2004. The Big Dig theme


could provide a great deal of financial leverage, inseveral ways. The television, radio, and newspa-pers invested in the development of a vast array ofinformation and educational material simply be-cause the Big Dig topic was of great interest totheir customers. Schools and community learningcenters could have built upon that naturally devel-oping corpus of multimedia material. In addition,school students and teachers would have been ableto add to the materials because of their first-handexperience with the phenomena. They could havegathered information from local citizens and ex-perts for free through interviews and questionnair-es. They could have gather empirical data from thephysical construction sites and surrounding areaswithout cost. Perhaps most important is that thestudents’ work would have value to the communi-ty. In 1999 there might have been enough commu-nity and school interest in the Big Dig theme foreducation that they were able to get the CAT au-thorities to agree to invest 5 percent of CAT fundsinto education and training.

Is our vision a utopian one? After all, there isnothing new in arguing that technology is soon toexert a profound influence on the institution ofschooling. The literature is replete with boastfulpredictions of major changes that somehow nevermaterialized. What is new, we have argued, is a setof circumstances that make this argument morecompelling than similar ones of the past. First, theuse of technology within the society is rapidly be-coming ubiquitous and necessary for economicsurvival. Second, the kinds of technologies beingdeveloped and deployed are, unlike their anteced-ents, of a kind that exemplify authentic and“constructivist” approaches to teaching and learn-ing. Finally, the new technologies, especiallywithin the communication field, have alreadydemonstrated the potential to transform theboundaries of teaching and learning.

All this, however, remains speculative. UnlikeLew Perelman’s School’s Out (77), our scenario isnot depicting a world of isolated and terminal-bound individuals pursuing an isolated, atomisticvision of “life-long learning.” We do not chal-lenge the need for the underlying “social capital”currently being provided for by the institution of

schooling. In fact, we believe one of the more seri-ous problems facing contemporary education isthe lack of adequate social capital (110). That isone reason why we support community-oriented,project-based education with its long period of so-cial and intellectual apprenticeship. We questionwhether traditional schools, with all their existingsocial and organizational baggage, can any longeraccommodate the profound changes technology isalready having on our world while enhancing ourchildren’s ability to learn, live, and develop com-fortably within it.

The task of public policy, then, is not one of ex-ercising unbridled imagination or passion in pur-suit of some technological garden of Eden.Instead, it is a more difficult one—that of sustain-ing critical public engagement with the presentwhile simultaneously creating incentives thatmight bring to scale those fledgling developmentswe decide as a society are most in accord withwhat is possible and desirable.

❚ Three Contexts For ChangeBased on our experience in utilizing technology totransform schools (18, 39), we suggest that thereare three distinct but related contexts for changethat are critical in transforming the rosy vision wepresent to one that is attainable. The first contextis that of integrating new technology tools and thedeveloping information infrastructure of whichthey are a part. Second, are issues and challengesassociated with incorporating novel approaches toteaching and learning made possible by the newtools and infrastructure. The third context forchange concerns the creation of a hospitable polit-ical, economic and organizational environmentnecessary to develop and sustain the visions in-forming the Big Dig.

Institutionalizing Change:Technology Tools and InformationHow to integrate tools and information infrastruc-ture? All the separate technological tools beingused in the Big Dig vignette are in use in 1994, al-though their use today is not as seamless as weportray in the scenario. The first major difference,


then, between 1994 and the Big Dig scenario is tobe found in the seamless environment of technolo-gy and information infrastructures, and the fluen-cy with these tools are used to design and enhancelearning experiences.

The technological infrastructure includes suchcomponents as computers, local area networks,telecommunications, and the equipment that con-nects all of these to metropolitan, national, andglobal networks. This infrastructure is just nowbeginning to change the landscape of Americaneducation. Client-server technologies, for exam-ple, now make possible decentralized control overthe local educational environment. In particular,integration of LANs and WANs, combined with anew generation of servers that are user-friendly,now allow teachers and students to more effec-tively design and manage their own educationalenvironment.

The information infrastructure includes thetechnological infrastructure plus the informationand organizational arrangements that make theeducational environment of the Big Dig vignettepossible. “Information” is used in its broadestsense, to include such things as:

� the Big Digger newsletter published by the stu-dents;

� the 10-year archive of interview data from Hay-market vendors; the database management sys-tems that enable users to create the cumulativearchive of interview data;

� the pictures and annotations of the Spectacle Is-land artifacts on the CWEIS Web; video mate-rials gathered by students on the ecology of theharbor;

� the economic data on the CAT project, and re-lated scholarly papers on economic models be-ing used by the students for their senior thesis;data analysis tools used by the students to ana-lyze and interpret such data as the vendor inter-views and the economic data;

� the software and locator directories that make iteasy for the Tunnel Team to connect via video-conference with Azikwe’s mother’s office andthe other schools in metropolitan communities;

� the tunnel simulation software demonstrated byAzikwe and his mother; reference data on thevarious components of the tunnel simulation,such as specifications on performance of mate-rials;the students’ tunnel simulation and thesimulation-building tools used to create it;

� the shared workspace software tools that enablelocal and remote participants to observeAzikwe’s computer screen during his demon-stration;

� the collaborative notebook used for brainstorm-ing and documentation in the Tunnel Teamworkshop;

� the assessment archives from last year’s TunnelTeam exhibitions; the database of expert re-viewers willing to participate in assessing stu-dent work; students’ personal developmentplans; the Tunnel Team’s educational goals;

� the Big Dig educational task bank of lessonsand learning activities;

� network agents and intelligent navigationalagents that enable the teacher to locate the Ge-ometry Forum; the people and information pro-vided by the Geometry Forum

� the “fair use policies” agreed to by the CWEIScommunity; and

� the Big Dig jobs bank maintained by highschool interns and the city CAT authority.

In our scenario, nearly all of these information-al learning components have been constructedthrough the collaborative efforts of citizens as abyproduct of their learning activities.

In reality, in 1994 there exists very little ad-vanced development efforts that would create anddeploy the kinds of resources, tools, and servicesneeded to support the Big Dig vignette. The kindof information infrastructure that is implied andreflected in the vignette is nearly opposite to thekinds of “Information Superhighway” develop-ment activity underway in 1994 by the telecom-munications and entertainment industries, andother commercial enterprises that control theevolution of the infrastructure. In general, thesedevelopments aim towards a view of people asconsumers of information rather than producers of


knowledge. Funding is practically nonexistent forthe development of services, tools, resources, andknow-how that would provide the appropriate un-derpinning for educational experiences such asthose reflected in the Big Dig. Every individualproject and community has to develop such infra-structures on its own, and none have funding forsuch purposes, if those services and tools are ac-cessible at all. Localities and states do not fund de-velopment of software advances. The federalgovernment has almost no mechanisms at all forfunding of software development or deploymentin the context of supporting reform of civilianeducation.

Institutionalizing Change: Teaching andLearning with Technology

Integrating learning tools with an informationinfrastructure requires a different view of whatconstitutes a “learning curriculum.” The Big Digparticipants’ information handling, problem-solving, and higher-order thinking skills perhapsprovide the most dramatic difference between1994 and the scenario for 2004. In the vignette,such skills are exemplified in the following ways:

Quality� the quality control processes built into the stu-

dent newsletter effort, such that the students’work is usable by professional journalists

Design� the assessment group’s ability to formulate a

two-pronged strategy for this year’s exhibit as-sessment, taking advantage of different kindsof input available.

Communications� the ability of both children and adults to com-

municate effectively in writing, speaking, andvisual media;

� the teaching team’s ability to communicatetheir needs to a distant expert in geometryeducation; and

� the CAT teenager’s ability to explain the orga-nization of the Big Dig Jobs Bank and the insti-tutional context for that effort.

Collaboration� the ability of people to spontaneously form effi-

cient working teams;� teacher Elaine Smith’s ability to choose the ap-

propriate collaboration tool at the time it wasneeded for efficient work in the day-long meet-ing, and the ability of the workshop partici-pants to access and use the tool with fluency.

Analysis� The high-level analysis skills of teachers and

students capable of formulating a comparisonbetween this years’ interview data and prioryears’ study methods and findings;

� A student’s ability to envision the usefulness ofa side-by-side comparison of two simulationsystems representations in the tunnel simula-tion system;

� A student’s ability to conduct a critical analysisof the user interface of the simulation system inrelation to the requirements of a large public ex-hibit; and

� The ability of the Somerville teacher and stu-dents to make a quick critique of the draft as-sessment plan, see it’s major flaw, andintervene in a timely manner.

Media� the students’ skill in producing high-quality

digital images of the native American artifacts,suitable for publication on the Web and enab-ling analysis and commentary by distant schol-ars;

� the high-quality videos produced by studentsdocumenting the tunnel and artery traffic; and

� Student fluency with image processing tech-niques enabling them to conceptualize how tocompare current digital images and imagesfrom a 10-year-old video.


Information Retrieval� The ability of the student assessment specialist

to locate relevant archives of information con-cerning individual students, teams, educationalobjectives, historical assessments, and assess-ment panelists;

� The teaching team’s ability to search the BigDig educational task bank for materials rele-vant to the Tunnel Team’s needs in mathemat-ics, and to make a quick evaluation of thosematerials;

� The ability of the volunteer worker at the com-munity learning center to teach Mrs. Maturanahow to use the jobs databank, and how to makea live visit to the CAT administration building.

Investigation� the complexity of the economics project under-

taken by the high school seniors.

Learning and Cognition� A community college teacher’s recognition of

the utility of the tunnel simulation system forhis technician students;

� The engineer’s recognition of the similarity be-tween a new professional engineer’s learningtask and the learning task of a group of school-children;

� A child’s ability to envision the use of tunneltraffic data to create an interesting game foradults; and

� A teenager’s ability to assess the complexity ofthe tunnel simulation in relation to the capabili-ties of her younger teammates.

Science and Engineering� A teacher’s insight about the usefulness of the

tunnel simulation for identifying assumptionsabout structural properties of the tunnel tubes,and her understanding of the value of this activ-ity for the students; and

� A teacher’s ability to see how to create a perfor-mance test of student understanding of physicsby using an operational simulation system.

Yet getting from here to there will not be easy.One of the more difficult areas to address is how

to integrate the use of technology in teaching andlearning so that it becomes an everyday occur-rence in everyone’s life.

At present, this integration is the exception, notthe rule. More often, as in drill and practice soft-ware or traditional ILSes (Integrated LearningSystems), technology is employed to do whattextbooks now do. Alternatively, technology isoften used exclusively as a “tool” without regardto the quality of the learning it is meant to en-hance. In the former instance, the curriculumremains traditional, wed to scope and sequence-oriented subject matter, often with a deadeningemphasis on drilling in the “basic skills.” In thelatter instance, the technology applications can bequite advanced and “constructivist” (email, hy-permedia, etc.), but lack sufficient depth of engag-ing content or context to justify the effort. In bothinstances, the source of the difficulty is not thetechnology; it is the curriculum.

Changing the curriculum so that technologycan be employed productively is not easy. The na-tional standards movement could prove usefulhere-providing it results in frameworks that resistdilution and in assessments that resist simplifica-tion. Also helpful is widespread interest in the de-velopment of project-based curriculum thatrequire teachers and students to orient their dem-onstrations of learning to significant “out ofschool” contexts. Emphasis on “school-to-work”transitions might also expedite the kinds of curric-ulum changes that require a more significant in-tegration of technology.

The unremarkable “ordinariness” of what thistechnology use might look like in both the contentand setting of “real school” is what we attemptedto depict throughout The Big Dig. The education-al reform efforts of the mid-1990s share aprofound shift in emphasis from the content-memorizing paradigm of the past to a paradigm oflearning that demands high levels of skill in col-laborating, communicating, solving problems,managing information, and the production ofknowledge. This has been accompanied by a fun-damental rejection of the belief that only a feweducated people are required for an industrialeconomy, to the belief that everyone must be fully


educated to participate in a knowledge-based soci-ety.

In reality, the Big Dig scenario reflects a highlevel of cognitive and social functioning with thesupport of appropriate technologies-a level un-likely o be achieved by 2004. In 1994 there existsalmost no research that would lead to the theoreti-cal and empirical knowledge base needed as afoundation for these educational changes. Publicmonies that currently are being expended in thisarena are for deployment and implementation, notresearch. The Big Dig scenario implies all sorts ofunderstandings that simply do not exist in the cur-rent state of the art-understandings of cognitionand learning and instruction in the context of verycomplex, information rich, dynamic situationsthat have rarely been the context for educationalor cognitive research. For instance, currently thereis no research on how learners become fluent withimage processing or the role of such fluency innovices’ development of understanding of dy-namic processes (9, 91). There is almost no re-search underway on appropriate tools for novices’construction of dynamic models and simulationsand the cognitive processes involved in suchconstruction. Ironically, at the time local, state andfederal education agencies are spending millionsto connect schools to the NII and to acquire relatedcomputing equipment, there is almost no researchon acquisition of information handling skills inthe context of very large information space, andtheir appropriate incorporation into school curric-ula and practice. Human-computer interface is-sues such as understandibility and standardizationof iconic representations are de facto resolved bysoftware publishers on the basis of idiosyncraticintuitions, with no grounding in empirical re-search. There is no research underway that wouldhelp to inform or establish the kinds of communi-ty-wide educational assessment and quality assur-ance processes and standards reflected in theinformation infrastructure of the Big Dig sce-nario.

How inclusive can this ambitious curriculumbe? Reviewers asked, will it work for the “bottomhalf” of teachers and students? This question sug-

gests that there might be a permanent “bottomhalf.” We reject this notion. As Stevenson andStigler have pointed out in their 1992 compara-tive study of American and Japanese and Chineseeducation, the poor achievement level of Ameri-can students has more to do with our culture oflearning than with any presumptive inequities ininnate intellectual endowment (92). Setting highstandards and expectations for all people, es-pecially in the early grades, instituting a morerigorous and challenging curriculum, and em-phasizing “effort” over “ability,” will help raisethe “bottom half” more than measures whose neteffect is to exacerbate, not solve, inequity. Inshort, there is no reason to believe that there is apermanent bottom half.

Thinkers such as Howard Gardner have pointedout that schools, with their narrow range of indi-vidual options and scope and sequence curricu-lum, often tap into only a limited range of“intelligences” and by so doing, miss the opportu-nities to engage and develop the talents and procli-vities of many students (20).

Authentic Learning: As Opposed to What?Changing the curriculum does not mean thatteaching and learning will thereby become effort-less. We have been careful not to romanticizelearning. When, for example, Azikwe’s motherpoints out to the student Meera that the softwareprogram used by professional engineers is differ-ent than the students’ program, the underlying rea-son is that the students’ program has been createdto reflect a controlled learning environment—anenvironment that is not, nor cannot be, completely“authentic” from the perspective of a professionalengineer. Similarly, the utilization of the Swarth-more Geometry Forum by the Tunnel Team teach-ers is meant to show that there will be times atwhich specialized instruction (in this case, Geom-etry) is necessary, though the manner in which itoccurs (its “just-in-time” quality, for example)distinguishes its use from traditional scope and se-quence pedagogy and curriculum.

Learning is not always fun, engaging, or relent-lessly faithful to the real world. It can on occasionrequire the repetitive performance of tasks or in-


tellectual battle with concepts and theories that areunfamiliar, removed from “reality,” even some-what contrived. That is one reason we believe thatpaying attention to standards, to what students areexpected to know and be able to do, is critical. Un-like past attempts at making education “relevant,”contemporary preoccupation with authentic learn-ing is grounded in the belief that there should beexplicit habits of mind, competencies and coreknowledge that all students are expected to mas-ter.

The Tyranny of Time and the “Schedule.”What goes on in most schools is often determinedby the school schedule (62). Forty-five-minuteperiods, bus schedules, and rigid work rules im-posed by teacher contract, can disrupt the flow oftime in which active and engaged learning occurs.Until this changes, it is unlikely that significantnumbers of students and teachers will be able toincorporate technologies in a more challengingcurriculum. We have already suggested that mov-ing some of the work of schools to outside theschool will help free students from the strangle-hold of the daily schedule.

But more is needed. In order to make technolo-gy an integral and institutionalized part of learn-ing, schools must take seriously the notion thatpeople learn in different ways and at differentrates. Arbitrary assignments of students based onage must cease, and more flexible grouping andteaming practices must become commonplace. Acentral point of our Big Dig scenario is the cre-ative use of computer and communicationtechnologies to help overcome the tyranny of timeand the complexities of scheduling group work.

Professional Development: Unless there existsa requisite level of proficiency with (and accessto) the various tools and applications, they will notbe used at all, much less creatively. Professionaldevelopment must be continuous; it must haveimmediate use in instructional contexts; and itmust, ultimately, be localized within the learningcommunity. Tools used in professional develop-ment must be available for use within the commu-nity when and where they are requested.

Phasing in Technology Use: It is not always de-sirable to begin in a technology-rich environment.Our experience in the Co-NECT restructuringproject, in fact, has been the opposite. Unfamiliartechnology can have a “smothering” effect on stu-dents and teachers. It is often better to phase in itsuse, so that the instructional, social and physicalenvironments have a developing and organic rela-tionship to one another.

Institutionalizing Change: Politics,Economics and Organization

Communities, Unions and Politics: Who willsupport the vision? There are a number of differentcomponents to this question:

a) First, what makes us confident that thereare enough “experts” out in the communitywho are willing and able to spend the kind oftime with students that the vignette’s experts(engineers, public officials, college professors)were willing and able to spend? In fact, we arenot confident that this will occur on the scale nec-essary to realize our vision. To be sure, there willalways be a certain number of individuals whohappily and selflessly devote their time to educa-tion. But we also believe that incentives will haveto be created to bring this vision to scale.

Demographics could prove key in makingthese incentives salient. For example, consider thefollowing demographic projection: While theyouth population (10 to 17) is shrinking from 34percent of the nation in 1970 to 25 percent in 2000,there is a corresponding rise in the over 65 popula-tion from 20 million to 40 million during thatsame period of time (and a rise to 65 million in theyear 2030) (31, 32). Healthy and still productive,the over-65 population will most certainly want toextend its stay within the workforce.

From a public policy standpoint, therefore,measures should be considered that might aid inthe restructuring of the educational workforce andat the same time, meet projected workforce reali-ties facing corporations, public entities, and insti-tutions of higher education. It is possible, forexample, to imagine a new category of “semi-re-


tired” personnel whose benefits remain intact, butwhose workloads and salaries are adjusted to al-low for civic-oriented contributions, such as be-coming educational mentors. A combination oftax incentives and the resultant opportunity to re-structure their workforce might prove attractive toboth the public and private sectors.

b) Will teacher unions buy in? Not likely, giv-en the present political infrastructure of Americaneducation. As long as the agenda of local collec-tive bargaining is determined by the existing polit-ical and institutional framework of education(school districts, outdated labor law, etc.), there islittle likelihood that unions will abandon “hours,wages, and working conditions” as their centralpurpose or that they will welcome the inclusion ofnon-dues-paying community experts into theirranks.

At least two changes will have to occur to alterunion opposition. First, the political structureupon which union structure is mirrored—e.g., lo-cal school districts—will have to be reconceived.And second, there will need to be created positiveincentives for unions to change their basic orienta-tion and purpose.

As to the first change, we already see the emer-gence of alternative political structures withineducation (such as charter schools and expandedpublic school choice) as potentially significant de-velopments. These alternatives have begun to ex-ert decentralizing pressure on centralized unionrules and regulations as well as school board rulesand regulations. Simultaneously, school financeis undergoing taxpayer criticism and extensive re-view. As states seek funding alternatives to theirsystems’ present reliance on the local propertytax, it is conceivable that some of the local focusof economic and political decisionmaking mightshift as well. If this occurs, the focus of localunions interest might change. The second changenecessary (new incentives) might occur in mea-sures such as providing greater teacher decision-making and influence in the area of professionaldevelopment in return for a relaxation in union de-termination of “hours, wages, and working condi-tions,” new pay schemes (pay for performance,

differentiated pay ushered in through the NationalBoard for Professional Teaching Standards, etc.).

What will happen to school districts as the vi-sion unfolds?

a) A system of schools rather than a schoolsystem: The organizational context enabling in-structional changes like those above, requires lesscontrol and more facilitation from the school dis-trict central office.

This move toward greater decentralization(school-based management, charter schools, etc.)might, as mentioned, eventually result in a radi-cally different institutional context for education.In the short run, however, increased use oftechnology in education will raise, as it has donein other areas of government and business, seriousquestions regarding privatization, the role ofmiddle management and the possibility of de-centralized accountability. In general, we believethat schools organized around shared educationalvisions will be more productive than those that aregrouped together on exclusively geographical cri-teria (30).

b) Restructure administration: At least in thenear term, school districts will remain the primaryadministrative organizational agents responsiblefor schools. If so, much needs to be done immedi-ately to avoid inefficiency at the central office lev-el. Technology planning and implementation isoften plagued by archaic central office structures.In particular, facilities, instruction and adminis-trative functions are often maintained by separateline and staff structures.

When this occurs, inefficiency results. Hard-ware is ordered centrally without regard to the re-quirements of the applications it will be running;facilities renovation is planned without account-ing for the telecommunications or video needs ofthe local educational program; technology ac-quisition/maintenance is placed in budget catego-ries and lines that make them susceptible toyear-to-year fluctuations in funding, rather thanbeing placed in fixed line items such as utilities.

c) Integrate administrative and instruction-al technology: The history of technology in edu-


cation has been a bifurcated one: Administrativetechnology has developed in isolation from itsinstructional use. Most often, the central officehas been the “data processing shop.” Instructionaluse of technology (electronic portfolios, access todatabases, etc.) has arisen independently.

Today, it is important to combine these twofunctions so that: decentralized learning commu-nities have access to information when and wherethey need it; (health records, budget, car registra-tion, milk count, etc., as well as educational), re-porting requirements are made helpful, notburdensome, to these communities; and we avoidthe inefficiencies of separate and redundanttechnology infrastructures.

d) A school is not a building: Or at least notthe egg crate carton structures that have becomeidentified with school facilities. The new technol-ogies require facilities and infrastructures that canaccommodate them. After all, it does little good tohave schools equipped for the 21st century but de-signed for the 19th (insufficient wiring, inade-quate, dysfunctional space, etc.). Over half theexisting school buildings in the country were builtin the 1960s, with an expected shelf-life of 35years. They were built in a fairly standardizedmanner and without regard for the eventual inclu-sion of technology. School districts, especiallyones that no longer design schools according tothe principle that “one size fits all, “ will need helpin effecting a transformation (25). The Depart-ment of Education and/or private foundationsshould consider reestablishing a “Educational Fa-cilities Laboratory” (similar to the one created bythe Ford Foundation during the building frenzy ofthe ‘60s) in order to disseminate current in-formation and promising models of new technol-ogy-rich schools. The new “School FacilitiesInfrastructure Improvement Program” approvedby Congress for FY 1995 is a small step in theright direction.

e) Student mobility: Another impediment tocreating structures that are amenable to sustainedflexibility in the learning environment is studentmobility, a situation particularly acute in many ur-ban areas. It can be counterproductive for a stu-

dent to work in a flexible structure thatincorporates the creative use of technology, ifwhen that same student moves during the courseof the year, her new school incorporates a tradi-tional pedagogical structure and schedule. It is im-portant, therefore, to seek ways in whichcontinuity of educational experience over timepersists across traditional attendance boundaries.Increased parental choice, appropriate transporta-tion arrangements and use of networks for conti-nuity of experience from one educational settingto another are examples of the kind of thinkingnecessary to solve this problem.

f) Many places for learning: In our scenario,people are physically located in many differentplaces throughout the city as they participate inlearning activities. The technology enables greatflexibility of place.

How will this vision be financed? We have al-ready indicated a number of ways in which the fi-nancing of elementary and secondary educationwill have to be reconceived if the vision of TheBig Dig is to become generalized. In what fol-lows, we elaborate on these.

How will the teaching workforce be structuredand supported? The lion’s share of every educa-tional institution’s budget is consumed by person-nel costs. There are at present some 2.5 millionK-12 teachers. By and large, these teachers havebeen “trained” and compensated as if they were in-terchangeable parts. The kinds of technology-intensive, project-based education we havesketched will require a fundamental restructuringof the teaching profession. We have already dis-cussed the various new roles that individual“teachers” are now occupying and will increasing-ly do so. The structure and composition of theworkforce as a whole will also experience radicalchange. More specifically:

� There may be fewer “professional teachers” re-quired. Instead of 2.5 million K-12 teachers, itis possible to imagine a situation in which theprofession is restructured to accommodate apermanent “teaching force” far fewer in num-ber. This number would command significant-


ly higher average salaries than at present, meetmore rigorous entrance requirements (certifica-tion as opposed to simple licensure), and heldaccountable for student results.

� They might be supplemented with a large num-ber of people who would be paid substantiallyless. These people (engineers, scientists, writ-ers, artists, etc.) are the experts with whom theteachers and students work directly. As a group,we could expect that these individuals wouldhave their basic health and retirement benefitscovered by their existing employers.

� College graduates who attend college on for-giveable loans might constitute a third elementof a restructured workforce. Upon graduation,these individuals would be employed as internsin various educational settings. After a numberof year’s service, the debt incurred from theircollege loans would be forgiven.

� This restructured three-tiered work force wouldrequire significant use of technology. Thewidespread availability and use of differentkinds of technology allows for a more efficientdeployment of personnel, greater use of econo-mies of scale, and increased personalization.

How will new organizational structures becreated and financed? The Big Dig envisioned thecreation of a fictional entity, the Boston Metropol-itan Educational Region, as a cooperative ventureof local, state and federal government with privateindustry. If, as suggested, school districts give riseto organizational structures more attuned to out ofschool learning and common academic purpose,entities like BMER might become typical. Theseentities could be financed through a combinationof various means:

� The expenditure of monies drawn from “life-long learning” accounts—that is, accountscreated and made available to citizens at birthand expended throughout an individual’s lifeby enrolling in any number of various learning/project centers.

� The ability of entities as nonprofit educationalcorporations to earn revenue by creating social-

ly useful products and/or services, and the leas-ing of space.

� Industry (biotechnology, finance, software,etc.) support for these entities as training andschool-to-work transition centers.

How will space for project-based education befound and financed? A number of possibilities ex-ist:

� Satellite learning centers: In Dade County,Florida, a few large businesses built publiceducational facilities on their premises. By do-ing so, they have provided many of their em-ployees with an additional benefit andincentive—that of being more directly con-nected to their children’s education.

� Shared use facilities: One possibility is shareduse of space by constituencies other than K-12.These facilities could be shared, for example,by ongoing community services (such as li-braries and other municipal buildings) or cor-porate job re-training centers.

� Revitalization of the inner city: Through mea-sures such as enterprise zone legislation, itwould be possible for boards of education toenter into partnership with redevelopment au-thorities. They might lease and renovate ne-glected buildings to be used as educationalproject spaces or cooperative centers by public-private partnerships.

� A federal agency or department (HUD, Depart-ment of Education, etc.) or a national founda-tion might establish a National EducationalFacilities Laboratory, whose purpose would beto disseminate best practice and advice on therenovation and construction of new school de-signs.

How will we organize and finance the researchand development needed to make informed use ofthe considerable technological potential availableto us for educational purposes ? What little educa-tional research has been supported over the past100 years was conducted in a context of incremen-tal improvement of learning, very modest restruc-


turing of learning environments, and minimal useof advanced technologies. Such an enterprise ispractically irrelevant to the rapidly changing so-cial and technological conditions at hand. Be-cause education and schooling are seen to be solagging in the technological change processes un-derway in other sectors of society, policymakers,decisionmakers and grass-root innovators are to-tally focused on issues of deployment and imple-mentation at the exclusion of development of abase of knowledge that would enable more ratio-nal and cost-effective implementation. Federalagencies are supporting “demonstrations,” “sys-temic initiatives,” and “scaling up” activities,rather than accompanying these with a focusedquest for understanding and knowledge building.

Given these current political conditions, theonly plausible strategy we can think of for sup-porting the creation of new knowledge and an un-derstanding of learning and cognition in thecontext of educational technologies and reform isto attempt to do so as a part of implementationprojects. Government agency programs that aresupporting innovative projects involving learningand teaching and technology could require thatsome meaningful percentage of the effort be de-voted to systematic investigation of learning andteaching processes in the context of their innova-tions, and to the widespread dissemination of suchknowledge. This strategy makes the quest for un-derstanding an integral byproduct of operationsand could result in a more secure foundation thanis presently being built.

SUMMARYTechnology serves a dual role within education.First, it can be used to support lifelong teachingand learning that is “authentic,” and, second, it cancatalyze the institutional changes necessary tousher in authentic teaching and learning. The BigDig reflects both tendencies.

The seeds of technological change have alreadybeen planted, and as a result, the system of educa-tion as we know it will become radically trans-formed in the coming years. In particular, webelieve that:

The institutional framework of education willshift from an emphasis on “schools” to an empha-sis on “communities.” The primary functions ofschools to date have been custodial and adminis-trative. Economic and civic changes demand thatthe institutional framework of learning be wid-ened so that these key functions be accommo-dated. Communities are the natural place to locatethis institutional framework.

This trend is already underway. For example,many have argued that it makes more sense to“educationalize” the agenda of social serviceagencies than to integrate yet another function ontop of the academic mission of schools. It is a shortstep from this argument to one that calls for an in-tegrated community-wide structure that can ac-complish all the myriad missions connected withyouth (health, employment, etc.). The technology,moreover, is now in existence to effect the com-munication necessary to make these new struc-tures operationally effective.

The financing of education will shift to an em-phasis on “lifelong learning.” Everyone is agreedthat school finance must change; the question ishow? While this will not be easy, the time hascome to create lifelong learning accounts. Educa-tional opportunities will be defined to include ac-cess to the technologies upon which they willincreasingly depend. The origin of these accountsmight be initially located within community, re-gional or state entities.

”Teaching” will be ubiquitous. The role ofteachers is already undergoing profound changes,and this trend will continue. Teachers will be inte-gral to virtually every aspect of social and eco-nomic life. With the intellectual distance betweenlearning and work disappearing, teaching will nolonger be considered an occupation relegated toany one institution. Providing for a continuity ineducational experience that is no longer institu-tionally based, teachers will need to demonstratetechnological proficiency in order to accomplishtheir tasks within a wide variety of settings.


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54. National Association for Sports and Physi-cal Education, Outcomes of Quality Physi-cal Education Programs (Reston, VA:1992).

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59. National Council for the Social Studies,Curriculum Standards for the Social Stud-ies, draft 2 (Washington, DC: May 1993).

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66. Newman, D., “School Networks: Deliveryor Access,” Communications of the ACM.pp. 42-46, May 1993.

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68. Newman, D., “Costs and Benefits of Inter-net-from-the-Desktop: Observations fromthe National School Network Testbed,” Pa-per presented in a symposium on Issues inComputer Networking in K-12 Schools: AProgress Report of Four NSF Testbeds, B.Hunter, chair, at the annual meetings of theAmerican Educational Research Associa-tion, April 7, 1994, New Orleans, LA.

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80. Resnick, L. B., “Learning In School andOut,” Educational Researcher, December1987.

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Appendix CThe Futureof Teaching

“Education is not preparation for life, it is life itself.—John Dewey

ovember 7, 2005. You are a member of a Program Quali-ty Review panel for the California State Department ofEducation. The panel is beginning the first formal re-view of one of the most successful school districts ap-

proved under the Charter School District Initiative of 2000. Over the past five years Pacifica school district has become a

model of how changing teacher-student and school-communityrelationships can create positive learning environments. Unlikeother models that begin by changing instructional practices, inthis design it was the job of teaching that was the primary focus ofchange. This Charter District radically altered the roles and re-sponsibilities of all positions from teacher to superintendent.1

PLANNING OFFICE OF CENTRAL ELEMENTARYYour day-long assessment begins in the planning office at Cen-

tral Elementary School. The panel is now meeting with the SeniorSchool Planning Team composed of four master teachers at Cen-tral Elementary: Barb Milner, Nancy Broyles, Ben Barrel, and

1 This paper is written primarily in the “voice” of teachers to reflect their central role ineducational change. My experience with educational technology has reinforced my beliefthat it strongest potential is as a communication tool to amplify the voice of teachers andstudents. Without their voices, there can be no significant educational change. As much aspossible, I want to share the visions that have evolved from my work with some of the besteducators in the world. This paper is more about the process that took place among theplayers in this scenario than it is the end result. For a much detailed description of howcurrent reform efforts are supported by exemplary use of technology, see M. Riel, “Educa-tional Change in a Technology-Rich Environment,” Journal of Research on Computer inEducation, vol 26, No. 4, pp.452-474

| 89

by

Margaret RielInterlearn


Josie Rowe. Barb and Nancy are co-principals atCentral. Ben is working on a curriculum commit-tee at the State Department of Education. Josie ispart of the district’s Superintendent Team. You arelistening to Co-Principal Bab Milner describe thehistory and rationale for setting up a Charter Dis-trict model.

Barb Milner : By the end of the 20th century, itwas clear that schools designed on the “industrialmodel” to transmit knowledge were no longerserving students, teachers, or our communities.But it was hard to find models for change. Therehad been more than one “education president,”and “education governors” had led many states.Some of these leaders believed that technologywas the answer; they set up models to “infuse theschool” with advanced technology, hoping stu-dent skills would rise dramatically. But researchshowed that while students were able to learn howto use the technology, there was no significant im-provement in academic achievement.2 Realeducational change required changing the rela-tionship among teachers, learners, information,and experience.3

As you know, the first attempts at changingthese relationships were mostly isolated. For ex-ample, the “Charter Schools Initiatives” in Min-

nesota, California, and other states led to somelimited success in educational innovation.4 Inthese schools, teachers, parents, and members ofthe community could develop plans for an indi-vidual school without having to follow all of theestablished state or district regulations. But theseefforts divorced the school from valuable district,state, and national services. The “Star Schools Ini-tiative” in the early 1990s helped science teacherscome up with “action plans” for science educa-tion, but these innovations were not well inte-grated with other aspects of school learning.Privatizing public education was marginally suc-cessfully when the “public” children came fromrelatively privileged backgrounds. But theseschools did not provide the promised “quick fix”to address complex social problems faced byschools across the country. They often concen-trated on low-level skills with a focus on test tak-ing. These isolated attempts were neithercost-effective nor efficient in providing qualityeducation to all children.5

In the mid to late-1990s, the rapid growth of theNational Information Infrastructure pushed teach-ers to the limit with new responsibilities. Beforelong teachers everywhere were overwhelmed withelectronic mail and conferences on every topic.

2 One the most dramatic efforts of infusing schools with technology is the “Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow” project. The extensive researchon student achievement in these classrooms show that the students did about as well as they might have without all of the technology. That is, thatthey were able to learn how to use a complex set of tools without and loss of school achievement. But this research failed to validate an assump-tion that and infusion of technology would be the simple answer to the problems faced by schools. Dwyer, D. (1994) “Apple Classrooms ofTomorrow: What We’ve Learned,” Educational Leadership, vol 51, No. 7, pp. 4-10.

3 Many of the school reform initiatives suggest that the failure of schools is directly related to existing power relationships in schools. Specif-ically these views can be found in S. B. Sarason. The Predictable Failure of Educational Reform. (San Francisco: Josesy-Bass Publishers, 1990)and in S. Sarason, Culture of the School and Problem of Change, (Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1982).

4 For more details on the charter school initiatives and their process across the U.S., see, Bierlein, L. and L. Mulholland (February, 1994).Charter School update: Expansion of a Viable Reform Initiative. Tempe, Ariz.: Morrison Institute for Public Policy. For a discussion of theCalifornia Charter Schools, see Diamond, L. (1994) “A progress report on California’s Charter Schools. Educational Leadership, vol. 52, No. 1,pp. 41-45.

5 The current experiment, Education Alternative Inc. (EAI), headed by John Golle, has not succeeded in raising test scores of students ineight Baltimore schools even with dedicating 30 minutes a day to taking drills in math and reading that are similar to those used in tests. Recentlythe U.S. Department of Education concluded that EAI is not providing special education students needed services in their mainstreaming ef-forts. There are similar concerns that money allocated for disadvantaged student is not being used for this purpose. The Edison project has sethigher educational goals with a longer school day and a longer year but they have yet to demonstrate that they can reach their goals in a cost-ef-fective way. For more information on the issue of privatization of schools, watch for a new book by Thomas Toch, senior editor at U.S. News andWorld Report, or read T. Toch “Privatization: News form the Front” American’s Agenda, vol 4, No. 3, pp. 12-17, 46.

Appendix C The Future of Teaching | 91

We were wasting too much of our most valuableeducational resource—teacher time. And studentswere wasting classroom time on undefined explo-rations, looking just to see what was there.

As we approached the 21st century we knewthat a revolutionary plan for changing teachingand learning was necessary. That “revolutionary”change came when we understood that we neededto create schools where change was an ongoingprocess rather than an end state. Once we acceptedthis idea, it was clear that we would have to changethe way a teacher spends his or her day. And oncewe got started, we realized that this would only bepossible if we changed our educational system.

❚ Overview of Changesin Leadership Roles

Barb Milner : Before we visit the Learning Cen-ters, we want to give you a brief overview of thechanges. It has been only five years since we initi-ated our new plan, although we began planning inthe mid-1990s. Before the shift, we kept trying tocome up with the right mix of interpersonal andintellectual skills to define our conception of the“ideal” teacher. Some of us experimenting withmodels of “school site management” wantedteachers to be curriculum developers with leader-ship roles in organizing the school. But someteachers saw these new roles stretching teacherstoo far and moving them away from the classroomat the cost of student learning. They wanted to fo-cus on students’ learning styles. And then therewere teachers who had “had enough.” They weretired of having every social problem dumped atthe classroom door, being asked to work at thepace of a hospital emergency room without sup-port and then being “held accountable” for all fail-ures. They didn’t want another meeting on anytopic!

We were getting nowhere. There were so manydifferent skills that defined teaching that reaching

consensus about an ideal teacher was surprisinglydifficult. And most of our designs were so over-whelming that without changing salaries or ad-justing the demands placed on teachers, we knewthese “super” teachers were unrealistic. So, wetook a different approach and decided to developa role for teachers with differing strengths andabilities. We wanted to develop a system that rec-ognized achievement but also provided opportu-nities for people with different talents to play arole in education. One of the most difficult cir-cumstances constraining us was a very lean schoolbudget. Our current plan has evolved from think-ing about our options and working together. Whileit hasn’t always been easy, it has been a great expe-rience.

At this point, Barb pauses and looks toward theother master teachers. The exchange of glancesseem to underscore the last statement. Ben Barrelcontinues.

Ben Barrel: We realized that our visions and toolswould have to work within the organizational cli-mate of schools. And that climate needed to be oneof collaboration. Teachers and students, their rela-tionships to one another and to sources of in-formation and patterns of thought, could notremain insulated in classrooms. The changes youwill see today came from increased communica-tion and partnerships among teachers and throughrelationships we developed with students, librari-ans, museum curators, publishers, developers,scientists, and researchers both near and distantand at all levels of school leadership. These con-nections between the classroom and the worldhave been the path of educational change for us.6

We started with changing the teacher’s role be-cause we knew that we could not ask a teacher todo any more without changing the dimensions ofthe job. We were just stretched too thin. We need-ed to design a system where a teacher’s expertisein working with students was rewarded and re-

6 Case studies of changes that have taken place when school administrators move toward transformational leadership patterns can be foundin Leithwood, K.A, & R. Steinbach. “Indicators of Transformational Leadership in the Everyday Problem Solving of School Administrators.”Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education vol 4, No. 3, pp.221-244.


spected. But we also wanted a system where therewards for good teaching did not result in leavingthe classroom. While I enjoy my work developingcurriculum on our state committee, I do not wantto give up teaching.

We began to evolve a new plan for teaching andlearning as a community. We were well underwaywhen the Charter School District Initiative wasannounced. It provided the perfect vehicle to testour ideas. We were the second district to have ourcharter accepted. I had been doing grade-level“team teaching” for a number of years and the ideafor Learning Centers evolved from our work. Atfirst I teamed with two other teachers. The hardpart was finding time for planning. At the sametime we were involving students in more indepen-dent project-based learning using telecommu-nication and multimedia tools. Initially, ourSchool Site Council provided some funds for along-term substitute teacher who provided someflexibility, but what we needed was what we nowcall “Learning Guides.” Josie, are you planning todescribe learning guides now or later?

Josie Rowe: We only have time for a brief descrip-tion now. Later, when we meet in the business of-fice, I will give you some charts that will help usdiscuss the economic issues of staffing. Learningguides are para-professionals who help studentslearn, but they do not have all the added responsi-bility of teachers. They are not expected to devel-op curriculum or plan the overall design of theLearning Centers. Learning guides supervise andfacilitate independent and group work by stu-dents. Since they move through the Centers withthe students, they get to know the students welland create a consistent set of expectations for ap-propriate Center behavior.

As you will see when you visit the Centers, weencourage students to take responsibility and con-trol of their projects and activities. This makes itpossible for teachers to work with smaller groupswhile larger groups of students are working underthe supervision of learning guides. Some demon-stration or performance lessons by our mentor ormaster teachers are designed for the whole Learn-ing Center, or close to 100 students. Students

move from small intense groups to larger groupsboth for lessons and for project work.

While learning guides were the only complete-ly new position we created in our district plan, allpositions have been significantly altered. Maybesome personal history will help you see this. I wasan assistant superintendent in this district at thetime we began the process of change. I had beena teacher and I loved teaching and experimentingwith different approaches. Ironically, it was myexperience working as a teacher/researcher on auniversity project research team that pulled meaway from the classroom. I found it so intellectu-ally stimulating to be a team member with my uni-versity colleagues that when the project ended, Iwas no longer happy only teaching students.While I loved teaching, it was not enough of an in-tellectual challenge. I found I missed the learningand especially the collaboration with colleaguesthat had been a part of the research project. Therejust wasn’t enough time in a day of classroomteaching to think!

I took a break from teaching and went back tothe university to get an administrative credentialand some computer skills. I was rehired by the dis-trict as a computer coordinator and then principalof Seaside Elementary. From there I was pro-moted to assistant superintendent of school ser-vices. But from the time I left the classroom, Imissed my time with the kids. I had often consid-ered leaving my district position and returning tothe classroom—even considering the cut in pay!

The teachers who proposed that all administra-tors teach expected resistance. They were sur-prised to find out how many of us missedteaching. Our administrative duties are nowspread over four master teacher-superintendentsinstead of the one superintendent and two assis-tant superintendents of the past. Each masterteacher-superintendent is assigned to two schools.We also work very closely with the co-principalsat each school. A master teacher-superintendentrotates to a different pair of schools each year andtakes on slightly different duties. In our superin-tendent meetings, we collectively bring with us arich and extensive knowledge of our district


schools because all of us are teaching. And wework closely with all of the teachers who havebeen central in evolving this new model. In someways, our work is that of creating and managinga culture of professional reflection among peers.7

Quality Review Panelist: Don’t you find it hardto move back and forth between district officesand school sites for teaching? I would think youwould waste a lot of time traveling.

Josie Rowe: Well, the easy answer is no, becausethe district offices are located at every one of ourschools. With computer telecommunications, werealized that common physical location was nolonger an issue with most of our “meetings” tak-ing place every day online. We sold the districtbuildings and used the income to build an officecomplex at each of our eight schools. You willhave a tour of these buildings after your visit to theCenters. By locating offices at the schools, wecould share equipment and resources which savedmoney and provided better services to teachers.

Quality Review Panelist: What about groupmeetings?

Josie Rowe: We often meet in groups of differentsizes and the meetings are held at differentschools. Sometimes I travel to these meetings, butI also have the option of teleconferencing whichworks almost as well. We have so many more op-tions for collaborative work than we did in thepast.

Nancy Broyles: Access to district offices here atthe school is a real benefit for us as you will seewhen you visit them. But let’s move to the topicof Learning Centers. We want you to be in theCenters as the school day begins, so I want to give

you a brief overview of our instructional pro-grams.

❚ Overview of Learning CentersNancy Broyles: Many of the ideas for our planhave come from our work online with schoolsaround the world. Working with distant teachershas resulted in many new ideas that I don’t thinkwe would have had without electronic connec-tions. One of our major concerns was that in thepast students were asked to master discrete low-level skills and learn isolated facts. We wantedstudents to master subject matter in depth, learnhow to develop and apply problem solving skills,and most of all learn strategies and develop inter-ests that would help them throughout their lives.It was this thinking that led us to create LearningCenters instead of classrooms.

The Center curriculum is based on the newCalifornia Frameworks for Theme-Based Instruc-tion.8 Ben and some of our district mentor teach-ers were on the state committees that developedthese new curriculum plans. We are very proud ofour participation. By making it possible for ourteachers to work with the larger educational com-munity, they have developed expertise in nationaland international arenas which enriches theirteaching and brings many rewards to the wholedistrict.

We are now in the second year of our experi-ment with a new way of grouping kids. We havemulti-age learning teams with an average of 85students to a team. We moved away from agegrouping because the competition too often re-sulted in kids who gave up trying to learn. Wefound that student interest makes it possible forkids of different ages to work together as partners.

7For more discussion on the role of administrators to create and manage collaborative cultures, see Fullan, M. G., “Visions that Blind,” andHagstrom, D., “Alaska’s Discovery School” and Schmuck, P., “Educating the New Generation of Superintendents” Educational Leadershipvol. 49, No. 5, 1992,19-20; 23-26; 66-71.

8 These documents do not exist but they would be the natural extension of the excellent curriculum frameworks developed in California.Many of the current frameworks celebrate a theme-based structure for learning. But beyond the content, I want to highlight the collaborativeprocess involved in writing these guides. Educators, writers and resource experts work together to create a plan for instructional innovation.


Our emphasis is on participation and accomplish-ments and not competition and comparisons. Wefind this cross-age grouping very effective forboth younger and older students. Our studentteams move to a new Center after a 12-week termwith the exception of the five-year-olds team whostay in the same Center all year. Here is a copy ofour school schedule showing how our studentteams move through the Centers (table C-1). Thestudents are just returning from our first termbreak. The other handout is a list of the curriculumthemes for this year (box C-1). Our primary pro-gram and our intermediate program are describedin this chart.

All student work is directed toward the Centerexhibition9 which is listed at the end of the term.The whole community looks forward to thesedays, they are heralded in the local papers and, likeparades or fairs, there is a strong feeling of com-munity investment and pride. Local businessesprovide resources and business partners join theirstudents to see the end result of their educationalhelp. These “events” are public portfolios of stu-dent work—and of the help provided by our com-munity. The students are motivated to do wellbecause their friends and neighbors and onlinepartners will see their work. Parents see whattakes place in their school and they are encouragedto evaluate what they see. I wish you could be herefor an exhibition. They are a very impressive dem-onstration of community support as well as an im-plicit forum of parent education.

Quality Review Panelist: Do all district schoolshave the same themes at the same time?

Nancy Broyles: No, we rotate the themes. Somerepeat on a three-year cycle, others have similarform but take different content each time. Thishelps with our use of school and community re-sources. We usually share themes with two otherschools each year. This means that communitypartners like our Pacific Aquarium or the An-

thropology Center can contribute on a regular ba-sis to two different schools each year supportingall of our schools equally. Books, CD’s and otherlearning materials move across schools. Thismeans there is a less need for duplication of mate-rials. We have almost all of our educational mate-rials in constant use at one of the schools so weneed less room for storing materials. Teacherswork together across schools to coordinate andshare resources and experiences.

All teachers help in planning the overall designof the learning environments in the Centers. Butthere are different roles. Each Center has a curricu-lum coordinator for the humanities and languagearts strand and one for the science, technology andmath strand. They are “content” experts who coor-dinate the local and distant resources for design-ing Center activities. “Team” teachers andlearning guides stay with the same group of stu-dents all year, moving with them to each Center.They work closely with students and bring astrong knowledge of “student skills and interests”to the collaborative planning. Other teachers are“resource” teachers, who can provide specialwork in a particular area or for a particular group,for example, bilingual or technology resources.Planning the Learning Center environment meanscoordination of expertise in academic disciplines,knowledge of the student team, and integration ofresources. But now it’s time to see how this worksin practice. School is about to start.

VISIT TO THE OCEANSLEARNING CENTERYour group walks from the school planning officedown an outdoor walkway past the school-yardfull of the noise of kids finding each other andtheir early morning activities. Nancy offers to takethose who are visiting the primary program. Barbleads the rest of the group. You are reviewing theintermediate program and will visit the Oceans

9 These school exhibitions help make the school the center of the community and learning a valued activity. Students contribute to the com-munity by creating these evolving museums. The term “exhibition” comes from Ted Sizer’s book: Sizer, T., (1992), Horace’s School, Boston,Mass: Houghton Mifflin, which has influenced many of my ideas on school reform.

Appendix C The Future of Teaching 195

Sept. 5-9 Team Orientation WeekStudent skill assessment

Sept. 12-Dec. 16 Term 1 (12 weeks)

Sept. 12 Term 1 begins

Oct. 10 Columbus Day

Oct. 24-28 Half Term Break (one week)

Nov. 24-25 Thanksgiving Break

Dec. 9 Term 1 ends

Dec. 11-Jan. 2 Term Break (2 weeks), plus one-week holiday

Dec. 10, 12 Exhibition Days

Total Center Instruction Days = 57 days

Jan. 3-Mar. 30 Term 2 (12 weeks)

Jan 3 Term 2 begins

Jan 16 Martin Luther King Day

Feb 13-17 Half Term Break (one week)

Mar. 30 Term 2 ends

Apr. 4-14 Term Break (2 weeks)

April 1, 3 Exhibition Days

Total Center Instruction Days = 58 days

Apr. 17-July 14 Term 3 (12 weeks)

Apr. 17 Term 3 begins

May 29-June 2 Term Break (one week)

July 4-5 Independence Break

July 14 Term 3 ends

July 15, 17 Exhibition Days

Total Center Instruction Days = 58

July 16-20 School Reflection and End of Year Activities

School year:

173 days of Center Instruction

5 days of Orientation and Assessment

6 days of Student Exhibitions

3 days of Reelection & End of Year186 days of school for students

Term 1Learning Centers\Terms Sept.-Dee.

Entry ProgramTadpole Center

Primary ProgramThe Lands Learning Center Team P-1

The People Learning Center Team P-2

Our Imagination Learning Center Team P-3

Intermediate ProgramThe Oceans Learning Center Team l-l

Time Machine Learning Center Team I-2

Term 2 Term 3Jan.-Mar. Apr.-July

—Team K all year—

Team P-2 Team P-3

Team P-3 Team P-1

Team P-1 Team P-2

Team I-2 Team I-3

Team I-3 Team I-1

Inner & Outer Space Learning Center Team I-3 Team l-l Team I-2

96 I Education and Technology: Future Visions

Primary Program Center ThemesThe Lands Learning Center In this theme, students explore the different continents, regions, and

states, climate and weather patterns, creatures big and small, plants and food cycles, energy, adapta-

tions, transportation, and communication. Many of the Center activities are drawn from the theme cur-

riculum of the National Council for Geographic Education.

The People Learning Center: This theme looks at the organization of people into families and so-

cieties They look at how different geographic regions result in different adaptations with respect to

food, clothing, family structures, health, and issues of local and regional security. Students will be con-

nected to people in very different living conditions throughout the world, including students who live in

homes dug under the ground in the desert heat of Copper Pedy, Australia.

Our Imagination Learning Center: This theme celebrates our ability to think and write about things

that “might be” or “might have been’’—the idea is to explore ideas that stretch reality. The work in this

Center includes a comparison of games and toys used by students’ parents with those that are popular

with students today. Students will read, write, direct, create and produce. An accomplished poet and

artist wiII help students create images to extend the present into the future.

The Intermediate Program Center ThemesThe Oceans Learning Center: This theme focuses on all forms of animal and plant life in our

oceans, from the kelp beds to the whales, from the depths of the ocean to the shallow waters of the

wetlands and marshes Students will become partners in local environmental projects concerning the

preservation of the Batiquitos and San Elijo Lagoons.

The Time Machine Learning Center: Time Machine is a journey through time. The students and

teachers wiII identify a number of places and times to visit and transform the classroom appropriately.

Students will research these periods and then act in the role of characters and customs of the past, For

the Egyptian period, papyrus is currently growing in our school garden so that students can make pa-

pyrus rolls for keeping records.

Inner & Outer Space Learning Center: This theme takes students from microscopic cells mostly

inside the human body to the very large expanse of the universe. The work in this Center will include

discussions of major systems within the human body including reproduction. Students will also examine

systems of planets and stars m space. The students will be working with partner scientists from the

Space and Science Museum.

Learning Center. You wonder how it is possible Two of your team members leave to review thisfor kids of such different ages to work together inone setting.

Barb Milner: This brightly colored area is theTadpole Center. It is for the five-year-old students.In this first year, teachers focus on getting to knowthe students and assessing their skills and their in-terests. In this first year the students remain in thesame Center all year. It is a transition year whenstudents are able to seethe structure of elementaryschool from the comfort of an environment simi-lar to their early childhood experiences.

program. As you walk to the other Centers, Barbdescribes the buildings.

Barb Milner: You will notice that the buildingsare not new. We wish we could have started overwith a brand new school, but we did not have thatluxury. Our school was built during the middle ofthe last century. The classrooms were wellconstructed and earthquake-safe so we had towork with the constraints of the old building. Asyou can see, they are rectangular rooms builtalong corridors.


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When we were planning for our Charter Dis-trict, we wanted flexible learning spaces—placesfor small group discussions, for project work, andfor large group presentations and demonstrations.The auditorium was not very close to classroomsand it served as the lunch room on rainy days, soit was not a great place for computer equipment.We were stuck on the idea of groups of students inan auditorium with a large presentation system.But as display systems became less expensive, werealized that a number of smaller monitors arounda common space was a better solution. Thisshifted our thinking. Instead of trying to constructa large place to move to when needed, we just tookout the connecting walls between three class-rooms and created a Learning Center of flexibledimensions. We replaced the permanent wallswith those wonderful new inflatable walls that rolldown from the ceiling. Have you seen them? Lotsof hotels have them for conference rooms. Theyare strong enough to lean on but they can disap-pear almost completely. And the new sound-proofcovering is perfect for when we need more quietspaces.

This area is for the intermediate Centers includ-ing the Oceans Learning Center. The intermediateteams are made up of roughly equal numbers of9-, 10-, and 1 l-year-old students. This team is re-turning from an inter-term break of one week.

Projectmaterials

They will have six more weeks to complete theirCenter work.

As you approach the classroom, you can seethat only the door to the Center room is open andthat a few students have paused in the doorwaywatching you. As you approach, a gregarious boyoffers a greeting.

Michael: Hello Dr. Milner! Are these the visitorsyou told us about?

Barb Milner: Yes, are you going into your Learn-ing Center? Maybe we can follow you.

Michael: Sure, I’m Michael and this is my friendRio. We’ll be happy to show you around.

You follow Michael and Rio into a very largeroom (see diagram above). At the right end of theroom there are two large tables with trays con-taining science tools and microscopes with videodisplay monitors connected to them. There aresinks built into each of the tables and some pansof water connected by tubes. Near the front win-dows are rows of plants with labels, There are athree or four kids watching the fish in a largeaquarium. Another smaller aquarium has marshplants. In the corner of the room are several largecardboard boxes, partially completed signs, andother project materials.


Directly in front of you is one of the three porta-ble multimedia computer carts and an assortmentof tables. The rectangular ones have been groupedtogether to provide seating for 16 students. Thereare four students intently working with laptopcomputers. Off to the side are round tables wherea small group of students are working with paperand props. From the ceiling are stuffed paperscale models of whales, dolphins, sharks, and oth-er much smaller sea animals. Along the side areshelves with an assortment of writing and art sup-plies, including a large row of graph paper andabout a dozen calculators, some partiallycompleted dolphins, and meter sticks. There arestudents taking things out of brightly coloreddrawers labeled with student names. In the frontleft corner of the center are two printers and a vid-eo tape deck. There is a small group of kids scan-ning pages that are coming out of a printer. To theright of the door you just entered is a library areawith books and magazines, CDs and other re-sources.

At the left end of the Center is an open area witha brightly colored circular rug. There are kids,some with computers, sitting on the rug with back-packs thrown to the side. At one end of the rugthere is another multimedia computer cart. Alongthe wall is a long cabinet with a work-top.

Everywhere there are pictures and murals offish, penguins, kelp forests and ocean robotics. Atvarious places there are monitors mounted fromthe ceiling or on the walls. Throughout the Centerabout 35 kids work in small groups or alone. Theprinter is humming and the overall feeling is oneof respect for the work of kids.

Quality Review Panelist: Why are you cominginto the classroom before the bell rings?

Michael: I like to see if I got any personal mail.Most of us have computers at home, but, like withme, my older brothers never let me have anytime.If we finish our project work in class, sometimesthere is time to check mail. But sometimes I gettoo much mail. Lots of us get to school early andwe can come in when we want.

Rio: I’m here now because my group-see themover there—we’re working on our performancefor the exhibition. We are writing a play and wehad some new ideas to change it, so we decided tomeet before school to get more time. I better checkin—I think I’m late.

Rio goes past the multimedia computer cartand turns to see his image appear on the screen.He types a few keystrokes, glances at the screen,and joins his group. Michael tells you that Rio hasjust checked in. You watch Michael flash a grin to-wards the small camera over the computer andtype The computer returns with:

Welcome to the Oceans Learning Center,Michael. You are in Mr. Phillips’ discussionthis morning, then you have time to work withyour distant partners on the wetlands project.

Michael: This computer lets the office know I’mhere, and it tells us where we are supposed to goor what to do if we forget. But I already know whatI am doing.

Quality Review Panelist: What if you type in thewrong code?

Michael: If the code doesn’t match your picture,like, if you look into the camera instead of me (Mi-chael leans to the side of the computer and typesmml1), see what happens?

I am sorry I didn’t recognize you. Will youplease type your name.

See, it didn’t work. We have to make sure weare signed in. That’s our job.

Michael opens the cabinet below the computerand pulls one of the notebook computers out of therecharging unit while Barb continues the descrip-tion of the attendance procedure.


Barb Milner : After the second bell rings, thecomputer displays pictures and names of any chil-dren who have not completed this check in. Theguide or teacher only has to doublecheck for themissing kids and the attendance process is com-plete.

A round-faced, middle-aged man has left agroup of students and is approaching you.

Carl Side: Welcome to the Oceans Center! I heardyou might be visiting our Center this morning.Dave Brott asked me to tell you that he will be heresoon to talk with you. Please look around and Iwill be happy to answer any questions. until he ar-rives.

Barb leaves you with Carl to meet the two cen-ter teachers, Noel Phillips and Marilyn Quinsay,and team teacher Dave Brott.

Carl Side: As you can see, some kids are still out-side, others have checked in. I like to open theroom as soon as I get here because I like the kidsto see this as their space. They know the rules; ifthey are too rowdy, I just ask them to leave untilthe bell rings. It works OK. The students onlyhave five more weeks until their exhibition andthey are very excited about it. You can see theirprojects taking shape all over the Center.

Quality Review Panelist: What are they doingover there with all those tubes and pans?

Carl Side: The kids are experimenting with dif-ferent ways to convert salt water to fresh water.And next to it are plants that can tolerate some saltin the water. One group of students is trying to fig-ure out what properties make it possible for a plantto live in salt water and what happens to plants asthe amount of salt in the water changes. That iswhy some of those plants don’t look so great.These experiments are supervised by Dr. Hugofrom the university. See the tall girl with the ponytail, that’s Merica. Her group is doing the first partof a genetics experiment that will be continued allyear by each of the teams. Over there, Rio’s groupis working on a play. See Vincent and Tamar?They wrote the play and are directing the youngerkids, including Rio, whom I think you met.

Michael, seeing that your attention shifted toadult conversation, took the notebook computer tothe nearest table and was now reading the screen.You wander over to see what he is doing. He haslogged on to the server and is checking his mail.You apologize for the distraction and ask him toexplain what he is doing.

Michael: I am checking my personal mail. Youcan’t read personal messages during class time.See, here are project messages and this is my mailslot. During Center time, my personal mailboxwon’t open. I have to read mail before or afterschool or during our free times.

You ask Michael about the messages listed.

I am working with one of the biologists at theSan Elijo Lagoon. They are creating preserves forthe California least tern and the western snowyplover. Look, here are their pictures. Rio and I didsome observation shifts at the site with binocularsover the break. See, we sent a message to Dr. Coo-per recording our observations, but he hasn’t writ-ten back yet. There are more birds coming nowthat their nests have been restored. We are study-ing wetlands, oceans and lagoons, you know, wa-ter, with kids in other places. But in my personalmail slot there are messages from kids. I have beensharing game hints with a guy in Alaska.

You leave Michael reading a message marked“Yea!!! Trek gold finally found” to see what otherstudents are doing. Within a short time, a bellrings outside and the room fills with students who move through the Center with a sense of pur-pose. There are now more than 20 kids on the rugon the west side and Carl is reminding them thatthey need to keep their voices down. Mr. Phillipsenters from the west side of the Center. Carl quick-ly introduces each of you. You learn that Mr.Phillips, one of Ocean Center’s two curriculumcoordinators, oversees the Humanities and Per-forming Arts strand.

Noel Phillips: Hello, welcome to our Center. Ihope you had some time to look around. Did yousee any of the student projects? If you get a chance,you should ask Tera’s group to show you theirmultimedia display of the effect of the moon on


the tides. They are doing a great job. They can alsoshow you what would happen to the earth if themoon wasn’t there. It is a pretty impressive pre-sentation of their understanding. What I find soexciting about multi-media is not the presenta-tions, but the fact that kids can work with theirown understandings by creating their own mov-ies, presentation and programs.10

Today, we’re going to have one of our “bigideas” discussions. The students know that thewhales will soon be visible off the coast. Thequestion is—“Why do whales migrate instead ofhibernate like bears?” Students have been asked tocome with their hypothesis about why whales mi-grate, what factors would increase or decrease thewhale migration, and why they don’t hibernate.Students have time to explore the topic before wehave a discussion. I encourage them to talk withparents or try to find resources in the NetWorld orfrom print or people resources. Then we sharewhat we found out and what we think. The youn-ger kids often ask the type of questions that pushall of us to really understand the issue. To help an-swer tough questions, I check the National Teach-er Online Resource List. You probably knowabout it; companies or businesses donate a fewhours of employee time to respond to teacherquestions. I found an email address of a researchteam at Scripps that will respond to teacher ques-tions.11 I can generally find someone who can

help in any area. If you will excuse me, I have toget started. I just saw Dave in the office. He is theteam teacher for these kids, and he said he will beon his way over in a few minutes.

Mr. Phillips walks to the far side of the Centerand picks up a conch shell and blows into it. Morestudents move to the rug area. He glances at thecomputer and sees that Ricky and Kalani are mis-sing. Kalani’s picture is dim which means her par-ents have already called in. No one has seen Ricky,so he pushes return and attendance is over. A pro-grammed call is placed to Ricky’s parents.

Reaching to the wall, Mr. Phillips flips aswitch. There is a mechanical whir and what lookslike a carpet roll drops slowly from the ceiling. Itunwinds like a large projection screen until itreaches the ground separating the circle area fromthe rest of the Center. Then it slowly inflates to be-come a rigid wall, leaving only a small doorway.The sight and sounds of the student group aregone and the Center becomes smaller.

Meanwhile, on your side of the new wall, stu-dents are collecting small packs from one of theclosets and talking about who will take what.Some kids are arguing about where the nets are,who gets to take the Batiquitos Lagoon CDguides, and which micro-sensors will need to betaken. Within a few minutes another teacher ap-pears, checks the computer screen, and finds all

10 Recently George Lucas, renowned movie director, testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Telecommunica-tions and Finance on his ideas about reaching for a technology-enriched educational system of the future which he calls “Edutopia.” He is pro-ducing several movies set in the future that will provoke teachers and student to envision the use of the multimedia tools in new ways. But thecentral thesis of this paper is that the construction of a vision and the work to implement it will need to be repeated by the students, teachers, andschool leaders in each school. It is in the design process that is critical in constructing school reform. The George Lucas Educational Foundation(Box 3494, San Rafael, CA 94912) publishes information leading toward his vision in a newsletter called Edutopia. There is no cost for a sub-scription and it can also be found online (Gopher: glef.org; http://glef.org).

11 There are many projects that are working on finding ways to connect subject matter experts to schools are resources. In the Passport toKnowledge project, on which I am currently working, television and telcomputing are used in parallel to take kids on electronic trips to remote“fields” of science. One component to these field trips is that the scientists agree to respect to questions that students have with responent to theirscientific work. Trevor Owen has created “Electronic Writers in Residence” which connects professional writers with students through comput-er links to help them develop their voice through writing. Judi Harris, from the University of Texas in Austin, has been designing a project“Electronic Emissary” in which subject matter experts are matched with classrooms where there is interest in a specific area of expertise. Usingthe computer, these outside experts become both teachers and learners as they work electronically with students who share their interest. Re-cently on the Internet, research groups have offered services to schools like “Ask a Geologist” to field questions that student or teachers mayhave on issues related to the Earth. Similarly, a university professor has organized his students to provide an “Ask a Mathematician” service.


her students have checked in. Marilyn Quinsay isintroduced as the Ocean Center math and sciencecoordinator. After a quick round of introductions,she turns to her students.

Marilyn Quinsay : I assume that all of you haveyour data recorders, any micro-sensors you need,and your sketch pads. Your group should have acamera, binoculars, and their guides. The groupleaders should have the data recorders and theyoungest member should take the binoculars.(Then, turning back once more to the visitors).Too bad you don’t have time to join us on our fieldtrip, but I hope that you enjoy your visit.

About 16 students kids leave the room in groupsof 3-5 students. Marilyn waves goodbye and re-minds you that you will have time to talk later. Thisleaves a group of about 25 kids working aroundthe different areas of the room. Carl makes the lastcheck of the attendance chart, looks around theroom, and then comes back to talk with you.

Carl Side: You just met our two Ocean Centercurriculum coordinators. Let me show youaround. The room to the right is our “lab,” thiscentral area has mostly tables and chairs, and thediscussion room is now hidden by the wall. Teach-ers can decide which space is best for the type oflessons they teach. Inflatable walls make it easy todivide the space. The six ceiling-mounted moni-tors have replaced blackboards and display whatis on the screen of the multimedia Center. If wehave the whole group lesson, we separate theserectangular tables for more seats and use the circletables and rug area. The teacher stands over thereby the multimedia cart. The monitors make it easyfor each student to see without crowding. If somestudents are not participating in the lesson, we canseparate off the science lab area and they can workwith me. The three multimedia computers are por-table and can be moved wherever they are needed.

Quality Review Panelist: What are the rest of thestudents doing?

Carl Side: Different things. These kids over hereare creating their own designs for desalination.And this group is examining a colony of fairyshrimp, a species that has recently made a dramat-

ic comeback now that we are preserving more ofthe wetlands. (Looking toward a student standingalone at one of the tables and raising his voiceslightly)—Eric, you need to use this time produc-tively. (Turning back to you)—Sorry. They arefollowing the work of scientists involved in re-storing the Batiquitos and San Elijo Lagoons.Some students are working on individual learningcontracts. Oh, perfect, here comes Dave Brott, hecan answer your questions. I need to get back tothe students.

Carl introduces you and then moves over toEric’s group. Dave explains the roles of the centerstaff.

Dave Brott: I’m not sure how much you heardabout how we divide up responsibilities. I am theteam teacher for all of the kids at this Center. Carland I stay with this group evaluating their perfor-mance in different learning contexts and acrossCenters. We work with the Center teachers, whospend all year in the same Center organizing thecurriculum and making project options available.Marilyn and Noel coordinate the participation ofother teachers and outside experts both online andthose that come to the Oceans Center. They are the“content experts” making sure that we have the in-tellectual resources to expand on and extend theacademic interests of our students. But the trade-off is that they have fewer opportunities to observestudent performance across settings. On the otherhand, as the team teacher, I watch student perfor-mance across settings and find ways to encourageor motivate the students to take advantage of dif-ferent learning opportunities in each Center. To-gether we provide a good balance between a richlearning environment and a personal connectionwith each students.

Dave gives a quick overview of the Center acti-vities for the day and then the discussion turns toissues of student assessment. You want to knowhow learning is assessed.

Dave Brott: Assessment is what concerns mostpeople when they see kids involved in group proj-ects, especially kids of different ages. We havespent a good deal of time talking about why and


what we assess. The result of our discussion is adifferent process of assessment.12 The functionsof student assessment are complex and some func-tions conflicted with our goal of promoting life-long learning. We don’t use assessment to sortstudents according to their “intellectual skill.” Wecreate multi-age groupings to avoid tracking stu-dents for success or failure at very early ages.Grades were used in the past to motivate studentsby creating an external reward. Extrinsic rewardsare not effective and this can be seen by the factthat parents often had to find additional extrinsicrewards or bribes to motivate their children. Lowgrades can be very destructive. We find that creat-ing a museum exhibit that is enjoyed by the com-munity and provides more intrinsic motivation tolearn. We think it is important for all of us, stu-dents and teachers, to know how we are doing. Wetry to encourage a sense of self-improvementthrough learning that we hope will become a life-long habit.

Our past methods of assessment involved usingstudent memory for content information to indexlearning. It was an easy but inaccurate measure.Now we use the intersection of three measures toassess student learning: self-assessment, commu-nity comments, and teacher feedback. Studentperformance on national standardized tests is usedas feedback to the teachers.

So let me explain the process of student assess-ment. At the end of every session, the studentsspend time reflecting on their work as they getready for the exhibition. They select their bestwork to display in the exhibition. But they alsohave to see how they measured up to the goals theyset for themselves. I help them set realistic goalsand then we all work to help them achieve thegoals. So the first form of evaluation is the stu-dent’s written reflection on their accomplish-ments and success in reaching the goals they set.

The exhibition provides a time for parents andcommunity members to see what students have

accomplished. Parents can see how their child’swork compares with that of children of differentages and abilities. The exhibition provides stu-dents an opportunity to teach their parents. We askour visitors to comment on what they see in theCenter and to compare it to their expectations forlearning. These Center assessments often providea view into the work accomplished outside ofschool, in homes, and in the community.

The final measure is a “process” report from theCenter teachers. Here is where technology hasplayed an important role by providing an efficientway for our team to make, store, and share ob-servations about students. Did you notice the clip-board that Carl was carrying? We all have one. Seethe microcodes by student names on this clipboard? As I notice things while they are working,I make notes that are automatically added to theircomputer file. For example, from here I can seethat Patrick and Kerwin are working on the mea-surement of a blue whale. Patrick is using the rulerand calculator with ease and finding the length andconverting it to the scale we are using. He is alsoexplaining it to Kerwin who is attending, but notmaking any of the measurements himself. So, Iuse this touch screen to scan Patrick’s code, thenthe project name “fish scale,” and then the codethat describes his behavior. I can do the same thingfor Kerwin. I can develop my own system of“benchmark” codes for different aspects of thetasks from academic to interpersonal issues. If Iwant to add a new comment, I touch here and thengo to one of the Center multimedia stations andtype the comment. If I touch a group code, thecomment goes to each student’s file as well as tothe group file. Because the comments are codes,the students cannot see or tell from this sheet whatnotations I am making. This keeps the system veryprivate. In fact, if I hand this to you, you will notbe able to enter anything as I have to scan this mi-crocode on my ring to use it.

12 For more information of function of grading, see A. Kohn, (1994) “Grading: The Issue is not How but Why,” Educational Leadership vol.

52, No. 2, 1994, pp. 38-41.


All of us have these clipboards but we don’t usethem all of the time. However, when we see some-thing that we want to share with the team, this isan easy and efficient way to do it. Because of theease of representation, we can use the informationin many different ways. Marilyn might search forall comments that are related to the measurementtask and look to see if a task is appropriate for anage group. I spend more time reviewing individu-al student profiles across different Center activi-ties.

An advantage of this system is that any of uscan note patterns among the comments. For exam-ple, if I notice that there are more comments abouteither boys or girls in one area, I can alert othersand we make a point of watching the other groupmore closely. In the past, at report card time, therewere always some kids who just slipped throughthe system because they escaped the notice ofoverworked teachers. Every week a printout iden-tifies kids who have the least comments in an areaand we all make a special effort to watch these stu-dents more carefully. We all try to make studentobservations as they happen because we knowhow quickly memory fades.

All student records are stored on the computer.You saw the kids check in. Their daily schedule ison the computer. Did you know that parents withaccess to the NetWorld can access their child’sschool schedule from their computers at work?This way they are better able to ask questions orfollow the work of their child in school. If a childis giving a special report at school or practicing aperformance, we sometimes have a parent whowants to watch from work. We can focus thesesmall cameras on the students and parents canwatch. Of course not all parents have this flexibil-ity or access. Students can also bring tapes fromhome and make a copy so that parents can watchtheir child’s speech or presentation later. Theseperformances demonstrate student skills.

Quality Review Panelist: Does this mean that theparents can see the comments that you and the oth-er teachers make about their child?

Dave Brott: No, not in real time as we make them,but eventually they will see a summary “processreport” at the end of the term. I take all of the ob-servations that are made on a student and organizethem into a report card. I can display the frequencyof different comments and create a picture of stu-dent strengths and weaknesses. Most of the time,comments across teachers are similar and I justcreate the report. But sometimes they are very dif-ferent. For example, one teacher might appreciatethe creative skill in humor, while another mightdefine the behavior as disruptive. We meet as agroup and come to a consensus on how to presentthese abilities. The process reports together withthe exhibitions of student work give parents aclear picture of their child’s school performance.

Each term, I compare process reports with stu-dent self-assessments. If they match, then wework out a set of goals and perhaps a personal con-tract for some work to be accomplished during thenext session. If they are not in line, then I call fora parent/teacher/student conference to arrive at acommon understanding of expectations and be-havior. Students who are doing well have morefreedom to explore areas they find of interest. Insome ways, students earn their intellectual free-dom. Giving students more responsibility for theirlearning seems to be the key that changed stu-dents. We seem to have many more “gifted” stu-dents than we did in the past.

School assessment takes place in the first partof September when we compare our students withstudents from around the nation on the NationalStandards Assessment Tasks.13 You will be ableto see these scores later in the office. Our studentsscore very well in these tasks as the learning centerstructure help them take knowledge learned in one

13 These don’t exist now but I believe they are a reasonable projection from the current debate and work on creating National Standards. Formore information see National Council on Educational Standards and Testing, Raising Standards for American Education, (Washington DC:U.S. Government Printing Office 1992.


setting and apply it other settins. The teachers usethese scores to identify areas of concentration.

You and your team member move around theroom reading the reports on the wall and lookingover the shoulders of students. Most children areworking on projects but some students are work-ing with computer programs that look like mathand language games. You ask one student whatshe is doing.

Student: I am practicing math facts—mostlytimes tables. I guess I take too long to figure thingsout, so Mr. Brott wants me to see if I can improvemy speed. We can invent our own ways to solvemath problems and I am real good at that, but Mr.Brott says I will be even better if I know these byheart. My personal goal is to get to under 11 min-utes a race. I think these computer race car gamesare dumb, but I just broke 12 minutes so I think Iwill be fast enough soon, then I can get back towork on my project.

You watch for a few minutes, thank the student,and continue through the Center. Mary Stanley,the computer expert, enters the room and goesover to the multimedia computer in the lab area.She asks the students if they are prepared for theirteleconference, reminding them that Dr. Noorg isvolunteering to help and they need to take advan-tage of this opportunity. She opens the conferenc-ing program and exchanges a few words with Dr.Noorg and then leaves. You can hear Dr. Noorg

telling students that over 92 percent of the salt wa-ter marshes on the West Coast have been de-stroyed and encouraging them to see their work ashelping to understand how to preserve theseareas. Then a student from Oregon asks Dr. Noorga question about the data they have collected.Soon one of the Oceans Center students is summa-rizing their work. Carl has moved nearby, avail-able but not intrusive. Interested in the topic, youstay here for some time listening to Dr. Noorg andthe student groups.

Your attention is pulled away by students com-ing through the small door in the temporary wall.Mr. Phillips is organizing students into smallgroups at the round tables with some materials.Within a few minutes another teacher enters andsays something in Spanish and a dozen or so stu-dents follow this teacher into the discussion areawhere Mr. Phillips had been working earlier. Butyour attention is diverted by a low whistle from astudent working with notebook computer. Youwant to know what he is doing.

Student: I am reading the research journals fromPaul Smith, who is in Antarctica. He didn’t senda message last week because they were lost on theice for three days before they were rescued,sounded pretty scary. Now they are stuck in anoth-er storm. I’m glad I can do my ocean work in theclassroom! 14

Leaning over, you read the screen:

14This is part of a much longer message by Paul Smith shared on the Passport to Knowledge, “Live from Antarctica” electronic field trip.The students were able to follow researchers, pilots, weather forecasters, camera crew, a teacher, a 17-year-old student, as well as others as theyset foot on the distant continent of Antarctica and began their explorations and work.


Last week I went south to Robbo’s and hada fantastic time quadding around the islands.We climbed through icebergs, said hello toWeddel seals, climbed up to Opaque Lake (socalled because the water is full of penguinwaste) and laid hands on the VanderfordGlacier without an enormous chunk breakingoff and squashing us. There are about 13islands down that way and although we didn’tget to all of them we covered a lot of ground.One place I’d like to go back to is HerringIsland where the seals come to give birth inOctober. As is so often said about Antarcticweather-beautiful one day, really horrid thenext--we were stuck in Robbo's hut for thenext day with the strongest blizz recorded thisyear blowing outside. Angie read the hut logand found out how, in its early days, it had atendency to snap guy ropes and move the hutseveral meters. It didn’t this time but not forlack of trying on the weather’s part. i thoughtI’d just open the door quickly and peek out.Bad move. Sort of like getting all your dailyfresh air in about two seconds, plus a showeronce the snow’s finished melting..

At that momenta small boxed message appearsat the bottom of the screen from the school office.

Ms. Johnson, our parent/artist, will be herein five minutes to help students with the oceanmural. Those involved should finish up theirwork, log off, and gather their materials.

At the same time, Barb Milner returns to theCenter and explains that for the next hour the stu-dents will all be in skill clinics of different types.This is the time when almost all teachers are in theCenters working with groups of students. Youagain raise the issue of differential skill levels andask how this works.

Barb Milner: Using the assessment profiles fromthe beginning of the school year, students haveareas of concentration identified. These can beareas of student expertise or areas of weaknesses.

Students have individual goals and the skill clin-ics are organized to help students in these specialareas. The composition of these groups is one ofthe continual topics of teacher discussion in ourstaff meetings. There is no perfect formula for bal-ancing the comfort level of learners in homoge-neous groupings with the challenge that comesfrom working with heterogeneous groups. Eachgroup of Center and team teachers tackle skillclinics in their own way.

You stay and watch the lessons until Barb indi-cates it is time to visit the business complex. Youwould have enjoyed more time in the Center, butyou also want to find out how this district madethe transformation from the traditional hierarchyto this collaborative arrangement. You are in-trigued by teachers who move in and out of theclassroom so easily. One of your questions is howteacher unions and job protection issues are han-dled in this new arrangement. You follow Barb to-ward a modern structure of wood and glass as shedescribes its history. The other members of yourpanel are already there.

VISIT TO THE DISTRICT/SCHOOLOFFICESBarb Milner: A professional career path forteachers necessitates a place of work other than aclassroom or Center. So, we did some creativethinking and eventually sold the district offices.With some help from a bond passed by the com-munity, we were able to build a smaller office siteat each of the eight schools in the district. You sawthe school planning office and the school secretaryin our earlier meeting, but now I want you to seethe rest of the office complex.

On the other side of the school planning officeis a medium size office and a small workroom withoffice equipment, file drawers, and some videoand electronic equipment including a large Sili-con Image system. You meet Alan who is the office/district manager at Central. He works directly forJosie and handles district records. He introducesyou to several other people working in the office.


Alan says they are mostly supported by grants andcontracts held by mentor teachers.

You walk down a short hallway. To the right isa library conference room with a number of hard-wood tables pushed together to form one largetable and a set of padded office chairs. To the leftyou can see a lunch room with some people talkingand waiting in front of a microwave. You walk pastthese rooms into a modern looking office complexdivided into modular units. Room dividers createa number of different-size offices, some with doorsopen, others are closed. You are curious aboutwho gets larger or smaller offices.

Barb Milner : (laughs) Well, it isn’t always theeasiest decision and it changes from year to year,but we try to be as fair as possible. Sometimesmentor teachers prefer to share a larger spaceamong two or even three teachers because they arenot here all the time. In some cases they are work-ing on the same project, other times they are justfriends who find it easy to share a large space. Oth-er teachers would rather have a small space tothemselves. Another factor is the nature of a proj-ect. For example, Marilyn Quinsay is working ona math multimedia program for Educational De-signs. You may have noticed the Silicon ImagingSystem in the workroom? She uses a range of dif-ferent tools that take up space so we give her moreroom. Her work makes it possible for us to havenew equipment. We are getting a new touch screensystem for the Center as a result of her contract.She is working with a national team of teachersand students to develop a multimedia theme-based curriculum. With the Silicon System, wecan use the Custom Courseware Service to designand print classroom materials as we need them.

Quality Review Panelist: But who makes the de-cisions about office space?

Barb Milner: The actual decision is made by theteachers in our school management meetings. Wemeet face-to-face during each term break to makedecisions that relate to teaching and working. Butwe have online interaction all of the time. We be-lieve that teachers must have the responsibility formaking the decisions that affect them. This is the

way we deal with most issues of limited resourcesin our district.

Quality Review Panelist: Since you mentionlimited resources, I notice that some desks havecomputers, others don’t. How does this work?

Barb Milner : Just like you saw in the Center, thenotebook computers are charging here (she opensthe cabinet under a multimedia computer similarto the one in the Learning Center). All teachershave their own private “card” drives, and of coursespace on the office network. But these notebookcomputers make it easy for us to share resources.Of course, we would love the new “Power Paper”computers with those “crystal image” screens, butwe just don’t have the funds to upgrade. I think itis the nature of schools to have to work with yes-terday’s technology but at least we have portable,cordless computers. During the heaviest use time,inter-term and term breaks, we borrow computersfrom the Centers.

Quality Review Panelist: Who works at thosedesks along the wall?

Barb Milner : Those open stations are primarilyfor the entry teachers. Since they spend almost allday in the Centers, they tend to keep their workand materials in a Center desk. But these open sta-tions provide a quick place for anyone to checkmail or type a letter.

Quality Review Panelist: I see phones. Howmany lines do you have and how do you accountfor phone use?

Barb Milner : There are phones on every desk, fi-nally, but no, they are not private lines. In fact ourlimited budget still makes it necessary for teachersto have calling card codes and limits on the copymachine and printing supplies. The difference isthat teachers set the limits and monitor them-selves. When teachers get grants and contractsfrom different groups, they include indirect costsof 40 percent for phone, mail, and other office ex-penses. This is how we are able to maintain the of-fice.

We are headed for the conference library to talkabout staffing. Josie is waiting for us and I think


Instructional Positions Academic Requirements Average Time at this Level Salary Range

Learning Guides ■

Entry Teacher ●

Mentor Teacher ■

■

Master Teacher ■

2-year College degree witha Learning Guide Certificateor B.A.

B. A. and provisionalteaching credential

Full teaching credentialOther certification oreducation will be necessaryfor some activities.

Administrative credentialand usually graduatedegrees

she will have some information that will help youunderstand some of the things you have been see-ing. I will be at the school planning office and willmeet you there later.

You say goodbye to Barb as Josie welcomesyou. The topic of discussion is different roles, re-sponsibility, and, most important, the costs of newstaffing positions.

❚ Teacher Roles and SalariesJosie Rowe: I hope you enjoyed your visit to theCenters. Now we have more time to talk about thechanges in the career path of teachers. There aretwo critical components that make our plan differ-ent than any that had been tried in the past. One isthe use of para-professional learning guides andthe other is the combining of outside resourceswith public funding. I am going to describe theteaching positions and pay scales (see table C-2).

Learning guides are para-professional posi-tions. Learning guides don’t require a great deal ofacademic preparation, but they need to have goodskills in working with and motivating students.Basically we have two categories of people whoare attracted to this position. Some young people

3-year renewable contracts,security of employment aftersecond contract.

Up to 5-year contract withtenure decision between years2 to 5.

Advancement beyond a MentorTeacher based on meritdetermined by peer-reviewprocess.This is the top rank of educator.

$20,000-$25,000/year$110/day

$25,000-$30,000/year$120/day

$32,000-$50,000+/year$175+lday(unlimited)

$55,000+$235+/day(unlimited)

who are looking for a way to earn money betweencollege and graduate school find organizing learn-ing for students an enjoyable break from studying.Some are considering a career in teaching or feelthat some experience working with kids will be agood way to prepare for their role as parents.

Then we have another group that is generallyolder, some have had teaching experience. To bevery blunt, they are not interested in the intellectu-al challenges that face teachers in our career plan.They just enjoy working with kids. You met Carl,right? He is terrific with kids. They take to himlike the Pied Piper. He wasn’t great at organizingacademic lessons, but he gave life lessons that stu-dents rarely forgot. In the past, he ended up witha class of the most difficult kids in the school be-cause he was so good at reaching them. But thiswas unfair to Carl who was overworked, and itwas unfair to the students who did not have thesame learning opportunities of other students. Wewere creating a school within the school, segregat-ing students and not providing all students thelearning environments they needed.15 Carl de-cided he would rather be a learning guide than ateacher. He finds the work fulfilling and enjoys thefreedom after school and during term breaks.

15 Education tracking of students is not a productive strategy. For more extensive discussion of this issue see J. Oakes, Adam Gamoran &

Page (1992), Curriculum Differentiation: Opportunities, Outcomes and Meanings, In: Philip Jackson (Ed.) Handbook of Research on Curricu-

lum (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1992). Also see H. Mehan, Understanding Inequality in Schools: The Contribution of Interpretive Studies,

The Sociology of Educational vol. 65, No. 1, 1992, pp.1-20.


Learning guides work from September to mid-July. During the one-week half-term breaks, theyhave meetings and recordkeeping tasks, but theyget the two-week period between terms off. Theirsalary works out to about $13 per hour. They openand close the centers each day. They are in the cen-ters or on the playground seven hours a day witha 45-minute lunch and a 15-minute break. Butthey do not have to prepare lessons, write reportcards, or work on weekends. They are the onlygroup in our district that is still represented bytraditional teacher unions. However we are allmembers of the recently evolved AmericanEducation Association (AEA). We believe this or-ganization represents the transformation that weare working towards.16

Quality Review Panelist: How do you react tothe criticism that you are de-skilling the role ofteacher? What if you just kept increasing the timekids spent with learning guides versus teachers?Does this worry you?

Josie Rowe: Yes, this does worry us and we havespent many hours discussing this very issue. Butwe try to look at the whole picture. We wanted toarrive at a system that included those who wanteda fast entry into working with kids, but also pro-vided a system of rewards, a career ladder thatwould attract talented men and women into thechallenge of continually assessing and evolvingthe best possible educational system. There aremany teachers in other school districts with lessskill than our learning guides who work with stu-dents all year. We are trying to increase the levelof skill by not losing talented teachers to other ca-reers. Because job opportunities for women haveexpanded, it is important to create incentives to at-tract the level of teachers that we want in leader-ship roles in education. Remember that learningguides are not teachers. They are there to super-

vise learning. Without teachers, there is no learn-ing to supervise.

Our teachers did an analysis of how they spenttheir time in the classroom. They found that theyspent an average of two-thirds of their time teach-ing either whole group or small group lessons butthat there were 20-minute periods throughout theday when students were doing group work or indi-vidual writing or reading. Children, unlike olderlearners, cannot be left without supervision. Thelearning guides provide this supervision. Butmaybe this will be more clear after I introduce ourdifferent levels of teachers. There are entry teach-ers, mentor teachers, and master teachers—andthere are levels within each rank.

Quality Review Panelist: My concern is that thedaily rate you list for the different ranks of teach-ers looks very low, but you list a high yearlysalary. Can you explain this?

Josie Rowe: Entry teachers are beginning teach-ers. In practice, most have full credentials, butthey can be hired with a provisional credential andfinish their credential work while they teach.Entry teachers are expected to spend five or sixhours a day with students in the Center and the restof their time is spent working with Center or teamteachers. Entry teachers are paid during termbreaks like learning guides, and they are also paidduring half term. Except for a day or so of super-vising student exhibitions and attending teammeetings, they can structure their time duringterm breaks, but the expectation is that they areworking during this time. They do have somevacation time, one week at Christmas and oneweek during the summer, but the rest of the timethey are learning. It is their time to develop an areaof expertise. The difference between a learningguide and an entry teacher is in time rather thanmoney. Entry teachers have much more time for

16 Trade unions were set up to protect the rights of workers from the abuses of management. Professional organizations are set up by mem-bers to set standards, control certification, regulate members and provide channels of communication. With a shift from teachers as workers toteachers as professionals should come a transformation of teacher unions to professional organizations. The American Education Associationdoes not currently exist but represents this evolution that I believe is vital to educational change. The new organization suggests a shift to sharedresponsibility.


planning and for developing ties in the profession-al community of educators. It is these ties that willlead to professional work and pay.

The transition to a mentor teacher will be basedon the productive use of this time. Over the firstfive years of teaching, entry teachers have almosta full year of professional development time.Entry teachers, like all teachers, have flexible con-trol over their work. They can work in the schooloffice complex, at a resource center or library, orat home. The normal career path has them comeup for a tenure peer review in their fifth year. Theyare evaluated in a peer review process in terms oftheir teaching skills, their expertise in an area oftheir choice, and their service to the educationalcommunity. Entry teachers are encourage to de-velop professional ties but not to take on addition-al responsibilities outside of Center teaching. Webelieve it takes concentrated teaching for aboutthree to four years to develop one’s style as ateacher. Most entry teachers begin as “team teach-er” because this gives them the opportunity to col-laborate with three different sets of Centerteachers over the year. While these new teachersare analyzing student learning, they are exposed tothe teaching styles of our best teachers. This waythey learn the skills both from center participationand observation. Team teachers prepare and teachlessons in close cooperation with center teachers.

Once a teacher has demonstrated good teachingskills, they are free to develop an area of expertisewhich will eventually lead to professional oppor-tunities. We provide the time and encouragementfor our teachers to pursue intellectual challengesoutside of the Center. Since we did not have fundsto pay teachers an increasingly higher salary forteaching, we have instead made it possible forthem to essentially split a teaching position withother work in the educational community. We giveteachers time to pursue intellectual challenges thatwe believe make them better teachers.

Quality Review Panelist: What counts as “anarea of expertise” and how do teachers decidewhat to do in this professional development time?

Josie Rowe: That is a good question and someentry teachers find making that choice difficult

because it is a new concept. But in our early dis-cussions of what made someone an ideal teach-er—remember, we talked about that thismorning—we found that it wasn’t the particularskill, like teaching writing, organizing innovativescience labs, or integrating technology. It wasmore the very fact that these teachers had worked,often on their own time, to develop a strong pas-sion for some way of improving education. It wasthis process of learning—not what they learned—that characterized our best teachers. So we wantedto develop a plan that would encourage teachers tobe learners. And we wanted them to have a choice.

Of course, like most choices, the options avail-able are somewhat constrained by economic reali-ties and regional opportunities. The goal is to havethis area of interest evolve into contractual work.If you decide to become a specialist in an area inwhich there is little need, such as a bilingual spe-cialist in a language that is not spoken here, it isgoing to be more difficult to find work in this area.On the other hand, if there is grant money avail-able for environmental science or district andstate opportunities for bilingual Spanish/Englishspecialists, developing expertise in these areasmight make it easier to make the shift to a mentorteacher.

Mentor teacher positions are very different thantraditional teaching positions. Mentor teachers arepaid a slightly higher rate for classroom contacthours. But, again, the advancement to this level isa shift in the amount of time spent in the class-room. The expectation is that they will spend upto two-thirds of a day teaching. However the otherone-third of their time is free for them to take onother tasks that are related to their developing areaof expertise. These might be consulting contracts,district resource positions, foundations and gov-ernment grants, or work at the university either inresearch or education. While teachers have writtenand received grants in the past, they have beenlargely for materials or salaries of other people. Inour district, mentor teachers can write grantswhich include up to 50 percent of their salary.

If an entry teacher develops an area of expertiseearly and is awarded a grant or receives a contract,


he or she can ask to be reviewed for mentor statusafter two or more years of teaching. At the otherend, an entry teacher must develop an area of ex-pertise within seven years or they will not havetheir contract renewed. Basically, we are sayingthat teachers are professional learners who wantthe intellectual stimulation that comes from fol-lowing personal interests.17 We have taken astrong stance in this district. We don’t think some-one can be a good teacher if they are not learning.

Ben Barrel (who enters the library to hear the lastcomment): And similarly, we decided that allschool leaders should be “master teachers” as wellas master learners. This keeps the loop betweenleading, learning, and teaching closely aligned.

Josie Rowe: Hi, Ben, I’m glad you have time tojoin us. I am describing the steps from an entrylevel teacher to a mentor teacher and then maybeyou could continue with a description of the pro-cess of becoming a master teacher.

Ben nods as Josie continues with the descrip-tion of mentor teachers.

Josie Rowe: A mentor teacher is in the Centerworking with kids for three to four hours a day,some more, some less, depending on lots of fac-tors. Some of our mentors provide services thatwere in the past district positions. Our resourceteachers help identified students intensely duringinter-term weeks and sometimes between terms.This way students who need extra help are not los-ing regular instruction for their special needs likespeech or language.

A mentor teacher is guaranteed a minimalsalary for teaching two-thirds of each of the schooldays and participating in the three exhibitions.This leaves almost half their time for work in other

areas of education, and more than half of a year ifthey choose to work over summer break. All ofthese work arrangements must be submitted andapproved through our contracts and grants office,but it provides an open-ended salary for teachersbased on achievement. Each of our teachers canchoose how hard they want to work. Some of ourteachers work year round using the term breaks towork on many exciting projects. They earn sala-ries that are comparable to other professionalssuch as university professors, lawyers, high-leveladministrators. Our district benefits from these ar-rangements in three ways. One, and most impor-tant, our teachers are intellectually engaged ineducational issues which often enrich Centerteaching. Two, the outside employment covers of-fice and other “overhead” expenses which supportour office complex. And three, we rarely lose our“best” teachers to jobs outside of the classroom.

Our district has one of the best records in the na-tion for pulling in grant money. This is not surpris-ing since we provide time and incentives forteachers to write grants. Some of our teachers arepartially funded by grants—in fact you mighthave noticed the group in the Oceans Center work-ing with the vernal pool fairy and tadpole shrimp.Their work is part of Center teacher Noel Phil-lips’s grant from the Wildlife Federation. I thinksome of the highest-paid mentor teachers havecontracts with publishers designing electronicmaterials for home as well as education markets.Since up to 50 percent of a mentor teacher’s salarycan be negotiated by the teacher with other orga-nizations, a mentor teacher could, in theory, earnmore money than a master teacher. However, Isuspect that this level of recognition of skillswould prompt a review process and an early ad-vancement to master teacher level.

17 The professional development of teachers requires taking an active role in learning new ways of teaching. The change is more likely tohappen if their professional development is linked to their career advancement in their chosen area of expertise. For more information on themultiple factors involved in professionalizing teaching, see W. Fireston & B. Bader, Redesigning Teaching: Professionalism or Bureaucracy?(Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992).


Quality Review Panelist: Is there an issue oftravel? If teachers are working for people outsideof your district, don’t they have to travel to meet-ings?

Josie Rowe: While some of these projects involvetravel, teleconferencing helps keep teachers onsite most of the time. The rapid development ingroupware has made it much easier for theseteams and committees to work together. In fact, Ipersonally feel more productive in online meet-ings, although I admit it is more fun to go and meetwith people face-to-face. However, there is plentyof time between terms to arrange for travel.

I think I’ve said enough about mentor teachers,so I will stop and give Ben a chance to tell you howmentor teachers progress to master teachers. Hemight want to address the issue of travel as he hasa 50-percent contract with a curriculum commit-tee at the State Department of Education.

Ben Barrel: Travel is not a problem as most of mywork is done online. In fact, most meetings are atconferences that I would probably go to anyway.But let me describe the master teacher position.The plan we have in place says that after five yearsof teaching as a mentor teacher, a teacher can re-quest or be recommended for a peer review for theposition of master teacher. Some teachers may notbe ready after five years and that is fine. A mentorteacher can stay a mentor teacher for as long as heor she wishes. There is no pressure for all mentorteachers to be master teachers. Being a masterteacher is a way to reduce teaching responsibilitiesto provide more time to pursue leadership roles ina wide range of educational settings.

You have to be at the rank of master teacher tobe a member of the principal or superintendentteams. But master teachers don’t have to be ad-ministrators. Because of the way we started, cur-rently most master teachers have either principalor superintendent positions. But this year that willstart to change. For example, Marilyn Quinsay isup for review. She has developed an internationalreputation as one of the leading developers of mul-

timedia programs and she wants more time towork on this.

In the past, teachers such as Marilyn wouldhave left teaching for the prestige and financial re-wards of developing new materials. We give themthe option to stay connected and involved withstudents. That is what I like about our plan. But Ido have a concern. I am worried that if all teachersstay in education and become master teachers thework in the Center might become too fragmented.Right now we have an ideal mix of learning guidesand entry, mentor and master teachers and thingsare working better than I ever expected. But I hopethat this system will be able to develop along withteacher advancement.

Josie Rowe: Ben, you missed our discussion oflearning guides and concerns of de-skilling therole of teaching. But I know these issues concernyou.

Ben Barrel: Yes, we are charting new territoryand it is difficult to see into the future. But we arehopeful that the creation of the Teacher Senate andthe increased income to the school from masterteachers will be one of the resources that gives usmore flexibility in dealing with problems as theyarise. The system is not fixed. We know thatchange is part of the plan and we are hoping thatour new collaborative structure will be openenough to design this change. The excitement ofour teachers in having control of their lives in theTeacher Senate is big step forward.

Quality Review Panelist: Well, I want to knowhow this system compares in cost to the moretraditional plan of having one teacher for 30 kids.I can see that there are some savings with learningguides, but how many teachers do you have andwhat is the pricetag of your payroll? How is teach-er-student ratio computed?

Josie Rowe: I have prepared a chart so that youcan see how the number of teachers has shiftedat this school. In 1995, we had about 30 stu-dents in a classroom with a total of 18 teachers


Traditional Model (1994)

Beginning teachers Midrange teachers Highest teachers3 full-time 4 full-time 11 full-time

3x$25,000 4x$38,000 11 x$46,000

$75,000 $152,000 $506,000

3 teachers 4 teachers 11 teachers

TOTAL: 18 full-time teachers $733,000

New Model (using 1994 equivalent figures)Learning guides Entry teachers Mentor teachers Master teachers7 full-time 4 full-time 12 two-thirds time 4 one-third time

7 x $22,000 4 X $27,000 12 X $32,000 4 X $24,000

$154,000 $108,000 $384,000 $96,000

7 teachers 4 teachers 7.92 teacher equivalent 1,32 teacher equivalent

TOTAL: 20.24 full-time guides and/or teacher equivalents $742,000

(table C-3).18 The 18 classroom teachers weremostly at the top of the teaching pay scale.

With our new structure, it is difficult to makedirect comparisons, because of all the differences.We have seven learning guides (one for each Cen-ter), four entry teachers, 12 mentor teachers, andfour master teachers. The Center time for mentorsand master teachers (two-thirds and one-third) isan average and in practice it is different for specif-ic teachers. This gives us, counting learningguides, the equivalent of more than two additionalteachers, which changes the student-teacher ratiofrom 30.5: 1 to 26.9:1. The payroll difference isnot significant given this reduction in student-teacher ratio.

Quality Review Panelist: So, in table 3 you haveonly listed the money that mentor teachers receivefor teaching. But they essentially have other jobsthat add to this salary?

Josie Rowe: Yes, some of the mentor teacherscombine Center teaching with work as resourcespecialists in a particular area of expertise. Thesepositions were covered by district funds and thecost also remains about the same. Instead of one

teacher working across several schools, these re-source positions are held by mentor teachers whoare at the school all of the time. They often havethe benefit of knowing much more about the stu-dents they work with since they see many of themin regular Center teaching.

Other teachers developed expertise outsidethese certified school or district positions. Someof these are funded out of public education funds,such as Courtney Balboa who supervises studentteachers for the university. Also, I think we havetwo mentors working with the State Department.Is that right, Ben? (Ben nods.) Two or three areparticipating in research projects and testbed acti-vities that are funded by a combination of govern-ment and foundation money. And then we have afew that work with commercial firms, mostlycreating classroom materials. The most difficultpart is trying to keep up with the developments inthe lives of all of our teachers and organizing les-sons and professional commitments into a singlesystem. I would be misleading you if I said thissystem always works smoothly. But we feel thebenefits far outweigh the extra scheduling work.

18 For the sake of this comparison, all salary estimates are based on monetary values of 1994. The salaries listed for the traditional model are

drawn from the California Statewide 1992-93 Average Salaries and Budget Percentages for School Accountability Report Cards. I have also

consulted with school district superintendents and school principals to assure reasonable figures.


Salary for Superintendent $100,000

Salary for two AssistantSuperintendents ($78,000 x 2) = $156,000

Costs associated with School Board $60,000

Salary for eight Principals($66,000 X 8) = $528,000

Total Cost $844,000—

Quality Review Panelist: For the master teach-ers, your chart shows only $24,000 which I as-sume covers one-third of their time that theyspend teaching. How are master teacher salariescovered?

Josie Rowe: Yes, that is a good question and thatleads into these other two charts which I have pre-pared to compare our district administrative coststo the past. Table C-4 shows our 1994 administra-tive costs.

Table C-5 shows how things look in our currentarrangement. I have subtracted the teaching sala-ries for master teachers as this amount is coveredin the teaching budget in table C-3. You can seethat our administrative costs have remained moreor less the same.

Quality Review Panelist: I see that you sub-tracted the costs associated with the school board.I read somewhere that you don’t have a board.Don’t you value community input?

uals and few people in the community had anyidea of what was going on in the schools.

Too often, well-intentioned people ran forschool board because they were concerned abouta single, controversial issue. But a school is acomplex system and any attempt to solve a singleproblem without a systemic understanding of theeducational community causes problems. Everytwo years our superintendent and her assistantsstruggled to educate a new panel of citizens so thatthey could make critical decisions that affected thelives of teachers and students. The problem withthis model was that our school leader became aschool board tutor working overtime to educatefive people. This was problematic in two ways.These five people had limited channels for gather-ing community input. And we needed the time ofour superintendent to work with teachers to pro-vide leadership and direction. Most of us feltstrongly that if we were going to have the leader-ship that was necessary to be constantly evolving,the decisionmaking power needed to be in thehands of our teachers and not hastily trained out-siders to education.

We actually do have a school board but it haschanged in name and function. The decisions thatused to be made by the board are now made by our“Teacher Senate.” Each teacher at our school, re-gardless of level, has one vote in the Teacher Sen-ate. The voting takes place electronically. Thisway our superintendents work with teachers to

Josie Rowe: We do! So much so that we wanted create the best quality program possible. But Ito find a way to strengthen it, but we didn’t believe don’t want to ignore the issue of community lead-that a school board, as it operated in 1995, was ac- ership in education. We have arranged a luncheoncomplishing this goal. The school board was setup in the early part of the last century to make theschools accountable to the public. The problem Five Master Teachers/

was that, in practice, school board members did Co-Superintendents (4x $82,000) $ 328,000

not always have the background in education to 16 Master Teachers/Co-principals,two per school, (16 x $65,000) +$1 ,040,000

provide the level of leadership that was required.Each newly elected board had be reeducated. The

Total $1,368,000

Master Teacher (one-third) teachingmore serious problem was that the school board salary ($2400,00 x 21 Mastermembers had almost no links with the community teachers) $ 504,000they represented. They made decisions as individ- Total $ 864,000


over this topic because we are absolutely inter-ested in keeping the community highly involvedin all decisions that affect their children. As youwill see, our community is entirely behind our de-cision to put educational decisions in the hands ofexperts.

Quality Review Panelist: How would you de-scribe the benefits of your changes in teacher’sroles and responsibilities?

Ben Barrel: Well, the teachers here are alive withpassionate interests and they have time and sup-port to pursue them. When they teach, they teachfrom what they are learning. It is fresh and they arenot bored. In fact, I doubt that you will find any-one, teacher or student, who uses “bored” to de-scribe what they do here.

Quality Review Panelist: I did find one childwho said that a computer game she was workingon to reinforce the times tables was boring. But insome ways it supports what you said because shewas eager to return to her project work, or at leastthat’s what she said.

Ben Barrel: All right, I probably do overstatethings a bit (laughter). But I am sure you see theexcitement that all of us here feel. I work with ex-cellent school leaders from all over the globe us-ing telecommunication to explore new ideas. AndI bring that excitement and the ideas back to in-form my work with teachers and students. I oftenshare ideas that I learn with students when I teach.And I learn so much about leadership from listen-ing to students. I think the students enjoy beingpart of the design. They know that they are part-ners with the opportunity to exchange ideas witheveryone in our school community.

Co-Principal Nancy Broyles had entered theroom and been listening. She joins in the con-versation.

Nancy Broyles: I find having a principal team hashelped us make tough decisions. This is my se-cond year. This shifting responsibility within apartnership keeps us from either changing thingstoo drastically or becoming too fixed in a single

way to accomplish a task. Since any master teach-er can represent our school, there are more peopleto be on those endless committees and task forcesand to be present at school functions. I can nowhave dinner with my family on at least some week-day evenings. Ask any principal outside of ourdistrict how many times he or she makes it homefor the evening meal!

Quality Review Panelist: What if a master teach-er becomes too busy to teach?

Josie Rowe: Master teachers must teach at thevery minimum the equivalent of one hour a day.But this does not mean that a master teacher hasto teach every day. One of our district masterteachers does televised teaching and tapes all ofthe segments in one term. We can teach summerschool, but we have to spend some time teachingthe age group we serve. That was one of our Char-ter District arrangements. I really enjoy my teach-ing.

Nancy Broyles: By the way, mentor teachers alsohave this flexibility. That’s the headache in sched-uling we referred to earlier. We try to balance therequests of the teachers, but we also have to makesure that all of the Centers are well staffed withteachers who are skilled in the appropriate areas.In the classroom arrangement, the principal usedto spend so much time sorting kids into class-rooms and responding to parents’ complaintsabout placement decisions. Now the parents aremostly content because the student teams cyclethrough all of the teachers. The strain now is tobalance all of the teacher requests. But, like be-fore, things have to work out and they do.

Josie Rowe: An important difference is that wecan support each other informally. If I have ameeting to go to and it is scheduled for a timewhen I am teaching, I can check with one of theCenter teachers and just trade times or days. Withmore people, there is so much more flexibility. Iremember my days as a classroom teacher whenyou couldn’t go to the bathroom without causingstaffing problems.


Well, I can see that our lunch has arrived andalso members of our community advisory boards.I think we can shift to the topic of communityleadership and involvement.

❚ Parent and Community InteractionsAt this point, a number of people enter the room

and a buffet lunch is set up on one side of the room.As we bring our lunch to the table, Bill Parks (ina fire fighters’ uniform) is introduced as the chair-person of Central’s School Community Councilwith Amelia Leff, Bud Porter and Lensci Dennyas council members. Dee Sharp is Central’s repre-sentative on the District Community Board. Josieexcuses herself and leaves while Ben and Nancystay and Barb rejoins the group.

Barb Milner : Welcome and thanks to all of youfor being here. Our guests have heard that we havea different model of community involvement.They know about our community exhibition butwe haven’t said anything about Central’s Commu-nity Council. Bill, I am going to let you talk aboutthis group.

Bill Parks: Sure, Barb, I would be happy to. OurCommunity Council is a combination of our for-mer PTA and school site council. We meet threetimes during each term to discuss schoolwide is-sues. We form study teams to think about ways tosolve different school problems and ways to sup-port our Center teachers. One of our tasks is to cir-culate information before the exhibition and toprepare community feedback forms for each ex-hibition. Because so many of the people in thecommunity come to these presentations, we usethis opportunity to get parent and community in-put on issues that face our schools. This way noone person or group has the say about what the“community” thinks. Teachers have worked veryhard to be responsive to our collective positions.

Dee Sharp: Our District Community Boardworks in much the same way. Each school com-munity elects one person to serve on this commit-tee. These elections are done during ourexhibitions at the end of the year. Council mem-bers have much less decisionmaking power than

school board members did in the past. Their roleis to provide community input to the districtTeacher Senate. One important service we per-form after every exhibition is to collect the in-formation from each school and publish asummary of results in local newspapers.

Amelia Leff: One of the things we do as part of thecouncil is to encourage all community membersto come to our exhibitions—even if they don’thave children. We want them to see the school astheir school. Everyone needs to be involved, notjust parents. Some of the students take their pre-sentations to hospitals and convalescent homesfor people who find it hard to come to the school.We post signs and banners in stores and banks andCD rental libraries inviting everyone to come toschool. We have found that our community ismore willing to support our schools and vote forschool bond issues if they visit the Centers and seehow hard students work with such outdated equip-ment.

Dee Sharp: The Centers are a wonderful source ofpublic education. They are like evolving mu-seums with exhibits designed by kids. I really likelearning with my kids, and I feel so much more in-volved when I see not only what my child is doing,but what teachers, other experts, and other kids aredoing. I always look forward to the exhibitions.And I like seeing kids learning outside of theclassroom in our community.

Amelia Leff: Our community council has alsotaken the lead in solving a long-standing problem.Kids out of school without parent supervision be-came a problem about 30 years ago when unpaid“homemaking” mothers moved out into the paidworkforce. Some kids went off to organized pre-school programs, but many kids were left inempty buildings. So, over the past few years, weset up an after school community program on theschool site. We passed a bond to help with initialcosts. Basically, we created a contractual agree-ment between the city and schools to work togeth-er to provide a community after school program.Then we scheduled a number of classes offered bypeople in the community. Some are routine like


scouting and sports, but we added different op-tions including clubs for hobbies like reading,chess, gardening and kite making. One of the par-ents designs unusual kites and sells them world-wide. She offered to work with students for anhour a week.

The most controversial issue, which I think isfinally worked out, has to do with religious educa-tion. We understand the recent Supreme Court rul-ing to mean that religious education can be held onschool grounds under the following conditions.

1. Religious instruction is a parental choice andother options are available.

2. Teachers are not involved in the religious train-ing because of students’ strong emotional at-tachment to their teachers.

3. All religions are given an equal opportunity toprovide classes.

4. All expenses other than the use of school build-ings are covered by the religious group.

So, we have about 10 different religious train-ing courses. There is also a values clarificationand self-esteem program that is funded by the Co-alition for Religious Education in Our Schools.This is an organization of all the religious groups.They felt it was important to offer a non-denomi-national discussion of basic social values for chil-dren whose parents do not want religiouseducation but would like their kids to think aboutdifficult social problems.

Bud Porter: I just wanted to add that one of thebenefits of this program is that many of the stu-dents who in the past were segregated in religiousschools are back in public education. This makesour community more integrated. This option de-flated the effort to resurrect voucher initiationsthat took money away from public education. Theeffect on overall school climate has been great.And I think it is great to have such an extensive af-ter-school program provided by the community.Community services are so much more effectivethan police in reducing crimes.

Bill Parks: And, there are other class options.Some have more expenses associated with themso we ask parents to donate the cost of supplies,

but we don’t exclude students. We have inter-school teams and tournaments in jump rope, track,soccer, and basketball. Students can take classesto learn to be referees. And we have ScienceOlympiad training classes for intermediate stu-dents during the spring to prepare a team for thisregional competition. This has been run by parentvolunteers for seven years now. Also, PlannedParenthood offers a course called “Our Bodies andOurselves” for our 11- and 12-year-olds. Theschool library/media center is open and Friends ofthe Library sponsors storytelling and craft pro-grams for our younger students. On our stage thereare often “dress rehearsals” and kids in the libraryprogram serve as an audience

Quality Review Panelist: Who provides all of theteachers for these clubs?

Dee Sharp: As you might guess, it involves acoordination of the efforts of a number of groups.The city pays small teaching stipends for teachers.Some teachers hold special education classes dur-ing this period and these are funded with federalmoney. All religious education classes are paid forby their congregations. Some programs havecommunity sponsorship. For example the SeasideBotanical Garden Society is sponsoring the gar-dening club and mostly retired people help kidslearn these skills. Some of the other clubs, likeScience Olympiad, are run by parent and teachervolunteers. The coordinator for the service com-ponent from our high school arranged to sendabout a dozen high school students to each of ourschools each afternoon. Most of the high schoolstudents come on a once-a-week basis over theyear, which fulfills their service requirement.They provide supervision for our sports tourna-ments and some coaching in both sports andschool. We don’t charge for any of the programsbut we do accept donations and many of our par-ents become sponsors of a club or program.

Quality Review Panelist: How many studentsparticipate in these programs?

Bill Parks: Usually about 80 percent of our stu-dents stay on any given day, but I would ventureto say that most kids are in some program. The


kids who do not stay are usually kids who are in-volved in community programs that we can’t offerat school, like swimming, gymnastics, clubsports, or other activities.

Quality Review Panelist: How do you deal withthe issue of equipment and classroom materialsbeing taken or destroyed?

Dee Sharp: This was one of the biggest problemsin past programs, but we’ve had less trouble. Ithink it’s because kids see it as school and they re-spect property just as well as they do during therest of the day. Students are used to movingaround and working in different spaces. For manystudents, the program is just part of the school day.The computer equipment locks into those recharg-ing units you saw. The biggest concern is alwaysdamage to kids’ work and we deal with that thesame way we do during the day. We want kids tolearn to respect the work of others. I think it helpsthat we know exactly who is in which room eachsession so that there is some accountability. Over-all, we’ve had fewer problems in this area than weexpected.

Bill Parks: We are pleased with our success andwe are constantly considering new ideas as well.At every exhibition we show what we have ac-complished and ask students, parents, and com-munity leaders for their input on how to make theschool better. Right now, for example, we are ex-ploring an idea for programs during term breaks.There has always been federal money to providespecial tutorial work for “at risk” kids and somespecial education programs. But we are workingon plans to provide inter-term opportunities for allstudents, like our extended community schoolprogram, maybe on a sliding scale for cost.

Barb Milner : So, I hope this makes it clear thatwhile we don’t have an elected school board mak-ing education decisions as in the past, we havefound other vehicles for keeping us connectedwith the community. This gives our educationalleaders more time to deal with pressing schoolproblems and we feel that these open exhibitionsmake us publicly accountable to our community.

Quality Review Panelist: I guess I would like toknow how you managed to get such a vibrant com-munity effort going.

Amelia Leff: I can respond to that because I thinkI have been involved in this school the longest.My son is now in high school and comes back aspart of his community service. I just consider itmy community service to stay involved and I en-joy it. But, you ask how we got from a detachedschool to this new arrangement where the schoolis “central” to our lives.

I think the first step was when teachers startingto teach integrated themes and they did not haveenough resources. So they appealed first to par-ents and then to everyone in the community. Thenin 1994 we received one of the “Service Learning”grants and the kids moved out of the classroomand into community projects. They started pro-ducing information sheets and newsletters thatwere available in stores and banks. Then I thinkwe started to move our displays into the communi-ty. Our small airport let us use their hallways forour public education campaigns. Once the kidshad a purpose, they were more geared into learn-ing. And this relationship with the communitycontinued to grow as teachers pulled more of usinto the classroom and the kids took more of theirlearning out to the community.

Lensci Denny: Here is another example of thisservice learning. One of our teachers, Clare De-vlin, took a survey in a local senior citizen orga-nization about what their members would like tolearn about computers and specifically what ap-plications interested them. Then she had her stu-dents learn how to use these programs so theycould teach them to the seniors. For one month theseniors were invited to come to the school andlearn from the students. This program was verysuccessful. But what Clare never realized is whata powerful resource the seniors would be to theclassroom once they were computer literate andinterested in what was going on in the school.They have contributed in so many ways, both intime and money; they gave us a big thrust forward.


So, an attempt to help this others ended up helpingus. And I guess that is how it went.

After more discussion, the lunch is cleared andthe community representatives leave. The reviewpanel returns to the school planning office to lookover school records, student performance scoresand tests, and other documentation. The testscores show a steady climb in averages but lots ofstudent variation. Barb describes how some stu-dents who have done well in the past because ofgood memories are taking longer to adjust to thisnew way of demonstrating their thinking.

Later in the afternoon, you meet with the entryand mentor teachers. They reinforce the samestory that you had heard all day. Everyone hasmore time to engage in teaching and learning.One of the mentor teachers is explaining why thisis so important.

Michel Lickte : The most significant differencefrom the past is that we have time—time to think,time to reflect, time for collaboration with othersmaking the important decisions that set the stagefor learning. Most of us had an “area of expertise”before these changes, but we had to develop itwhile teaching full-time and we rarely receivedthe recognition or encouragement to really pursueit. Being able to retreat to the office and make pro-fessional contacts during business hours—this isa rare benefit for teachers. And the school officesare a great place to work, I really enjoy workingwith other teachers on projects. The changes haveencouraged an entrepreneurial sense to profes-sional development which many of us have foundvery rewarding.

Sandi McCan: I love teaching but I also enjoy mywork testing, reviewing, and editing materials forSchool Media Tools Service. And I enjoy doingthis work in the evening at home. I teach between9:00 and 12:00 and between 1:00-2:00. Since Ihave extra time during the day, I sometimes helpa child who needs some individual help. And I amnot the only one. We all have much more flexibil-ity now that we don’t have to be with the studentsall day. I can’t tell you what a sense of freedom Ifeel when I have all of my students working on

some project and I can just leave the room know-ing that the learning guide will supervise studentwork. Since my work involves testing new curric-ulum, I sometimes teach special classes making itpossible for scheduled teachers to work withsmaller groups.

Clare Devlin: In contrast, I like getting here about5:00 in the morning and working in the office forabout three hours. I have a grant to explore life-long learning which helps me bring the seniorsinto the school. I am working on an article aboutour project. Sometimes I stop by the Senior Centeron the way to school. Like Sand, I really enjoy thefreedom to be at the school and not always in theclassroom. I can come in here and just talk withother teachers. We have planning meetings andworkshops during school hours! And I don’t mindfilling in for other teachers or even helping out inthe office, especially working with Marilyn. Ihave learned so much about computer graphicsthat I think my next project will be doing some-thing with her.

Quality Review Panelist: How would you char-acterize the most significant change that has takenplace in your charter district?

Hernando Borja: I know how I would answerthat. For me it is becoming part of a vibrant com-munity working collaboratively in the learningcenters, at the school, and in the local communityand across the country in the educational commu-nity. The collaboration is intellectually satisfyingto me and to all of us. It provides many more op-portunities for quality learning. We are all proudof what the students are accomplishing in thelearning environments that we have created to-gether. The rewards are collective rewards. In thepast, there was always a bit of competition amongteachers about who was the “best” teacher at agrade level, who had the best classroom. Parent re-quests caused so many conflicts as we tried toplace students in individual classes. But in this ar-rangement teachers as well as students work andlearn from each other. The multi-age teams areworking very well—kids are more supportive inhelping one another learn as there is not the under-


lying assumption that everyone in a team shouldalready know something. We have always knowthat teaching is one of the best forms of learningbut it was much harder to arrange for it to happennaturally in traditional classrooms. But in the cen-ters, teaching and learning are part of almost ev-ery interaction.

And the other part of this is the shift in the rela-tionship between teachers, principals and superin-tendents. The decisions that effect our schools andour work as educators are made by us in the Teach-er Senate. We are all asking ourselves about whatwe can do to improve education and we all havea say in the answers to this question. We are moreconcerned about creating a shared vision then fol-lowing the education ideas of a charismatic leader.The design of this school district is our design andthat is what makes it so powerful.19

Quality Review Panelist: How would you evalu-ate the role of technology in the changes that havetaken place?

Mary Stanley: As Central’s technology coordi-nator, I can respond to that. The tools that we have,and the new tools that are available each year, areincredible. But they are tools and we need to know

how to use them to accomplish important educa-tional roles. In some ways, we no longer eventhink about the role of the technology separatefrom the activities because we are beginning totake it for granted. But I think Hernando just gavethe answer to your question. Access to informa-tion resources in the Net World has been extreme-ly helpful, and we have a better match between ourteaching objectives and supporting materials. Butthe most significant change is the ability to workin groups with educators who share similar inter-ests or face similar challenges. Everything fromteacher senate decisions to student group projectsare facilitated by our communication tools. I cansay, without a doubt, that the rich network of hu-man resources is the most significant technologi-cal advancement we have.

The meeting draws to a close. You are im-pressed by the strong sense of professional respectthe teachers have for themselves and one another.The Teacher Senate is more than a symbolicstep toward teacher responsibility for education.The teachers themselves convey the feeling thattheir advancement in the field of education isunlimited.20

19 The view of the school as a community with self-management by professional teachers is an ideal that many would like to see as reality.T.J. Sergiovanni, in his book Moral Leadership: Getting to the heart of School Improvement (1992) (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1992)advocates replacing strong centralized leadership in education and with collaboration communities. Collaboration is time consuming and it isdifferent to implement a high degree of teamwork without changing the existing dimensions of the role of classroom teaching.

20 “You” is used in the plural in this paper to refer to two different groups, those who have read the paper and those who will read it in thefuture. Many of the statements and questions of the review panelists have come from this first group of readers and I am grateful for their com-ments and suggestions. For those of you who have just finished reading the paper, I would enjoy reading the report of your Quality ReviewPanel. What did you think of this school and school district? Where do you suspect that they will run into problems? What are the strengths of theprogram, and what policy recommendations would you offer to them? If “you” want to write the Quality Review of Central School, or of thePacific School District, I would enjoy reading it: Margaret Riel, InterLearn, 943 San Dieguito Drive, Encinitas, CA 92024, ([email protected]).

Appendix DYear 2005:

Using Technologyto Build Communities

of Understanding

igital information technology is changing how peoplelearn, teach, work, and play. By the year 2005, the capabil-ities and the affordability of digital technology could cata-lyze and facilitate the wholesale transformation of

education and the communities that support it. SRI Internation-al’s Center for Technology in Learning believes the effective useof this technology could alter the relationships between homes,schools, and workplaces and in so doing assist the creation of newkinds of communities (29,32). In this paper, we offer one vision ofthese new communities—communities that have learning andteaching at their core and use digital technologies to foster higherlevels of community participation, enable deeper levels of cogni-tive and social engagement, and structure new kinds of relation-ships that support education. We analyze the social, pedagogical,and technological trends that support the realization of this vi-sion, and we discuss the implications for teacher training, schoolaccountability, and equity.

A community is a collection of individuals who are bonded to-gether either by geography or by common purpose, shared valuesand expectations, and a web of meaningful relationships (33). Inthe communities that we envision in this paper—what we call“communities of understanding”—education is the common pur-pose, learning is highly valued, and a high level of academicachievement is expected of students and their schools. Mutual re-spect, honesty, and fairness are basic values, and there is a com-mon dedication to see that each member of the community strivesand succeeds. These values are enmeshed in the everyday activi-ties and relationships of community life. There is a strong socialnetwork in these communities and a high degree of commitmentto and involvement in the educational endeavor. This commit- | 121

by

Robert Kozma andWayne Grant

Center for Technology in Learning

SRI International


ment is shared by students, teachers, parents, andother members of the community. Although thisdescription may seem utopian, many of thesequalities characterize successful learning environ-ments in inner-city public schools of choice, Cath-olic schools, and Asian schools of today(5,17,35,37).

Clearly, these qualities can exist in a communi-ty, independent of advanced technology. Andthere can be communities based on geographyrather than values or on values different fromthose described above. But in our vision for theyear 2005, digital technologies are used to createa web of relationships, engagement, and participa-tion that transforms the educational enterprise andmakes it the center of community life. Today,schools, homes, and workplaces function sepa-rately—connected by geography and circum-stances but infrequently by common purpose andcollaborative action. But in our vision of commu-nities of understanding, digital technologies areused to interweave schools, homes, workplaces,libraries, museums, and social services to reinte-grate education into the fabric of the community.Learning is no longer encapsulated by time, place,and age, but has become a pervasive activity andattitude that continues throughout life and is sup-ported by all segments of society. Teaching is nolonger defined as the transfer of information,learning no longer as the retention of facts. Rather,teachers challenge students to achieve deeper lev-els of understanding and guide students in the col-laborative construction and application ofknowledge in the context of authentic situationsand tasks. Education is no longer the exclusive re-sponsibility of teachers but benefits from the par-ticipation and collaboration of parents, businesspeople, scientists, seniors, and, of course, studentsof all ages.

How can technology support this transforma-tion? First of all, the emerging information super-highway (18,38) will connect schools with eachother and with homes, businesses, libraries, mu-seums, and community resources. The connec-tions between schools and homes will helpstudents to extend their academic day, allowteachers to draw on significant experiences from

students’ everyday lives, and allow parents to be-come more involved in the education of their chil-dren and to have extended educationalopportunities of their own. Connections betweenschool and work will allow students to learn in thecontext of real-life problems, allow teachers todraw on the resources of technical and businessexperts, and allow employers to contribute to andbenefit from the fruits of an effective educationalsystem. Connections between schools, homes,and the rest of the community will enable studentsto relate what is happening in the world outside towhat is happening in school, will allow teachersto coordinate formal education with informallearning, and will allow the community to reinte-grate education into its daily life.

To make these connections pay off, this infra-structure will be filled with effective and engagingmaterials and tools that challenge students, affordnew activities, and motivate learning. When usersaccess the superhighway, they will find rich, mul-timedia resources in mathematics, sciences, andhumanities and rich contexts of authentic situa-tions and tasks. They will have access to tools thatallow them to communicate and collaborate withothers, consider ideas from multiple perspectives,express their ideas in multiple ways, build mod-els, and explore simulations.

As important as digital information technologyis to our vision of the future, we have deliberatelyavoided the temptation to become overly techno-centric and speculative about cutting-edge devel-opments. Because we have chosen to limitourselves to technologies likely to be in wide usein 2005, our scenarios of the future are actuallyquite conservative on the technology side. Thetechnological capabilities we describe are fairlystraightforward extrapolations and amalgam-ations of the capabilities available today in ad-vanced systems, which we believe will beaffordable by schools and homes in the year 2005.No doubt, the cutting edge of technological capa-bility will have advanced beyond those presentedin the scenarios that follow.

Rather than emphasizing cutting-edge technol-ogy, we stress the collateral social change andeducational reform that must occur for this trans-

Appendix D Year 2005: Using Technology to Build Communities of Understanding | 123

formation to be realized. To realize the full impactof digital technologies on our educational system,there must also be massive changes in the largersocial structures, relationships, and interactionswithin which the education system is embedded.The forces constraining educational transforma-tion are not technological but pedagogical and so-cial. Where we have been daring with this paperis in developing a vision in which many of theeducational, social, and equity issues facing ourcountry have been addressed in systemic and posi-tive ways. In our analyses, we describe the neededsocial and pedagogical changes that can supportand be supported by the emerging technologicaldevelopments. When advanced technology is in-tegrated into a broad effort for school reform, theneducators, students, parents, and communitieswill have a powerful combination that can bringnecessary, positive change to this nation’s educa-tional system (21).

Our optimism is tempered by an acknowledg-ment of all the earlier technological revolutionsthat failed to change the classroom (10). On theother hand, our enthusiasm is buoyed by a grow-ing number of policy discussions, community ex-periences, and educational experiments in social,pedagogical, and technological change at local,state, and national levels that seem to suggest thatour visions are not outside the realm of possibility.Nonetheless, what we present is our vision ofcommunities of understanding; it is not a predic-tion. We do not assert that this will happen, onlythat it can and should.

With that introduction, welcome to the year2005.

A VISION OF THE YEAR 2005

❚ Characters (in order of appearance):

� Steve Early, a 14-year-old African-American.� Nelson, a 17-year-old living in South Africa;

Steve’s electronic pen pal.� Carmela Zamora, 15-year-old of Philippine de-

scent.� Mr. and Mrs. Zamora, Carmela’s parents.

� Valerie Spring, a senior teacher with a sciencedegree.

� Sharon Gomez, a mathematics teacher.� George Shepherd, an apprentice language arts

teacher.� Christopher Lindsay, a school-work coordina-

tor.� Lynda Lucero, a 13-year-old of Hispanic de-

scent.� Mrs. Lucero, a design engineer at the Global

Car Company.� Vincent Tracy, 14 years old and visually im-

paired.� Other children, parents, and community mem-

bers.

Settings: Some of the events take place in chil-dren’s homes. Most of the events take place in theMcAuliffe Learning Center, which serves as thephysical locus for formal learning, community ac-tivities, and social services. McAuliffe is dividedinto a variety of spaces specifically designed fortechnology-supported learning. Facilities includelearning-team pods, each with a workstation andproject resources (microscopes, fabrication mate-rials and tools, etc.); small-group meeting rooms,each with collaborative technologies, a flat-paneldisplay, and personal interaction devices; multi-media production and editing suites; and a largemultimedia auditorium and performance center.These resources are used by students and teachersduring the day and are open to community mem-bers and groups at other times (see box D-1).

❚ Social Perspective: ConnectingLearning to the World

An important motivation for learning comes frommembership in a community. The meaningfulnessof a learning activity is increased by relatingevents that happen in the larger world to thingsthat are happening in the student’s world. Theneed to understand these events and do somethingabout them creates a context and a motivation forlearning. Connecting the informal experiencesand learning of the outside world with the formallearning of the classroom makes the knowledge


As he does every morning, Steve Early eats breakfast in front of the teleputer. While he watches a

news program m one window, his personal communication service relays a video message from his

South African friend, Nelson, m another window. Nelson’s vid-message is about a train derailment near

his hometown that caused a huge hazardous-fuel spill, made people sick, and now endangers a wild-

animal preserve. Nelson explains. “I am afraid the chemicals will poison our water and hurt the ani-

mals “ Steve clicks on a button that Nelson embedded in the message and activates a “knowbot." This

software agent presents the news story as it originated m Nelson’s community and then goes off to

search for additional information about the train accident on the GlobalNet. After Steve checks out the

Net pointers, he constructs his own agent to search the local and national video news servers for other

stories about the accident He Instructs his agent to find video clips that run less than three minutes,

sort them chronologically, and store them on the school server so he can access them later, As he fi-

nishes his breakfast, Steve watches the video that the agent retrieved.

Meanwhile, another student, Carmela Zamora, is flipping through channels to the Hispanic MTV-

News and hears about the South Africa train derailment. A budding naturalist, she is alarmed by the

news and wants to do something to save the animals. When her dad comes in to remind her about

getting off to school on time, he sees the news and they talk about it. Carmela shares her concern and

asks, “What can we do to keep this from happening?” He tells her, “We all have to help. The telecourse

I’m taking is to learn a new manufacturing process that will make the rail cars my company builds stron-

ger and less likely to crack open if they are hit or fall off the tracks Maybe you’d Iike to come to the

plant sometime and see how they’re made “

Walking to school, Carmela meets Steve and asks whether his South African friend knows any-

thing about the accident. “Yeah, he’s worried. It happened close to his town, ” he says In the play-

ground, they meet up with three other members of their Iearning team, the Falcons. This morning, they

must present an idea for a project to their teaching team. Carmela launches in, “I saw a report on the

news this morning about an accident in South Africa. There was a fuel spill from a train near a wild-ani-

mal park I want to find out what can be done to save the animals. “ “Me too, ” Steve says, “My friend

Nelson lives nearby, and I watched some video clips this morning that we could use. Let’s ask the

teachers if we can figure out how to stop hazardous spills from hurting the environment. ”

The other three students agree. In the project planning room, teachers Valerie Spring, Sharon Go-

mez, and George Shepherd and the five students gather around the teleputer and open their project

planning tool. Valerie Spring starts off, “OK, let’s fill in the goals for the project. What do you kids have in

mind?” The students chime in with their ideas.

“Your ideas about reducing hazardous spills sound interesting, ” Ms. Spring responds, “but what

would you Iike to do about it? What would you like to accomplish with your project?”

“1 would like to find a way to keep hazardous waste from hurting plants and animals, ” Carmela

replies.

“1 think we should get a law passed that makes tank cars safer, ” says Steve.

“My dad’s company is working on that, Steve. Maybe we could talk to him about that, ” she says

“1 think that’s a good idea, ” says Ms. Gomez Always looking for a way to bring math into he con-

versation, she asks, “What other kinds of things might reduce the risks connected with transporting haz-

ardous wastes?” Carmela puzzles for a moment and then offers, “In addition to making tank cars safer,

what if we reduced the number of cars needed to transport fuel?” Steve adds, ‘(l wonder how many car

loads of fuel are delivered in a year. ” Excited by the prospect of a solution, Carmela volunteers, “What if

we Increased the efficient use of fuel by 10 percent?” “We wouldn’t need as much fuel, ” Steve replies.

Appendix D Year 2005: Using Technology to Build Communities of Understanding 1125

“Wouldn’t it also reduce the number of cars on the tracks?” asks Ms. Gomez. “if we reduced the

number of cars, wouldn’t that also reduce the chance of accidents?”

“Yes, and it would also make the air cleaner, ” Carmela shouts, “Let’s think of ways to increase fuel

efficiency”

Hanging on the wall is a large, color, flat-panel display for plotting the project. The use of pointing

devices with the display makes it easy for students and teachers to rearrange the software symbols and

objects that represent their developing ideas. Working with the display and the software planning tools,

students and teachers develop the project’s organization, timeline, and goals, as well as each student’s

learning objectives and tasks, As the discussion progresses, the teachers check the goals that stu-

dents suggest with those Iisted in the curriculum. They also look at learning-history profiles that show

each student’s current knowledge in terms of the goals. The tool lets them see the skills, activities, and

subject matter that past projects have emphasized The teachers suggest activities that will help the

students gain the skills, knowledge, and experiences identified as absent from their learning profiles.

For example, in her planning tool, Ms. Gomez Indicates that the new project will help the students

strengthen certain mathematical skills and concepts, including measurement of liquid volumes, graph-

ing number relationships, and making mathematical connections to real-world problems. She also Iists

science facts, skills, and concepts appropriate to the project, including thinking critically and logically

about the relationships between evidence and explanations, understanding ecosystems and organ-

isms, and describing transformations of energy. Like most of her colleagues, Ms. Gomez has become

adept at thinking in terms of broad, ambitious goal statements established by her school and district.

As a result of the discussions, the students decide to make an interactive multimedia report as

their final product “You need to think about your audience for the report, ” comments Mr. Shepherd,

their language arts teacher, “and what they would want to know about your topic. ”

“We need to think about why our report would be important to them, ” adds Steve.

“If someone dumped fuel in your backyard, you would want to know how to stop it, ” replies anoth-

er team member. “Maybe we should show what happened to Nelson’s neighborhood and then look for

spills in our neighborhood, too, ” adds a fourth member.

“But we need to find a way to stop it, ” demands Carmela.

The students decide they will interview Steve’s South African friend Nelson and ask his school-

mates to collaborate with them by gathering video images and other local information about the train

accident that can be integrated with the information they create. They will also talk to community mem-

bers in the McAuliffe neighborhood and see whether there have been any fuel spills in the area during

the past year. Finally, they will come up with some suggestions for how to stop fuel spills. They will store

their report on the community video server and make it available through the community-access cable

channel and send it to Nelson and his South African classmates. The report will conclude by taking

viewers to the Environment Chat Room on the GlobalNet, where they can talk to scientists, environ-

mentalists, and others about the problem and potential solutions.

Each student has an assignment and downloads the project plan into a personal digital assistant

with a beginning set of pointers to resources both inside and outside the neighborhood. “1 think we

might really make a difference here, ” Steve says. “1 can’t wait to tell Nelson. ”

acquired more useful and the world outside more increasing the authenticity of learning activities.comprehensible. Today’s technologies—television, telephones,

Technology helps motivate learning by bring- computers, electronic mail, and videodisks----of-ing the world into the learning environment and fer ways of infusing real-world issues into con-

4


ventional, discipline-based curricula. However,the usefulness of these technologies is limited bya paucity of interactivity—there is not much thestudent can do with this information. As technolo-gy evolves during the next decade, a host of per-sonal communication and information serviceswill become increasingly understandable, afford-able, and accessible to consumer and educationmarkets.

An interactive connection with the world candramatically increase learning resources. Teach-ers and students can get access to expertise and in-formation not otherwise available. Moreimportantly, students can do something withinthis technological environment. They can interactwith and influence other people. They can explorefar-off continents, and they can add to the contentsof far-off libraries. They can share a museum visitwith their schoolmates or take a field trip withoutgetting on a bus. Scientists can come into theclassroom, and students can go off into space.They can identify people with similar concernsand find others who can help them solve theirproblems. This interactive web of people and re-sources can become a foundation for building thecommunity of understanding.

❚ Pedagogical Perspective:Project-Based Learning

In recent years, consensus has evolved around aset of National Education Goals to improve stu-dent learning. By the turn of the millennium, theindividual states and local school systems are like-ly to implement these goals into an extended set ofstandards that students must achieve (for exam-ple, see references 6 and 7). These will serve as afocus for the design of learning environments andactivities. Prominent among the National Goals isthe objective of increasing student ability to solveproblems and demonstrate competency over chal-lenging subject matter, particularly in mathemat-ics and science. In our vision, the “learningproject” is the mechanism used to accomplishthese goals.

Project-based learning involves students in theidentification of some problem or goal of personal

or group interest and the generation of activitiesand products that will accomplish the goal orsolve the problem (4). Within this framework, stu-dents pursue solutions to nontrivial problems, askand refine questions, debate ideas, design plansand artifacts, collect and analyze data, draw con-clusions, and communicate findings to others. Be-cause they bring problems in from their ownpersonal lives, students are more motivated topursue a deep understanding of a cluster of topicsacross related domains. This approach contrastswith the current practice of superficial coverage ofmany topics in a single domain.

The project is also a way of valuing and inte-grating knowledge from multiple perspectivesand multiple disciplines. Naturally occurringproblems are not compartmentalized into mathe-matics, science, and language arts. Furthermore,problem solutions benefit from the multiple ex-pertise, perspectives, and modes of expressionthat come from multiple members of teams—bothteams of students and teams of teachers. No oneperson is likely to have the solution to complex,real-world problems, and differences among stu-dents in expertise and experience are valued.

Project-based learning, particularly projectsthat emerge from student-identified interests,makes planning and accountability more com-plex. The challenge for teachers is to begin withthese student-generated interests and guide the de-velopment of a particular project to make sure thatstudents are challenged and that they accomplishimportant educational objectives. They mustbuild on individual strengths and accommodatethe individual needs of students within the group.In addition, they must work with students to gen-erate productive activities and provide them withaccess to useful resources.

Technology can help both teachers and studentsmanage the complexities of project-based learn-ing. In the scenario above, teachers and studentsuse project software to help them keep track ofstudent progress with respect to curriculum goals.Teachers use the software to support students instructuring their projects by providing studentswith access to resources and activities they can use


to accomplish their goals. And students benefitwhen they externalize their ideas by representingthem explicitly as concrete objects with whichthey can interact more easily. Finally, both teach-ers and students can use the environment to shareexperiences and resources with others.

❚ Pedagogical Perspective: Scaffolding“Scaffolds” are external aids that provide cogni-tive and social support for people new to a task orknowledge domain, much as scaffolds on aconstruction site support workers and materialswhile a building is erected. These external aidsconsist of questions, prompts, or procedures pro-vided to students that more knowledgeable peoplehave internalized and provide for themselves. Byperforming part of the task, scaffolding allowsstudents to manage tasks that are more challeng-ing than the ones that they could do on their own(41). When these aids are a normal part of theclassroom discourse, students can model theseskills for each other and get assistance from theteacher and others in the group (25). As studentsrefine and internalize these new skills, the sup-ports are gradually withdrawn and students per-form more of the task on their own.

Problem solving and critical thinking are par-ticularly challenging curricular goals for youngstudents. They must learn to analyze problemsand specify goals, identify information and planactivities that will help them solve the problem,identify the products of their work and specify cri-teria that will be used to evaluate them, and workas a team to accomplish their goals. The use ofscaffolding helps students work through thesecognitive and social processes. By using theseprocesses repeatedly across projects, students willcome to generalize them, take them out to the realworld, and apply them to problems they encounterthere.

In our scenario, students use a combination oftechnological and social supports to scaffold theirproblem solving. They use a computer-based proj-ect tool along with the guidance of teachers andeach other to design and manage their project. Thetool and the teacher team scaffold students’ work

by stepping them through the planning process,asking them to define their goals, prompting themto select activities to accomplish these, guidingthem to resources, and structuring their assess-ments. Students begin to use these prompts social-ly with each other, and ultimately the skillsbecome internalized and they can use them ontheir own. While students work on their project,the tool keeps their goals and plans visible so thatthey do not lose track of them while in the thickof their activities.

❚ Technological PerspectivesIn this scenario, a number of technological toolsand software utilities support student learning andconnect it to the experiences, resources, andpeople in the outside world.

Computer-Based Planning EnvironmentAlthough pedagogically appealing, project-

based learning and scaffolding present new chal-lenges to teachers and learners. Teachers needhelp to ensure that open-ended, bottom-up, proj-ect-based approaches provide a comprehensive,balanced education, and learners need help inplanning and executing their projects. Technologycan provide this help.

Embedded coaching systems and intelligentcritics that assist users while they are actively car-rying out their tasks are beginning to appear incommercial products (for example, Apple Guidein Macintosh System 7.5) and will become muchmore common in learning software environmentsin the next 10 years. These approaches are particu-larly effective for open-ended exploratory envi-ronments (14) that emphasize the discoveryprocess as well as project design and develop-ment. These software coaches and critics will pro-vide timely curricular support for teachers, and,along with the teachers, scaffolding for students.

In this scenario, teachers and students use aproject planning tool that helps provide studentswith guidance and feedback on the design, devel-opment, and execution of their projects. Byconstructing a “learning-history profile,” or mod-el of each student’s current knowledge state, the


project planner functions as an assessment toolthat enables teachers, students, and parents to seeareas that past projects have emphasized, as wellas the objectives a student might address in thecurrent project. In the process of constructing theirproject plan, the students and teachers work withthe tool to decompose each activity into its con-stituent curriculum objectives. The tool makessuggestions for improvements to the project by re-ferring to similar cases and draws from a databaseof activities known to have been successful in thepast. A record for each activity in the databasecontains a description of the activity, a set of linksto useful content, and a list of technologies thesestudents will need to use to meet their learning ob-jectives. Over time, the use of such tools, in thecontext of project-based learning, supports deepengagement in problems and content without sac-rificing the comprehensiveness of the curriculum.

Integrated Personal Communication ServicesCurrent approaches for exchanging electronic

messages assume that users send, receive, andstore messages within a single information utility(such as the on-line services CompuServe orAmerica Online). These electronic communica-tion services are separate from services for com-municating by voice and from other informationservices, and these differences create difficultiesand barriers for users. Several trends suggest sig-nificant changes by 2005 that will integrate theseservices, and make them easier to use.

For the past few years, telephone services haveexpanded to include voice mail (voice messaging)and personal telephone numbers (unique address-es). The telephone companies are increasing thecapability of their infrastructure to transmit textand high-quality audio and digital video, and, asa consequence of recent FCC rulings, they are be-ginning to offer these services on a limited and ex-perimental basis. Similarly, trends in the cabletelevision industry suggest that, besides video-on-demand, cable providers plan to offer messageservices and access to the kinds of databases cur-rently carried by information utilities. Despite thefalling through of the proposed TCI/Bell Atlantic

deal and the failure to pass federal telecommu-nications reform legislation, the complementarycapabilities of communication companies contin-ue to make them attractive partners (1,36), as wit-nessed by the recent Intel/AT&T deal to developservices for corporate video phones (39). Extrapo-lating these trends, it will not be long before anarray of familiar consumer products can be usedto send and receive digital messages in a varietyof forms with a variety of devices at prices similarto those currently charged by cable providers, tele-phone companies, and other information utilities.

In this scenario, when Steve checks the person-al communication service on his television forvid-messages, he does not leave the television ex-perience and go to a desktop computer to enter acommunications mode in a different medium (thatis, text). Because of windowing and multitaskingfeatures offered by his “teleputer, “ he mixes theinformational perspectives Nelson sent him fromSouth Africa with those available from his localnews service. These capabilities allow him tomore seamlessly intermingle South African per-spectives with local ones and to connect these per-spectives with other information available in thesystem. Nor does Steve have to interrupt the trainof thought he developed during his news viewingexperience to log on to an information utility. Theintegration of services frees the cognitive capacitynormally used to operate different systems and al-lows a deeper engagement with the ideas con-tained in the messages.

Smart Mail, Intelligent Agents, andProgramming by Example

As a result of the integration of information andcommunication services, the amount of informa-tion and the number of people available on the net-work increase dramatically. Tools will be neededto make this mass of information useful and us-able. Smart mail, intelligent agents, and program-ming by example will increase the power ofcommunication, decrease the difficulty of findingand using information, and make the system easyto operate.


General Magic has recently organized a consor-tium of companies—including Sony, Motorola,Apple Computer, AT&T, Philips, and Matsushi-ta—to develop personal communicators and ad-vanced communication software and services tobe offered at prices geared to the average consum-er. The heart of these services is a communication-oriented programming language called Telescript.In Telescript, each message is an agent, or a“knowbot.” The agent is a small program that canperform functions besides just expressing a textmessage, such as searching, collecting, organiz-ing, and distributing information to certain peopleat certain times. In the future, scripting languageslike Telescript will enable users to add computa-tional capabilities to their messages (27).

For this technology to be broadly successful,the ability to construct a smart message cannot re-quire a user to learn a difficult programming lan-guage or write lines of code. New approaches aresimplifying this task by allowing users to “write”a program by example (11). In programming byexample, a software agent monitors a user as he orshe performs a task, such as constructing andsending a message. The agent forms a model ofwhat the user is doing, and once it is “confident”that it understands the process, it will offer to carryout the actions in the future. Thus, by simply per-forming a task, the user creates a program that thesystem can implement under similar future cir-cumstances. By 2005, such approaches will be soevolved that users will be able to construct agentscripts so naturally that they will be completelyoblivious to the fact that they are “writing” a pro-gram.

The “smart” message Nelson sent Steve in-cludes a set of computer scripts, which, when trig-gered, link Steve to more information. Nelsonwanted Steve to see the train derailment andchemical spill from a South African and other per-spectives, so in his message he included a hyper-media link that Steve can follow to see the SouthAfrican news clip and an agent that Steve can acti-vate to search for information about the train acci-dent on the GlobalNet. Steve also constructs hisown agent to search for and organize additional in-

formation of a certain kind. Construction of thisagent is easy because these are the kinds of thingsSteve usually does with information, and theagent knows that (see box D-2).

❚ Social Perspective: ConnectingLearning to Work

Society is recognizing that students must be betterprepared for productive jobs within the competi-tive world market and that those skills and knowl-edge could be better obtained if academic workmore closely resembled authentic work. Reportssuch as America’s Choice: High Skills or LowWages! (24) rang the alarm that the United Statesis not providing an education that prepares youngpeople for productive careers in the technology-dependent and highly competitive 21st-centurywork environment.

School-to-work transition programs shouldhelp students acquire the conceptual underpin-nings of the skills they learn without becomingtrapped in training on specific procedures orequipment, much of which will be outdated by thetime the students enter the adult work world.Ideally, students should be exposed to both thepractical contexts and the meaningful tasks ofadult work as well as the conceptual knowledgeand generalizable skills normally associated withformal learning (31). The teacher guides the trans-fer of knowledge between these two areas andhelps students reflect on their experiences.

With this approach, students should be chal-lenged by tasks that:

� Have analogs in adult work, but also reflect stu-dents’ interests.

� Are complex and open-ended, requiring stu-dents to work through the definition of theproblem and regulate their own performance.

� Relate to practical situations so that experiencesfrom work and daily living provide importantinformation, strategies, or insights.

� Can be accomplished in multiple ways, typical-ly with more than one good answer or outcome.

� Are performed by student teams, with differentstudents taking on different specialized roles.


Later that day, Carmela and Steve join one of their other learning teams the Cheetahs which is

designing a car to compete in the National Cyberspace Derby against cars created by students from

other communities around the country, The team is preparing for the regional competition; the winners

compete in the national finals. Students are coached by school-work coordinator Chris Lindsay and

math teacher Sharon Gomez, Chris Lindsay starts the meeting: “There are two designs you folks have

been working on; we need to decide which one we wiII use to compete in the regional, ”

“Lynda and I want to race our fastest car, ” explains Vincent Because he is visually impaired and

cannot see the car being designed, Vincent relies on auditory and tactile feedback provided by the

computer system, As he traces his hand over a flat-panel display, the system provides auditory informa-

tion about the coordinates he is interacting with, He has learned to use this information to build an

image of the car in his mind At the same time, graphic and text information is fed to a Braille printer so

he has documented information that can be used in the future and shared with other blind students, “I

like this design, ” he says, “Now that we have modified the spoiler and tuned the manifold, this should

be the fastest, ”

“Remember, the race rules state the best overall car wins, ” replies Ms. Gomez, “What other fac-

tors do you think you need to consider, given that rule? What might the judges include in determining

the best OVERALL?”

Carmela responds, “Well I’ve been thinking about a new hazardous-waste project that Steve and I

are working on, and I think building the most fuel-efficient car will be safer for the environment “

‘(Yes, and thinking about it from a business view, what about the cost of production? You do need

to make a profit, right?” offers another team member

With these ideas in mind, the student team consults with an engineer who works at the local office

of Global Car Company, an automobile manufacturer and one of the race sponsors, The engineer is

also the mother of team member Lynda Lucero. For weeks, Ms. Lucero in person and remotely re-

sponds to students’ questions as they encounter problems with their designs, The students use a high-

end workstation and computer-aided-design (CAD) program supplied by Global Car, The students’

CAD tool has all the basic features of professional design tools but runs on less powerful and less ex-

pensive computers than the one in Ms. Lucero’s office. However, the two machines are connected so

that the same image appears on both screens and can be altered by both the students and the engi-

neer,

■ Are performed with the same information and out linkages between project activities and thethe same kinds of technology tools (though notnecessarily identical tools) that are used by pro-fessionals.

Networked communications and collaborativesoftware can be used to create new relationshipsbetween work and school. As reflected in this sce-nario, teachers and experts from various profes-sions can jointly design realistic activities basedon authentic tasks that motivate the learning ofgeneralizable skills and concepts. Teachers pro-vide an overall structure, assess student work andcreate ways for student self-assessment, and point

concepts under study. Mentors work with studentson specific tasks, providing guidance and assis-tance when students reach an impasse, modelingthe way practitioners in the field solve problemsand providing guidance that is not associated withthe grading process. All of this is supported by theelectronic infrastructure and a set of softwaretools.

❚ Pedagogical Perspective: ModelingThere are two meanings for the word model( 15)—an “of’ meaning and a “for” meaning—and

Appendix D Year 2005: Using Technology to Build Communities of Understanding 1131

Ms. Lucero’s image appears in a small window in the corner of the screen next to the large win-

dow that displays a wire-frame model of their favorite design. Back in her office, she uses her stylus to

lower the roof line on the model, and the students see the results on their monitor “If we make the roof

line lower, it looks better and it will reduce friction—or what we call the drag coefficient—which results in

increased fuel efficiency, However, manufacturing a sleek racing car can be expensive, and you have a

limited budget for your design, This is what your teachers mean when they talk to you about

‘constraints’ in design. You are going to need to think carefully about whether to spend that money on a

better engine, a more comfortable interior, or reducing the drag. ” The team discusses these and other

complex issues with Ms. Lucero.

The cars the students create are not static drawings but functioning models that they can test on

a simulated cyberspace race track. So after they make changes to their cars, Ms. Gomez has the stu-

dents conduct simulations to test each change scientifically by running the car and studying the effects

of their changes on speed/fuel consumption comparison graphs. To increase their understanding of the

issues, working with Ms. Lucero, she introduces them to velocity and acceleration graphs. The students

begin to see that there is a lot of math and physics as well as artistic talent revolved in making a car that

is attractive, fast, and fuel efficient,

At the end of the mentoring session, each student uses a personal digital assistant (PDA) to re-

cord new information and knowledge and a reflection on the day’s activities in a “learning log, ” Mean-

while, as they work with each Iearning team, the teachers use their PDAs to keep track of new skills the

students have demonstrated and their impressions of how well the exercise fosters collaborative skills.

“OK, team, ” Ms. Gomez announces, “everyone please put a note in your PDAs so you’ll remem-

ber to have the people in your family conduct a simulated test drive of the prototypes by next Monday

You’ll need their comments on how each car handles. Ask them to compare each design to the cars

they drive Remember, customer satisfaction counts, too. ”

“The race is just two weeks away, ” Mr. Lindsay reminds them. “You must decide on the final de-

sign by the end of the week so there’s plenty of time to prepare your multimedia reports and rehearse

your presentations. You will have to explain why you designed the car the way you did, Remember,

we’ve invited families and neighbors to watch the race, so you need to be sharp. ”

both are relevant to new pedagogical approaches.In the first sense, models are constructed, symbol-ic artifacts that simulate the “real thing” in someimportant ways. These artifacts may be scalemodels, flow charts, or computer simulations thatdisplay or operationalize the structural or func-tional relationships of a physical system, such as amechanical device, or of a conceptual system,such as Newton’s laws of motion. By building,manipulating, and explaining the design of suchmodels, as illustrated in the scenario, studentscome to understand these structural and functionalrelationships (42). When modeling a phenome-non, students must represent their understandingof the world in an explicit way, as the students did

with their design of fast, fuel-efficient cars in thescenario above. By representing these phenomenaexplicitly, students may uncover weaknesses intheir understanding that they can work to correct.If students operationalize their understanding incomputational models, they can compare the be-havior of these models with the behavior of real-world phenomena, using these to judge thevalidity and reliability of what they know.

In the second sense, a model is a symbolic rep-resentation of something that is intended to be-come real. In this sense, behaviors, practices, andattitudes are modeled with the intent that studentswill come to be like these models. In cognitive ap-

4


prenticeships, an expert carries out a task so thatstudents can observe and understand the processesthat are required to accomplish the task (9). Thismodeling requires the externalization of cognitiveprocesses and activities that are usually performedinternally. In the scenario above, Ms. Lucero wasmodeling how designers think, solve problems,and use their tools. In demonstrating the processby using the shared CAD tools, she not only mod-eled the use of the tool but the decision processesand procedural knowledge that are used to designcars.

Technology can be used to help make these in-ternal processes external and observable whilestudents are working on their authentic task. Aswell, the system can keep track of students’ pro-cesses and make these traces available to both stu-dent and mentor. These traces can become thefocus of cognitive mentoring in which both stu-dents and mentor examine the thinking processesbehind specific decisions. Thus, the students’thinking processes themselves, as represented inthese traces, can become a direct object of mentor-ing.

❚ Pedagogical Perspective:Collaborative Problem Solving

Traditional school learning emphasizes individu-al achievement and solving problems without theaid of other people or resources (28). Althoughthis approach works when learning facts and solu-tions to simple, contrived problems, it is insuffi-cient for the application of knowledge to solve thecomplex problems of the adult work world. In thereal world, complex problems are frequentlysolved by teams of people who bring to bear a vari-ety of perspectives and expertise. Preparation forthis environment involves learning to collaborateand to use a variety of tools and resources.

Collaborative learning focuses on problemsrather than topics and engages students in activi-ties where they produce and promote theories, in-terrelate ideas, and explain how things work orhow they are caused. This shifts the pattern of dis-

course from teacher-initiated questions, followedby student responses and teacher evaluation, toa pattern of teacher- and technology-supporteddiscourse in which students initiate inquiries,provide responses, and evaluate each other’s con-tributions. That is, the focus of education shiftsfrom teaching to learning.

Technology can be used to structure and facili-tate this collaboration. Currently, there are severaltechnology-based learning environments that il-lustrate this capability. Scardamalia and Bereit-er’s (30) computer-supported intentional learningenvironment (CSILE) is structured so that the stu-dents use a computer to collaboratively build atext and graphical database of information on top-ics of mutual interest. In creating this database,students engage in electronic interactions inwhich they pose problems, ask questions, andshare their understanding. Pea (26) provides agraphical simulation environment with whichgroups of students construct ray diagrams thatreplicate actual or videotaped experiments illus-trating principles of light and vision. White (42)designed a simulation environment with whichstudents formulated and tested hypotheses aboutforce and motion. Environments such as these,and the CAD environment in the scenario above,when used along with appropriate educational ac-tivities, transform the roles of students from recip-ients of transmitted facts to active participants inknowledge-building communities.

❚ Technological PerspectiveIn this scenario, the school’s computers provideprocessing power sufficient to render and manipu-late CAD graphics and run simulations. The soft-ware enables students to create powerful projectdocuments quickly and easily. In addition, the col-laborative software, coupled with a broadbandnetwork infrastructure, makes school-work men-toring a reality. These capabilities enable newrelationships, new levels of participation, and newactivities that support connections betweenschool and work.


High-Performance WorkstationsAccording to “Moore’s law, “ the density of

computer chips quadruples every three years. Thistrend is expected to continue until the year 2000,when extrapolation suggests that a single memorychip will store 256 million bits. The 256-million-bit figure may be slightly optimistic, however,since Meindl (22) predicts that growth will slowdown sometime in the near future. Using Meindl’sprojections, the density of chips will grow at 20 to35 percent per year through the year 2111. If thattrend—and a similar trend of increases in pro-cessing speed—holds, computers developed andpriced for consumer and education markets will beable to process data at speeds approaching 400MHz by 2005.

While power and speed quadruple every threeyears, historically computer hardware prices dropby half. Following similar trends, prices of RAMand VRAM will continue to fall and enable learn-ing environments to upgrade workstations so thatthey can render and manipulate detailed graphicsimages at speeds greater than those afforded bytoday’s dedicated graphics workstations. Addi-tionally, the cost per megabyte of storage will dropto enable storage systems for low-end worksta-tions to reach into the gigabytes.

Consequently, in this scenario, students usewhat would be considered, by today’s standards,a high-end graphics workstation to develop theircybercars. These students and teachers take ad-vantage of this processing power by working onauthentic and appealing car design problems tolearn physics and math.

Compound DocumentsSupported by trends in object-oriented pro-

gramming, software developers are moving awayfrom current applications-centered models ofsoftware development toward document-centeredapproaches. Applications-centered models focuson separate task clusters, like writing or budget-ing, and design software with functionality thatcorresponds to these clusters, such as word pro-cessors and spreadsheets. This model assumesthat users enter a task mode (such as writing) and

will need only the functionality pertinent to thatmode, as narrowly defined. Therefore, a user whowants to add pictures and sounds to a documentmust move back and forth between several othersoftware packages (such as a graphics or soundpackage) and deal with the operation of these oth-er programs.

Document-centered approaches assume thatusers will want access to different tools all thetime. Thus, document-centered approaches en-capsulate functionality in software componentsthat users can access within any document. For ex-ample, instead of working with a word processor,drawing application, or spreadsheet, users canwork within generic documents and import intothose documents the specialized capabilitiesneeded to perform specific tasks. This capabilitywill make systems easier to operate and tasks easi-er to perform. As with integrated communicationstechnologies, a document-centered approach freesthe cognitive capacity normally used to operatedifferent systems and allows users a deeper en-gagement with their ideas.

In this scenario, document-centered ap-proaches enable students to easily import dynamicmodeling capabilities into their designs, so thattheir cars can actually race in cyberspace. Theycan also export components of their design docu-ment into their multimedia report document, sothat they can demonstrate design features as theypresent the rationale for their design.

Simulation and ModelingThe opportunity to model a phenomenon offers

students a significant new way to represent andoperate on their understanding of the world—inthis case, a world of cars, what makes them work,and how they are designed. Document-centeredapproaches enable students to import “smart ob-jects” from a car design object suite into their proj-ect document. The objects themselves “know”how they can interconnect. And because these ob-jects are fashioned in view of an overall model ofhow cars operate, when interconnected they cancontribute to critiques of students’ evolving car


designs. These objects also “know” about proper-ties of the world in which cars operate.

Consequently, when students carry out simula-tions, they receive feedback about performanceand efficiency. For example, in this environment,students can even carry out wind tunnel simula-tions, which, with the help of visualization, enablethem to assess the aerodynamic efficiency of theirdesigns. Thus, the technologies that support mod-eling constitute a learning environment thatinvolves students in a systematic process of recur-sive design—a process that requires them toconstruct a grounded understanding of physicsand math while simultaneously developing amental model of systematic inquiry.

Collaborative ComputingCurrently, researchers are focusing a great deal

of attention on workgroup computing, also knownas groupware or computer-supported collabora-tive work environments. These are hardware andsoftware environments that connect people, per-haps at different sites, to work on shared tasks.These environments allow users to exchange andwork on shared documents, in synchronous orasynchronous mode. The connections may pro-vide for the exchange of formatted files, voicemessages, graphics, or video. The environmentscaffolds collaborative problem solving and de-sign. Computer-supported cooperative learningenvironments are just beginning to spin out ofthese technological developments (26, 30, 31).

Because they have access to collaboration ca-pabilities, when students in the scenario abovereach a stumbling block in their approach, theycan connect to a car design expert who shares theirdocument space. Ms. Lucero not only sees the de-sign that the students are creating, she can manip-ulate this design on her workstation. The studentscan see and hear Ms. Lucero and see what she isdoing with the design, and they can work togetheron its development. The collaboration environ-ment also records a history of the group’s design,so that Ms. Lucero can see earlier versions of thedesign and review the design process. The expertcollaborates with students to solve special prob-

lems that teachers do not have the expertise totackle, and she collaborates with teachers to createauthentic tasks and experiences for the students.In this way, the technologies enable new kinds ofrelationships and new levels of participation thatcan support learning.

Assistive TechnologiesAdvances in computer and other technologies

have long offered the potential of enhancing theeducation of children with disabilities, and in thepast decade, many applications of software, com-puter peripherals, and other technologies havebeen developed or adapted to increase the partici-pation of these youngsters in learning experi-ences. Because of the increasing awareness andacceptance of disabilities in our society, and therapidly accelerating pace of technology develop-ment, we foresee an increasing range of assistivetechnologies by the year 2005.

The full range of children with disabilities whocan benefit from technologies is too broad for usto address in this paper. For this reason, in our sce-nario, we have selected just one area on which tofocus attention—visual impairment. Currently,there are a number of assistive technologies de-signed to help persons with visual impairments.They include fully speaking, hand-held dictio-naries, screen readers with audio feedback that al-low the user to get an audio “dump” of a computerscreen, Kurzweil readers, Braille printers, and soon.

In our scenario, assistive devices designed forthe visually impaired and specialized interfacesfor technologies used by his fellow students en-able Vincent to share his learning experience andreduce the isolation his disability imposes. For ex-ample, students with no visual impairment mightbe using a graphical user interface (GUI) to inter-act with the software; Vincent would use speechrecognition technology and an interface that usesthe same graphic metaphors but presents them inwords (40). In addition to recognizing his speechinput, the technology provides Vincent with thesame information that others can read on a screenas text or graphics. This can be done by translating


this information to voice, so that Vincent can hearwhat is on the screen instead of seeing it. In ourscenario, we have also projected that Vincentcould use a touchscreen to enable him to visualizegraphics or schematics, the information beingprovided to him by voice according to the coordi-nates that he touches on the screen. These power-ful assistive technologies not only increase theparticipation of disabled students but provide stu-dents with environments of equivalent experi-ences that enable new relationships betweendisabled students and their nondisabled friends(see box D-3).

❚ Social Perspective: ConnectingLearning to the Home

A key factor in building “communities of under-standing” will be the extension of learning envi-ronments to include home and parents. Althoughmost parents want to be involved in their chil-dren’s education (13), a number of factors makethis difficult. The rise of single-parent and dual-career families has reduced the amount and flexi-bility of time that parents have to assist theirchildren and communicate with teachers. Someparents are inhibited by cultural differences, feel-ings of mistrust, or their own lack of education.Unfamiliar curricula and recent developments inknowledge make it difficult for some parents todraw on their own education to help their children.As a result, parents of all educational backgroundsbelieve they are ill-equipped to help. Several na-tional surveys of parents of all income levels havefound that they want schools to tell them how tohelp their children at home, and they want moreinformation about their children’s performance inschool (16).

Teachers face similar constraints on their time.Many lack training for dealing with parents orhave difficulty relating to culturally different fam-ilies. But studies show that school programs thatsupport parental involvement affect participationmore than other factors, including the parent’srace, education, family size, or marital status, andeven student grade level (13,16,23). Parentswhose children’s teachers involve them in the

learning process report feeling more compelled tohelp, report that they understand what their childis being taught, and rate the teacher higher in over-all teaching ability and interpersonal skills.

When parents are involved with children’slearning, teachers maintain higher expectationsfor students and report stronger, more positivefeelings about teaching and their school. Theyalso are less likely to make stereotypical judg-ments about poor, less-educated, or unmarriedparents than other teachers do.

Most importantly, the children of involved par-ents—especially students from low-income fami-lies and ethnic minorities—earn higher grades andtest scores (16). Schools also perform better whenparents are involved at school. It is estimated thatwhen as few as a third of the parents become ac-tively involved, a school as a whole begins to turnaround (16). The performance of all children in theschool tends to improve, not just that of the chil-dren of those who are more involved. The highestlevel of student achievement happens when fami-lies, schools, and community organizations worktogether.

The increased presence and connectivity oftechnology in the home can increase the level ofparental involvement by making it easier, moreconvenient, more interesting, and more produc-tive. Connections with the school can not only ac-commodate parents’ time constraints, but theysituate parents’ interactions with teachers in thecomfortable, familiar context of home experi-ences and tasks.

In this scenario and the first one, a number ofschool programs and technological capabilitiessupport parental involvement and communicationbetween the school and the home. Connectionsbetween school and home allowed Mr. Zamora toparticipate in Carmela’s experience even thoughhe could not attend. He is also able to help her andher classmates within the constraints of time andplace. Finally, he is able to use technology to ex-tend his own learning. Other activities and ser-vices facilitated by these connections could be:


Four weeks later, the families of the students and other community members gather to cheer on

the student teams as they pit their cars against others in the finals of the National Cyberspace Derby.

Steve and his parents walk into the performance center where the other students and neighbors are

gathered. Excitement is thick in the air.

“Thank you, everyone, for joining us this afternoon, ” Mr. Lindsay, the school-work coordinator,

says. “We appreciate Global Car Company’s sponsorship of this race and providing the students with

our engineering mentor, Ms. Lucero. In the finals, the winner of the race wiII be the car that is the fastest

while getting at least 40 miles per gallon of fuel. All cars have raced in series of regional qualifying runs,

and now the best 12 will compete in today’s final race. These cars have already rated high on tests of

user satisfaction and have come within production budgets. ”

On the large projection screen, the audience sees the race from four perspectives. In one win-

dow, there is an overhead view of the entire track and the position of each car. Another window displays

the track from the driver’s seat as students maneuver among their competitors. A third view focuses on

the car’s instrument panel of gauges showing speed and fuel consumption. Because each car is a

computational model, the students can tap into any car on the track, read its gauges, and display them

in a fourth window

Lynda, Vincent, Steve, and Carmela huddle around their teleputer as the voice of the announcer

comes through the speaker. “Good luck, everybody. Ready, set, GO!”

As the audience cheers, the McAuliffe Cheetahs accelerate their car around the track, moving to

the front of the pack

“You’re off to a good start, ” Ms. Lucero cheers

As the cars lap the cyberspace track, two cars from other communities pull ahead. “Look how

much fuel they’ve used, ” yells one parent, pointing to the projection screen. The audience watches the

indicator drop quickly as the car in the lead bursts ahead. “See our fuel gauge; we still have plenty left, ”

Steve shouts.

The community audience groans as the cars reach the finish line. Two cars cross the line ahead

of theirs. Then the voice of the announcer says: “While the first two cars that crossed the finish Iine were

the fastest, the winner is the car that is both fast and fuel efficient, so our winner is the car that crossed

the line third: the McAuliffe Cheetahs!”

Later that night, those from the community who couldn’t attend the race live can access a replay

of the race on the community’s dedicated learning channel. Carmela returns home with her mother to

find her father finishing up his latest telecourse lesson. “Congratulations!” he beams. “1 watched the

results in the background while I was working on my lesson. Great job!”

Carmela smiles back, “1 knew we could win if we made it more fuel efficient. We checked the fuel

efficiency every time we changed the car design. Keeping track of fuel efficiency is really important. We

are using it a lot. Ms. Gomez asked us to enter the fuel efficiency of our family cars in the class data-

base for our project on hazardous spills. Can you help me transfer the data from our car’s computer?”

Mr. Zamora reaches for the family PDA and calls up the database for their car. The database is

automatically updated by wireless communication every time the car pulls into the garage, so the family

can keep track of its efficiency and catch problems before they become big ones. “Let’s link these data

to your classroom database, like this, and it will automatically be updated, too. Let’s sit down tomorrow

night and go over the data together. We can look at why some cars are more fuel efficient than others “

“Dad, will you mentor this project?” Carmela asks. “The kids want to see how the rail cars are built

so they don’t spill hazardous waste “

“Sure, let’s send electronic mail to your teachers asking how I can help, ” he says. “But first, let’s

replay that winning race!”


� Videotext service and dedicated school videochannels that provide continual updates ofschool activities.

� Electronic mail or voice-mail messages that al-low parents and teachers to discuss studentprogress asynchronously, at times convenientto each.

� Video programs that explain student assign-ments and provide tips for how parents can par-ticipate and help.

� Computer-based assignments, educationalprojects, and multi-player games that parentscan do with their children.

� Extended video-based programs or mini-courses that supplement parents’ knowledge ofa range of topics from parenting skills to schoolsubjects.

� Switched, interactive video so parents and othercommunity members can tutor children fromtheir homes.

� Community-access video servers that allowparents to share personal photos and audio andvideo recordings of historical note or personalmeaning.

❚ Pedagogical Perspective:Authentic Assessment

Paralleling several other developments describedabove, there is a national move to change studentassessment so that it reflects knowledge as it isused in the world rather than knowledge in theclassroom. Authentic assessment moves from therecall of facts and the computation of “answers” tothe application of knowledge in situations similarto those in which knowledge will be used in thereal world. Correspondingly, judgments are madeon authentic processes and products, and the “cor-rectness” of these assessments moves from beingthe sole responsibility of the teacher to being theshared responsibility of those who participate inand are affected by the application of knowledge.

� Authentic assessment can be supported bytechnology in many ways, including:

� Designing multimedia assessment tasks thatpresent richly textured scenarios.

� Allowing learners of disparate knowledge,learning styles, challenges/impairments, andlanguage to be equally engaged in the assess-ment process.

� Archiving the learning process, draft materials,and finished products.

� Recording time spent on tasks and trackingscaffolding.

� Supporting “remote” evaluation of studentwork.

� Publishing student work and making it avail-able to parents and others in the community.

❚ Pedagogical Perspective: MultipleRepresentations and Visualization

External representations are the primary means bywhich people come to understand a phenomenonor concept and express this understanding to oth-ers (20). We use words, pictures, sounds, dia-grams, numerals, and other symbols to constructthese representations and convey meaning to oth-ers. Each type of symbol, or symbol system, ex-presses the meaning of a phenomenon or conceptin a different way. A picture of a car racing down atrack says something different from the equationf=ma, yet both say something about motion,force, acceleration, etc. Making connectionsacross symbol systems or representations is im-portant; in fact, the ability to make these connec-tions is frequently what we mean when we saysomeone “understands” something. For example,someone understands f=ma when he or she canread a paragraph about speeding cars and use theequation to determine which car will go fastest orneed the least force to accelerate.

Technology can be used to support understand-ing by providing students with one or more sym-bolic representations of a phenomenon or concept.Students can act on these in some way and observethe results. These multiple coordinated represen-tations can make difficult concepts more accessi-ble to students, and students can build a deeperunderstanding of the concept by combining thedifferent information provided by each represen-tation (19,20). For example, a student could enteran equation and the technology could provide a


graph of the equation. As a consequence, the stu-dent has a deeper understanding about both equa-tions and graphs. Or the technology can build ona student’s understanding as represented one wayto understand the phenomenon as expressed in adifferent way.

“Stepping on the gas” is a common, everydayexperience for students. In the scenario provided,the students can manipulate the graphic object ofa racing car so as to “step on the gas” (that is, in-crease the force), thus increasing its velocity andacceleration. Not only do they see the car speed up(a consequence with which they are very familiar),they also see a numerical representation of itsspeed and see this numeral change over time.They also see a graph of the relationship betweenforce and acceleration. Thus, they can use theirunderstanding of speeding cars, as represented bypictures, to understand force and acceleration, asrepresented by numerals and graphs.

❚ Technological Perspective

NetworksDuring the next 10 years, pressure from four

market forces will drive service providers tosupport broadband (10 Mb/s to 100 Mb/s) andwideband (greater than 100 Mb/s) demands formetropolitan-area networks (MANs) and wide-area networks (WANs):

� Increases in computing power.� The public’s growing appetite for media-rich

information.� Increases in workgroup computing (that is,

groupware).� Performance expectations based on the broad-

band and wideband capabilities of local-areanetworks (LANs).

Encircling the McAuliffe community of ourscenario is a switched, high-bandwidth, wide-areanetwork composed of fiberoptic cable and high-capacity video servers. The network is extendedinto homes, schools, automobiles, and offices byan amalgam of fiber, coaxial cables, wireless com-munication, and a few residual copper wires. Its

capacity is increased by a variety of software andhardware compression and decompression utili-ties. The network is connected to networks aroundthe world via satellite and microwave. Tapped intothe network are a range of electronic devices thatact and look sometimes like telephones, some-times like televisions, and sometimes like com-puters, but they all communicate with each other.Sometimes they are combined into a singleinformation-entertainment “teleputer.” This net-work interconnects the various devices we havedescribed and supports the connections betweenschool, home, and work.

Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)Learners and teachers will have small, wireless,

very powerful information appliances at their dis-posal and within reach of their budgets in 10 years.Capitalizing on trends in miniaturization,manufacturers are packing more and more com-puter power into smaller and smaller cases. Thesedevelopments herald a new class of computing de-vice called a personal digital assistant (PDA).Prices of these devices are dropping rapidly, and,well before 2005, their price points will meetthose currently offered by more specialized gameplatforms such as Nintendo. For example, mostanalysts anticipate that prices for Apple Comput-er’s Newton PDA will fall to $200 or less by 1996.

Because they carry their PDAs everywhere,learners in our scenarios can work on their proj-ects regardless of their location. In addition to ap-proaching the task in a structured way, studentswork opportunistically, adding voice annotations,comments and ideas from friends and parents, andpointers to new information that arise during dis-cussions. The major importance of these devicesis that they bring computer processing and com-munications to situations anytime, anywhere.These capabilities will enrich many “informal”(outside the physical school building) learning sit-uations, such as those that occur in the home.

Interactive Digital VideoCable service providers are scrambling to pro-

vide interactive digital video services. As firststeps, they are putting in place the infrastructure


to provide video-on-demand and interactive homeshopping as a replacement for conventional sub-scriber TV. They are examining both the impactand the requirements of such services in testbedsacross the country (27). And, fueled by customersurveys that already underscore the attractivenessof these offerings, companies are building the vid-eo servers and set top boxes necessary to supportthese initiatives. One can already preview modestexamples of these capabilities in hotels that offerguests the option to select and watch a movie at atime that matches their schedule or check outthrough the TV without going to the front desk.The advent of digital video-on-demand, coupledwith the development of user-friendly agenttechnologies, will allow people to search videoservers for specific kinds of information and makeselections just as people today search and retrieveinformation from conventional databases.

In this scenario, both the replay of the race andthe telecourse that Mr. Zamora is taking are avail-able on large digital video servers. Carmela andher fellow students will also store their multi-media reports on these servers. These and otherresources are available to members of the commu-nity as they are interested in using them.

Large, Color DisplayIt is likely that in the next 10 years flat-screen

technology will improve sufficiently to accom-modate modest display sizes in limited locations.The federal government has made a financialcommitment to keep the United States competi-tive in this technological arena. For example, Xe-rox Corporation has recently received significantamounts of government funding to develop flat-panel technology for the U.S. military. We expectthat in 10 years, following this developmentalphase, the prices of large (4-ft x 3-ft ) flat paneldisplays will reach price points equivalent totoday’s high-end consumer televisions($2,000-$3,000).

In this scenario, the community has access tothis still-expensive technology through the multi-media performance auditorium at the McAuliffeLearning Center. This display serves the impor-

tant purpose of providing a common experience toa large group of people. The community memberscan participate in the achievements of their chil-dren and share in the satisfaction of their accom-plishments.

IMPLICATIONSReiterating the point that began this paper, the vi-sion that we present has significant implicationsfor social change that go beyond the developmentof advanced technologies. Some of these implica-tions we have embedded in our scenarios and theiranalysis. Others are more pervasive and representthe larger social context beyond school, home,and business connections and relationships. Mak-ing the vision that we present a reality will dependon changes in the way teachers teach and usetechnology, on the way education is supported andschools are held accountable, and on the universalavailability of the services we describe.

❚ Teachers and Teacher TrainingSheingold (34) concludes that the human side oftechnology introduction is a much bigger barrierthan lack of technology per se. To fulfill our vi-sion, teachers would need to learn not only to usethe various technologies described in our scenar-ios, but also to design, structure, guide, and assessprogress in learning centered around student proj-ects.

This kind of teaching, which most teachershave rarely experienced in their own education,requires wide-ranging subject matter expertise,creativity, and intellectual confidence. Teachersneed to help students design projects that will in-corporate important content and be able to providekey ideas or strategies for helping students over-come impasses encountered in their work. Teach-ers need to be comfortable letting their studentsmove into domains of knowledge where the teach-ers themselves lack expertise; teachers need tohave the intellectual confidence to be willing tomodel their own reasoning process when they en-counter phenomena they do not understand orquestions they cannot answer. Teachers need to becreative in finding ways to embed measures of stu-


dent understanding within group projects, no easytask when multiple groups are working concur-rently and different students assume differentroles within their groups. Teachers must be able toroam from group to group physically and elec-tronically, providing stimulation and coachingwithout dominating the group process.

This new role for teachers is challenging and re-quires a very different kind of teacher educationprogram, one in which prospective teachers aretaught in the way we wish them to teach, andtechnology use is integrated into all preserviceeducation classes rather than treated as the topicfor a single, isolated class. Today’s teachers needa great deal of professional support for learning toteach in new ways and to incorporate technologyinto these practices. They do not need the one- ortwo-hour workshop that is so prevalent today.They need regular blocks of time built into theirwork schedules in which they can plan project-based, technology-supported activities and as-sessment methods, as well as opportunities toobserve classrooms where such work is going on.They need a chance to interact with a professionalgroup of colleagues interested in the same kindsof instructional approaches and subject matter toget feedback on their new approaches, pointers touseful information, and encouragement for get-ting over the inevitable setbacks. Technology canhelp develop such groups through electronic net-works and through “video clubs,” in which teach-ers share and discuss videotaped excerpts fromtheir classrooms. However, administrators andpolicy-makers need to provide the resources tosupport time for teachers to engage in these activi-ties and develop expertise in their new roles.

If learning and teaching change in the ways weenvision in these scenarios, the profession ofteaching will change drastically. Teachers will as-sume a more executive role, setting goals and pro-viding guidance, support, and evaluation, butletting the students carry out most of the learningactivities. This new role entails curriculum devel-opment (as they work with students to design proj-ects), team building, diagnosis of individuallearning needs, assessment of individual studentprogress, and exploration of questions in a broad-

er, unspecified range of content domains. Just asbusiness professionals employ a variety oftechnology tools to increase their access to in-formation and ability to make sense out of it,teachers will need a range of technology supportsfor designing learning materials, performing as-sessments, keeping track of curricular goals andachievements, and communicating with otherteachers, information resources, students, andparents. No longer will teaching be the single pro-fession in which practitioners cannot expect readyaccess to a telephone. Teachers will need to havetechnology tools available to them for their ownas well as their students’ use.

The teachers we describe, with well-developedskills as technology users and greater interactionwith the worlds of research and commerce, arelikely to find an increase in their status and in thenumber of nonteaching opportunities available tothem. Side effects of this change in role could wellinclude pressure to increase teacher salaries and agreater diversity among those who choose the pro-fession.

❚ Accountability and Public SupportFrom a public policy perspective, accountabilityconcerns are a driving force in federal, state, andlocal education spending. Federal and state educa-tion agencies are offering local jurisdictions moreflexibility in their education programs in ex-change for accountability with respect to curricu-lum standards. Some might infer quite differentvisions of technology use from those describedhere, based on trends stressing curriculum stan-dards and assessment of student performance rela-tive to those standards. One could extrapolatefrom the national Goals 2000 legislation to the useof technology as the transmission mechanism for“approved” instructional content tied to curricu-lum standards and as a tool for collecting studentassessments (for example, through computerizedadaptive testing, which permits the coverage ofmore content with fewer test items per student).Many software publishers are looking forward tothe development and voluntary adoption of na-tional curriculum standards because they have the


potential to create broader markets for instruction-al software tied to a single national curriculum,rather than the patchwork of state and local curric-ula that makes software design difficult and frag-ments the market.

We offer a very different vision of technologyuse, one in which the same kinds of technologytools used in work settings and homes are avail-able to students and teachers, and are incorporatedinto challenging learning activities where stu-dents design projects around their own interestswith guidance and support from their teachers andoutside mentors. We have not ignored these policyconcerns, however. We suggest that sophisticatedsoftware tools can be developed to support teach-ers in injecting important curriculum content intostudent projects and in keeping track of studentachievement of instructional goals. This techno-logical aid is quite feasible, provided that teachershave the training and time for its use.

What is perhaps less clear is public acceptanceof this approach to learning and of a system ofassessing students in the context of authenticgroup projects. As Cohen (8) points out, the ma-jority of the public adheres to a very conventionalmodel of education as knowledge transmissionand assessment as performance on standardizedmultiple-choice tests. In many cases, departuresfrom conventional content, teaching practices, orassessment are seen as attempts to avoid highstandards. Parents want to know where their chil-dren stand in relation to other children and wherethe student body of their school stands in relationto those of other schools on traditional academicsubject matter.

Our scenario for the future requires a realchange in this perception. It will come about onlyif there is increased dialogue between educatorsand the community they serve, as well as strongevidence that project-based learning activitiessupport the attainment of higher skill levels andthat authentic assessments provide informationthat is at once educationally useful and predictiveof how well students will perform future tasks ofinterest, whether college performance or ability tofunction effectively on the job. Given the difficul-

ty of making widespread, fundamental changes inteaching practices, a strong body of research andevaluation evidence supporting these practicesmust be generated and disseminated to policy-makers and the public if the kinds of practices wedescribe are to be commonplace in the year 2005.

❚ Equity and AccessThe biggest assumption in our scenarios is thatstudents and their families will have near-univer-sal access to high-end technologies. As technolo-gy connects learning environments and homes, itbecomes increasingly important that differencesin socioeconomic status not create an electronicform of school segregation between the techno-logical haves and have-nots. Government andschool programs and regulations will need to as-sure the accessibility and affordability of at least aminimum form of network service for all homes.

Although the growth in the number of comput-ers and video-based technologies in schools hasbeen exponential (2), the number of hours perweek that individual students have access totechnology is still very low in most schools.Moreover, those schools serving children fromeconomically disadvantaged homes have less ac-cess to technology than do those serving more af-fluent communities (3) and, when they do haveaccess to computers, are less likely to use them inways other than drill-and-practice (12). In somestates, school budgets are stretched so tightly thatstudents must share basic texts; under such cir-cumstances, teachers have a hard time buildingenthusiasm for learning to use new technologies.

There are positive signs, however, that the issueof equity is getting more attention. School financ-ing mechanisms that leave areas with low proper-ty values with very limited per pupil educationalfunding are being challenged successfully inmany states. At the same time, federal compensa-tory education programs are focusing more onschools serving the largest proportions of poorchildren. Federal guidelines are encouragingschoolwide programs and supporting the acquisi-tion of technology and implementation of parent


involvement programs as part of the effort to im-prove the educational prospects for children at riskof school failure.

Corporate support for education programs, par-ticularly programs that incorporate technology, isat an all-time high and is likely to continue. Thebusiness community has become much moreaware of its dependence on a well-educated work-force and of the changing cultural, gender, andethnic composition of that workforce. Many cor-porations are making a particular effort to reachout to schools serving large numbers of childrenfrom less affluent homes, where computertechnology is usually absent.

Current trends are not sufficient to reach our vi-sion, however. Stronger efforts are needed on thepart of federal, state, and district education agen-cies to make sure that schools serving larger con-centrations of students from poor homes have notonly equal access to equipment, but also equity interms of the quality of technology-supportedlearning activities.

The concentration of government resources fortechnology in schools serving larger proportionsof children from low-income homes will not bringreal equal opportunity, of course, if the students donot have the same kinds of home resources usedby other students and their caregivers. Our scenar-ios assume that a rich array of broadband serviceswill be as commonplace and low in cost as televi-sion or the telephone. Without something ap-proaching universal access and perhaps specialrates for low-income households, we will not seethe kind of across-the-board parental participationdescribed here.

Another way to make technology accessible toparents is to make school equipment and servicesavailable during nonschool hours. Part of the sce-nario takes place in a technologically and sociallyrich community center located in the school. Thecoordination and co-location of communitygroups, social services, and educational programscan increase the impact of these services and in-crease their efficiency. Making these resourcesavailable to parents and students during non-school hours can further increase impact and rein-force educational goals. As a place where parents

and children come together to engage in learningactivities, the learning environment can becomethe center for building communities of under-standing.

CONCLUSIONThe technological developments that we have dis-cussed will be driven to a large extent by the busi-ness and consumer markets and funded by privatecapital. There is an important role, however, forgovernment leadership, regulation, and support.

Central to our vision of communities of under-standing, of course, is the community. Communi-ty leaders will play a pivotal role in makingeducation the focus of community life and innourishing the values that support education.

State and federal governments also can facili-tate the development of communities of under-standing in the policies and regulations that theymake related to the emerging National Informa-tion Infrastructure (NII). Current models of theNII envision schools connected to each other andto libraries and museums. This level of intercon-nection is insufficient to realize our vision;schools must also be connected to homes andworkplaces. As state and federal agencies reviewregulatory policies, they should require telephonecompanies and cable companies to providephased-in universal service as they install ad-vanced technologies, much as telephone compa-nies are currently required to provide universalvoice services. At the same time, policies shouldbe structured so that service providers are respon-sive to community needs, much as current struc-tures require cable companies to negotiate withlocal communities around the terms of their fran-chise. Policies and funding should encourage andsupport the experiments of local communities tointerconnect schools, homes, and workplaces tosupport education.

In forming policies, it is vitally important thatdifferences in socioeconomic status not result inan electronic form of segregation between thetechnological haves and have-nots. Policies willbe needed to assure accessibility and affordabilityof at least a minimum form of network service for


all homes, schools, and communities. Further-more, it is important that this minimum service beinteractive. An NII that allows some to both createand receive information while others are able onlyto receive it would institutionalize radical inequi-ties and disenfranchise segments of society. Equi-ty and access must be paramount considerations.

Finally, state and federal agencies dealing witheducation, labor, commerce, and science andtechnology should act in a coordinated fashion toencourage collaboration between the public andprivate sectors and to foster the development oftools, materials, services, and resources that sup-port educational reform and make the NII pay offfor students and schools.

APPENDIX D REFERENCES1. Bank, D., “Telecom Deals in Air Again. Con-

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3. Becker, H.J., and Sterling, C.W., “Equity inSchool Computer Use: National Data and Ne-glected Considerations,” Journal of Educa-tional Computing Research 3(3):289-311,1987.

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8. Cohen, D.K., “Educational Technology andSchool Organization,” Technology in Educa-tion: Looking Toward 2020, R.S. Nickersonand P.P. Zodhiates (eds.) (Hillsdale, NJ: Erl-baum, 1988).

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11. Cypher, A., “EAGER: Programming Repeti-tive Tasks by Demonstration,” Watch What IDo: Programming by Demonstration, A. Cy-pher (ed.) (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,1993).

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National Committee for Citizens in Educa-tion, 1994).

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35. Smrekar, C., “Impact of School Choice andCommunity: In the Interest of Family andSchool,” Youth Social Services, Schooling,and Public Policy (Albany, NY: State Univer-sity of New York Press, in press).

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Appendix EPublic School

Teachers UsingMachines in the

Next Decade

t is hard to be clever about the folly of making predictions. Icould cite instances of those who have predicted everythingfrom the end of the world to the end of printed books. I couldcite others whose business is forecasting the immediate fu-

ture as, for example, Central Intelligence Agency executives whomissed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Or I could turn to thosewho saw a revolution in schoolteaching with the invention offilm, radio, television, and computers. None of these is clever oreven amusing.1

I prefer candor to cleverness so, with the risks of forecasting inmind, I will create three plausible “futures” of teachers usingcomputers, CD-ROMs, modems, and other telecommunicationsin their classrooms. These scenarios will have a patina of credibil-ity because they are anchored in what exists now and are seasonedwith the experiences of both partisans and opponents of teachersusing these machines in their classrooms. I then will identify themost likely of these three scenarios to occur in teachers’ class-rooms. I am reasonably confident which scenario will material-ize, although the less courageous side of me surrounds the likely“future” with at least one qualifier.

So, I want to be clear at the very beginning of this essay that my“prediction” is no more than an educated guess based upon theclaim that schools are unique organizations, the fabric of social

1 For recent prophesies about the end of printed books, see D.T. Max, “The End of theBook?,” Atlantic, vol. 274(3) September 1994, pp. 61-71. For forecasts on electronic ma-chines’ impact on public schools, see Larry Cuban, Teachers and Machines: The Use ofClassroom Technology Since 1920 (New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 1986).

| 147

by

Larry CubanStanford University


beliefs woven around public schools, and whathas occurred in the past when practitioners facedelectronic machines.

In this paper I will argue that the spread of tele-communications in businesses, industries, themilitary, and other organizations make compari-sons to getting teachers to use computers in theirclassrooms facile but misguided because theclassroom as a workplace, the nature of teachinggroups of children, and public expectations forschools differ substantially from other institu-tions.

Such casual comparisons, I will argue, are driv-en more by a mind-set that frames the problem ofsnail-like progress in getting teachers to use thetechnology as an engineering problem. That is, theorganization is basically in good order; what itneeds is a heavy dose of efficient managing andquality control. If teachers are not using the damnmachines, get more of them, train the teachers touse them, provide continuous hardware mainte-nance and technical assistance to teachers and, byGod, there will be more students on those ma-chines. Framing the problem this way is popularand dominates the thinking of many advocates fortelecommunications in schools.

A less popular way of framing the problem isseeing the very slow (and, as partisans would say,unimaginative) use as a problem of poor designand stubborn traditional beliefs. That is, the pres-ent school structures (e.g., age-graded schools)and cultures (e.g., norms of teacher self-reliancerather than collaboration) that dominate the teach-er’s workplace need to be redesigned with teach-ing and learning kept foremost in mind forinnovative technologies to be used in classroomsroutinely. Second, the redesign will have to take

into consideration dominant popular beliefs aboutwhat teaching is, how learning occurs, whatknowledge is proper in schools, and the teacher-student relationship. These traditional beliefs in-form mainstream views of a proper schooling. Itis, however, the engineering approach, not the re-design approach, to getting teachers to use tele-communications that currently dominates thepopular and research literature on teacher use oftechnologies.2

There are very good reasons why the problemof limited teacher use of technology is framed lessoften in design terms. Previous school reformsthat swept across the nation largely ignored tech-nology. Moreover, the entangled impulses thatdrive reformers to press teachers to use newtechnologies seemingly mirror those very sameimpulses in manufacturing, banking, medical sci-ence, the armed forces, and other organizationsthat have automated many of their essential opera-tions. Engineered solutions worked there. Whynot in schools?

I then turn to three scenarios that I constructedas credible alternative futures and assess whichone is likely to occur. To make this entire argu-ment concrete and coherent I will concentrate onteacher use of computers.

THE SPREAD OF COMPUTERSIN SCHOOLS: CONFUSION OVERACCESS, USE, AND INNOVATIONSchool use of computers has spread swiftly, wide-ly, and, on occasion, deeply. In 1981, for example,there were, on average, 125 students per comput-er; in 1991, there were 18. As new schools arebuilt that are wired for information technologies

2 See, for example, U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Power On!: New Tools for Teaching and Learning, OTA-SET-379(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988); Office of Technology Assessment, “Project Proposal: Teachers and Technology,”1993, pp. 1-12.

Appendix E Public School Teachers Using Machines in the Next Decade | 149

and the ratio of machines to students drop to 4:1or even less, hopes escalate for wider and more so-phisticated uses of the machines.3

A closer inspection of those and other figurescommonly used to display the swift penetration ofthe technology into schools, however, reveals thefrequent confusion between access and use. Forthose individual students who use computers (andnot all do) they spend, on average, a little morethan one hour a week (or 4 percent of all instruc-tional time). Moreover, what students do withcomputers varies greatly. For 11th grade studentswho use the machines, to offer another example,computers were seldom used in subject areas;where they were used, the purpose was to teachabout computers. An Office of Technology As-sessment (OTA) study concluded that studentsfrom high-income families have far more accessto computers in schools than peers from low-in-come families. Black students use computers inschools less than white, especially in elementaryschools. Pupils whose native language is not Eng-lish have even less access to computers. Finally,low-achieving students are less likely to use ma-chines to enhance reasoning and problem solvingand more likely to use them for drill and practice.4

What appears as a rampaging innovation threaten-

ing to reform the conduct of teaching and learning,then, is much less than meets the eye. And that hasbeen the case with earlier technologies groomedas tools for reforming traditional classrooms.

TECHNOLOGIES AND SCHOOL REFORMWhat is curious about current informationtechnologies and their earlier incarnations is thatnone were associated with national reform move-ments. If there is any pattern at all in the move-ments to reform schools that have swept across thenation since the middle of the 19th century, nonewere dependent upon instructional technologiesbeyond a teacher, blackboard, textbook, and penand paper.

Mid-nineteenth century common school lead-ers Horace Mann, Henry Barnard, and otherssought to make schooling accessible to all stu-dents regardless of ethnicity or class. They createdthousands of schools where students could attend,prepared teachers for those schools, and installeda common curriculum accessible to those who at-tended. Although instructional technologies wereabsent from such a movement, a managerial tech-nology—a systems perspective—was present inthe organizing of age-graded elementary schools

3 U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of The United States, 1991 (Washington, DC: U.S. GovernmentPrinting Office, 1991), p. 150; Quality Education Data, “Technology in Public Schools, 1991-1992: Extract (Denver, CO: Quality EducationData, 1992), pp. 1-2. For examples of new schools there is the $19.6-million Quince Orchard High School in Montgomery County (Maryland)where there are 288 computers for 1,100 students. Or the Juan Linn School in Victoria (Texas) where a computerized Integrated Learning Sys-tem (ILS) provides instruction to 500 students and records daily their work. See “Computers in School: A Loser? Or A Lost Opportunity,” Busi-ness Week, July 17, 1989, p. 108.

4 Power On!, op. cit., footnote 2, p. 6. These figures, however, obscure the imaginative applications of computer technology to instruction inspecial education where blind, deaf, and multiply-disabled students are able to read, write, and communicate in ways that heretofore were un-available and of new software for drafting courses, auto mechanics, business, and other vocational courses. See The Alliance for TechnologyAccess, a network of resource centers that specializes in using computers to help individuals with disabilities. They publish an occasional news-letter, CompuCID, the Computer Classroom Integration Project; also see Susan Russell, Rebecca Corwin, Janice Mokros, and Peggy Kapisov-sky, Beyond Drill and Practice: Expanding the Computer Mainstream (Reston, VA.: The Council for Exceptional Children, 1989).

Such figures also ignore the massive computerization of administrative work in districts and schools previously done by typewriters andtelephone. Computerized data processing, for example, has converted the making of district bus schedules, high school course selections, pay-roll operations and the reporting of grades into routine activities that take a fraction of the time formerly used for these tasks. Increasingly, teach-ers use software to prepare lessons, notes to students and parents, classroom newsletters, attendance and grade-report records. In libraries, cardcatalogues are electronically available. The overall picture after the introduction of the personal computer a decade ago and persistent efforts toimprove schooling suggest, at best, that computers are an expanding but marginal activity in schools with wide variation in administrative,teacher, and student use.


and subject-centered, departmentally-focusedhigh schools with their multi-period daily sched-ule of recitations.5

A half-century later, another generation ofreformers sought to transform schools into instru-ments of social reform. These progressive edu-cation reformers wanted schools to turn millionsof immigrants into Americans and reduce thecorrosive effects of slum housing, urban crime,and poverty. Moreover, reformers wanted theseschools to focus on more than the child’s mind;their psychological and social development werepart of the educator’s responsibility. Furthermore,what children studied had to change because theylearned best when their interests were harnessed towhat occurred in the home, community, and na-tion. Throughout the early 20th century, progres-sive educators sought ways of transformingschools to secure these aims. Many educators inpre-World War II schools saw the invention of themotion picture and radio as useful tools to helpachieve their aims. But these new technologieswere marginal to their vision for new forms ofteaching and learning.6

Since World War II, a series of national reformmovements to improve schools included raisingacademic standards in the 1950s, desegregatingschools and creating open classrooms in the1960s, and instituting back-to-basics and minimalcompetency testing in the 1970s. New instruction-al technologies were mentioned and even pro-moted temporarily (such as television andprogrammed learning in the 1950s and 1960s and

computer-assisted instruction in the 1960s and1970s), but the center of gravity to any of these na-tional reforms was nontechnological. Machineswere mere blips on the outer edges of reformers’radar screens.7

This has not been the case in the 1980s and1990s. With massive technological changes in theworkplace and daily life, school reformersthroughout the last decade increasingly haveturned to putting computers in schools as a high-tech, engineered solution for ineffective, evenprimitive, teaching by textbooks. Hundreds offormal reports from corporate leaders, founda-tions, professional associations, and federal agen-cies consistently have underscored how schoolshave failed in achieving their academic purposesand how, in that failing, have contributed to thenation’s economic decline.8

Thus, in the 1980s and early 1990s, strong im-pulses to introduce higher quality control intopublic schools moved these coalitions of reform-ers that included corporate executives, public of-ficials, foundation officers, school administrators,and teachers to embrace computers and telecom-munications as a way of unfreezing the perceivedinefficiencies and rigidities of American school-ing.

IMPULSES FOR USING LATESTTECHNOLOGIES IN SCHOOLSBasically, three impulses converged in reformingschools through electronic technologies. Al-

5 For the common school movement, see David Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot, Managers of Virtue (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1982); Carl

Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic (New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1983).

6 For general history of progressive movement in education, see Lawrence Cremin, The Transformation of the School (New York, NY:Vintage, 1961); for the penetration of these ideas into schools and classrooms, see Larry Cuban, How Teachers Taught, 2d edition, (New York,NY: Teachers College Press, 1993) and Arthur Zilversmit, Changing Schools: Progressive Education Theory and Practice (Chicago, IL: Uni-versity of Chicago Press, 1993).

7 For post-World War reforms, see Diane Ravitch, The Troubled Crusade (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1983).8 The Nation at Risk (1983) report, for example, forged the linkage between economic decline as a nation and decline in standardized

achievement test scores. The report recommended a half-year of computer science as a high school graduation requirement. See National Com-mission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983), p. 26. Also see, for example,David Hornbeck, “Technology and Students at Risk of School Failure” in Arthur Sheekey (Ed.) Education Policy and TelecommunicationTechnologies (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, 1991), pp. 1-2.


though I offer them separately, they are entangledand technological enthusiasts often combine oneor more of these impulses in their advocacy for aparticular technology.

First, there is the drive to bring schools techno-logically in step with the workplace because of thefear that students will be unprepared both to com-pete in the job market and adjust to the changingmarketplace where bank teller machines, barcodes on products, answering machines, and otherelectronic devices prevail. The computerizedworkplace and the ubiquity of telecommunica-tions in daily routines outside the home have con-vinced advocates of modernizing schools thatstudents must become familiar with electronictechnologies. Computers, in other words, are thefuture and schools must prepare students for it.9

A second impulse has come from a diverse co-alition of academics, educators, and foundationofficials who have neoprogressive values of chil-dren engaged in self-directed learning. This coali-tion, leaning upon the work of American (JohnDewey and Jerome Bruner), European (MariaMontessori), and Russian (Lev Vygotsky) scien-tists and educators, seeks to overhaul classroomswhere learning is tediously absorbing knowledgelargely unconnected to daily life. They wantschools where teachers help students construct

their own understanding. Neoprogressives viewstudents as active learners creating knowledgethat makes sense to them. They want schoolswhere such knowledge is shared by all membersof the community; schools where diverse mixes ofadults and children work easily together in variedgroupings. Hence, interactive computers and tele-communications are mind-tools that help studentsgrasp concepts, use all of their senses, and practicewhat they have learned creating self-directedlearning communities, according to such advo-cates.10

Finally, there is the impulse for productivity.This highly prized value of making teaching andlearning efficient is historic and, when harnessedto electronic technologies, unrelenting. The lureof productivity—teaching more in less time forless cost—can be traced back to the origins of pub-lic schools in the early 19th century and has beena consistent goal for schooling ever since.11

Advertisements for computers make similarpoints today without hesitation or subtlety. IBMhas run an ad for the last few years that has a cleverset of photos showing the same teacher workingwith different students in her class simultaneous-ly. The caption reads: “With IBM, there’s a prac-tical way for teachers to be everywhere at once.”The ad copy says:

9 In examining the impulses driving recent reform coalitions, I read the reasons reformers used in explaining why new technologies werecrucial in improving schools. I merged reasons that I felt were close enough to be cousins and, in doing so, probably created both ambiguity andmild confusion, if not annoyance, for some readers who wanted clarity. For a more exact delineation of the specific impulses for computers inschools, see Israel Scheffler, “Computers at School?,” Teachers College Record, 87(4), Summer 1986, pp. 514-528.

10 I use the word “neoprogressive” to link the ideas of these reformers with those of a century earlier who were pedagogical progressiveschallenging the then-inflexible ways of teaching, learning, and organizing schools. The ideas of Francis Parker, John Dewey, William H. Kilpa-trick, and such diverse practitioners as William Wirt and Ella Flagg Young were applied to schools and classrooms in the decades before andafter the turn of the century. Notions of active engagement of children in what they were learning, group work on projects, and focus on both themind and emotions of children as they developed were central to this earlier generation of reformers. See Lawrence Cremin, The Transforma-tion of the School (New York, NY: Vintage, 1961); David Tyack, The One Best System (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1974).

For instances of these ideas in print, see Howard Gardner, The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach (NewYork, NY: Basic Books, 1991; John Seely Brown, Allan Collins, Paul Duguid, “Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning,” EducationalResearcher (Jan.-Feb., 1989), pp. 32-41. For a clear portrayal of the neoprogressive view insofar as using computers, see articles by JudahSchwartz, Sylvia Weir, and the writers for the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition in “Visions for the use of Computers in ClassroomInstruction (February 1989) and “Responses to ‘Visions for the Use of Computers in Classroom Instruction’” (May 1989) in Harvard Educa-tional Review, 59(3), pp. 206-225.

11 See, for example, Carl Kaestle, (Ed.) Joseph Lancaster and the Monitorial School Movement (New York, NY: Teachers College Press,1973); Raymond Callahan, Education and the Cult of Efficiency (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1962) Arthur Melmed, “Productiv-ity and Technology in Education,” Educational Leadership, February 1983, pp. 4-6; Power On!, op. cit., footnote 2, pp. 171-172.


With an IBM network, teachers are discover-ing how to do the impossible: deliver quality, in-dividual instruction to every student. It ispossible because students are working with atool that is infinitely patient . . . teachers are freeto evaluate student progress and help when aneed arises. 12

“Faster, better, and cheaper” is the drumbeat ofthe productivity impulse.

These interlocking impulses have fueled thesurge in school purchases of information technol-ogies in the 1980s and early 1990s. But as the fig-ures cited earlier revealed, teachers’ use ofcomputers and telecommunications have yieldedmixed results.

Some obvious questions arise. Is the growingnumber of new schools devoted to using comput-ers and telecommunications a sign that these are,indeed, schools of the future? Or is the apparentlymarginal use of computers in classrooms a signthat this technology is going to be used just likeearlier ones, that is, peripherally, seldom disturb-ing customary ways of teaching and learning? Oris this marginal use of computers in schools a signof steadily growing acceptance of the newtechnologies and that, within time, most class-rooms will become more machine-friendly?

These questions ask about the future so I willsketch out three scenarios of what might be 10years from now. Each storyline is plausible andhas substantial evidence to support it. After de-scribing each I will pick one that I believe is likelyto be dominant a decade from now.

THREE SCENARIOS

❚ The Technophile’s Scenario:Electronic Schools of the Future, Now

A decade from now schools will have enough ma-chines, software, accessories, and wiring to ac-

commodate varied groups of students inclassrooms, seminar rooms, and individual work-space. The technophile’s vision driving suchschools is anchored in making teaching and learn-ing far more productive and meaningful than bothare now. 13

Better machines and software are central to thisvision; they are seen as tools for both teachers andstudents to liberate themselves from inflexibleways of teaching and learning. Students will cometo rely on the machines and one another to teacheach other; teachers will become coaches to helpstudents with what needs to be learned. Frequentlectures, recitation, textbook assignments, and50-minute periods will be as implausible as dino-saurs in a zoo.

The strategy for achieving the vision is to createtotal settings that have a critical mass of machines,software, and like-minded people who are serioususers of the technologies. Technophiles believe inmaking big changes swiftly rather than creatingpilot programs in schools or incrementally buyinga few machines at a time.

Two examples of the technophile’s vision in-spired by mixes of the three impulses describedearlier may help make the scenario vivid. Consid-er first a productivity-driven version of the scenar-io that emphasizes, in a phrase favored byadvocates, “instructional delivery systems.”

A student would take his paper to a writingcenter where he would be asked by a terminal totype his name, his teacher’s name, and the titleof his paper. Having done this, the computerscreen will then ask him to input the first symbolthat the faculty member has written on his paper.Here the student might type CS or rule #42, andthe screen would say, ‘John, this is the third timeyou have missed a comma splice. In your papersentitled ‘My Most Embarrassing Moment’ and‘An Analysis of Two Poems by Emily Dickin-

12 The School Administrator, May 1989, between pages 15 and 18.13 What I call “technophiles” Thomas P. Hughes calls “technological enthusiasts.” His study of American inventions and growth of systems

for using technology (electrical industries, manufacturing, etc.) between 1870 and 1970 makes clear that the present moment of vibrant hope forthe future that technophiles aspire to is part of a larger enthusiasm that is typically American. See Thomas P. Hughes, American Genesis: ACentury of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm (New York, NY: Viking, 1989).


son’ you had comma splices, and you have notyet mastered what a comma splice is. I am goingto explain it to you once again, give you somedrill and practice until you have mastered it, andurge you not to make this mistake again. . . .’

At the end of each instructional period in thecomputer center, a list will be given to the teach-er which divides the students into various group-ings of approximate ability as of that day. Thusthe teacher will be able to work individuallywith groups that are quite close together back inthe classroom. The [computer lab] managerswill also generate individual seatwork on a high-speed printer that the students can take back totheir rooms with them. Thus, while some may beworking with teachers in individual groups, oth-ers might be doing individualized seatwork withproblems generated to their precise level at thatmoment. . . .14

Other technophiles offer neoprogressive flightsinto the future to dramatize how new technologiescan create student-centered schools. One examplewill give a distinct flavor for this version of thescenario. In this instance, a high school seniorfrom a fully computerized school is applying fora job at a TV station.

She looked through her portfolio for the hun-dredth time. She hoped she had everything thatshe needed and that the battery on her notebookcomputer held up. She had her early work fromthe other clusters too. She had even brought herID disk, in case Mr. Martin wanted her to see thehologram that showed the paths she chosen toreach Mastery [in the curriculum].

‘Come on in, Laura. . . .’ Laura sat nervouslyon the edge of the chair next to Mr. Martin.“Well, Laura, how are you? Are you ready toshow me what you’ve accomplished?’

’Yes, sir, I sure am!’ Laura relaxed as she be-gan to talk about her projects. . . . ‘I’m inter-ested in long-range weather planning and itsimplications on international relations. . . .’Laura handed Mr. Martin her disk as he acti-vated the laser wall display. As the images of herdata began to appear, she described in detail thesteps she had taken in the completion of her pre-diction simulation. . . .

’Well, Laura, you’ve done a good job. Tellme about some of your other activities inschool.’

’I did my first rotation when I was eight. Itwas at the Materials and Manufacturing Cluster.We compared the differences between breadbaked in a bakery and bread baked at home. Boy,did we eat a lot of bread!’ Laura showed Mr.Martin the IBM floppy disk that she had kept allthese years. . . .

Laura left the interview with a good feel-ing. . . . She knew he appreciated her computerskills. She just hoped he looked at the hologramso he could see all the other things she haddone.15

❚ The Preservationist’s Scenario:Maintaining While Improving Schooling

In this scenario, policymakers and administratorsput computers and telecommunication technolo-gies into schools largely to improve productivitybut not to alter substantially existing ways of orga-nizing a school for instruction. While some teach-ers and administrators use these technologiesimaginatively and end up being profiled by themedia, most uses are fitted by teachers to the dura-ble grammar of the classroom and school.

The vision buried within the preservationist’sstory is one of schools continuing to do for society

14 Dustin Heuston, “The Future of Education: A Time of Hope and New Delivery Systems,” unpublished paper, WICAT systems, Orem, UT,1986, cited in Royal Van Horn, “Educational Power Tools: New Instructional Delivery Systems” Phi Delta Kappan, March 1991, pp. 527-533,quote is on p. 533.

15 Draft of Texas Technology Model for 2061 Project, 1991, pp. 2-4; For another example of older students using technologies in an early21st century “school,” see Christopher Dede, “Imaging Technology’s Role in Restructuring for Learning,” in Karen Sheingold and Marc Tuck-er (eds.) Restructuring for Learning and Technology (New York, NY: Center for Technology and Education, Bank Street College of Education,1990), pp. 51-52.


what they have historically done: pass on prevail-ing values, and accumulated knowledge to thenext generation, improve ways of teaching andlearning the prescribed curriculum, sort out thosechildren who achieve academically from thosewho do not, and give taxpayers as efficient aschooling that can be bought with available funds.Skepticism towards major changes, hammeredout of these traditional aims for schooling, leadsto adding-on to what exists now.16

Much evidence makes this scenario plausible.Some examples: mandating computer literacy asanother graduation requirement; adding computerscience courses to the curriculum; creating com-puter labs where teachers bring their classes; plac-ing one computer in each classroom; buyingsoftware that is part of a textbook adoption; final-ly, a school buying an integrated learning systems(ILS) that centralizes daily math and reading les-sons for each student with results of the students’work being reported the next day. 17

In this scenario, computers and other forms oftechnology are seen as important but peripheral tothe main business of teaching students. The resultis that new technologies reinforce what schoolshave done for over a century.

❚ The Cautious Optimist’s Scenario:Slow Growth of Hybrid Schoolsand Classrooms

In this scenario, cautious optimists believe thatputting computers into classrooms will yield a

steady but very slow movement towards funda-mental changes in teaching and schooling. Advo-cates of this scenario see it occurring slowly butinexorably, much like a turtle crawling towards itspond. It is slow because schools, as organizations,take time for their teachers to learn how to usecomputers to guide student learning. It is inexora-ble because, as Allan Collins says, “[T]he natureof education must inevitably adapt to the nature ofwork in society.” 18

Here again appears reformers’ productivity-driven dream of efficient machines freeingstudents from the tedium of traditional teaching—but in this scenario enthusiasts for faster, better,and cheaper instruction and learning need to be ul-tra-patient. A competing neoprogressive pictureof the future also rests within this story: schoolscan become small learning communities wherestudents and adults teach one another through adeliberate but slow application of technologies toschooling.

There is some evidence for this scenario.Introducing a half-dozen computers into a class-room or creating micro-computer labs, over time,alters how teachers teach (e.g., they move fromteaching the entire class as one group to usingsmall groups and for example, David K. Cohen,“Educational Technology and School Organiza-tion,” in Raymond Nickerson and Philip Zodhi-ates (eds.) Technology in Education: LookingToward 2020 (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates, 1990), pp. 231-264. Cohen examines

16 The essays of David K. Cohen describe well this scenario. He has analyzed elegantly why electonic technologies are marginal to theconduct of schooling. See, for example, David K. Cohen, “Educational Technology and School Organization,” in Raymond Nickerson andPhilip Zodhiates (Eds.) Technology in Education: Looking Toward 2020 (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Assosiates, 1990), pp. 231-264.Cohen examines the fit between innovative technolieges—in general—and the scarcity of incentives for changes within public education. HIsemphasis on the social organization of the school mirrors my own and has enriched my anlaysis. Also see David Tyack and Elisbaeth Hansot,“Futures That Never happened: Technology and the Classroom, “ Education Week, Sept 4, 1985, p. 40. My first foray in this subject, Teachersand Machines, offered an argument and evidence for this scenario also. Brian Winston makes the preservationist’s point by his “law of suppres-sion of redical potential.” A new technology that can substantially alter organizational routines and practices, he argues, is viewed by membersof an organization as a way of accomplishing more easily and efficiently what thay are already doing. See Misunderstanding Media (Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986).

17 Power On!, op. cit., footnote 2, pp. 201-202.18 Allan Collins, “The Role of Computer Technology in Restructuring Schools” in Sheingold and Tucker, Restructuring for Learning with

Technology, op. cit., footnote 15, p. 36.


the fit between innovative technologies—in gen-eral—and the scarcity of incentives for changewithin public education. His emphasis on the so-cial organization of the school mirrors my ownand has enriched my analysis. Also see David Ty-ack and Elisabeth Hansot, “Futures That Neverhappened: Technology and the Classroom,”Education Week, Sept. 4, 1985, p. 40. My first for-ay in this subject, Teachers and Machines, offeredan argument and evidence for this scenario also.Brian Winston makes the preservationist’s pointby his “law of suppression of radical potential.” Aindividualized options) and how students learn(e.g., they come to rely upon one another andthemselves to understand ideas and to practiceskills). In schools where the numbers of comput-er-using teachers and hardware reach a criticalthreshold, different organizational decisions getmade. Teachers from different departments orgrades begin to work together and move towardschanging the regular time-schedule. Schoolwidedecisions on using technologies become routine,as do decisions on nontechnological matters. Hy-brids of the old and the new, of teacher-centered

and student-centered instruction, proliferate inthis scenario. 19

Hybrids also can be found in individual teach-ers working alone in their classrooms. Teachersreport how they wove computers into their regularwork with students:

Telecommunications has helped students in myFrench classes use the language they are learningin a meaningful context. We have written collabo-rative stories with students in other schools, ex-changed ideas on pollution and the FrenchRevolution with students in France, participatedin an international conference based in Paris, andconsulted French travel databases in the FrenchMINITEL. . . .20

Now, which of these scenarios is likely to oc-cur, that is, has a 75 percent chance of happeningin most schools across the country?21

WHICH IS THE LEASTLIKELY SCENARIO?The least likely scenario is the electronic school ofthe future. While such schools will be built, they

19 Denis Newman, “Technology’s Role in Restructuring for Collaborative Learning,” (Paper presented to the NATO Advanced ResearchWorkshop on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, Maratea, Italy, September 1989. David Dwyer’s work at Apple Computers in re-searching and evaluating Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT) has yielded a number of studies, in particular, schools that support this neo-progressive vision of teaching, learning, and slow change in organizing of instruction. See Jane David, “Partnerships for Change,” ACOT Re-port #12, Apple Computer, Inc., Cupertino, CA, 1992; Robert Tierney, Ronald Kieffer, Laurie Stowell, Laura Desai, Kathleen Whalin, andAntonia Moss, “Computer Acquisition: A Longitudinal Study of the Influence of High Computer Access on Students’ Thinking, Learning, andInteractions,” ACOT Report #16, Apple Computers, Inc., Cupertino, CA, 1992.

A hybrid of neoprogressive and behavioristic influences can be seen in recent generations of ILSs. One of the most sophisticated that I haveseen (as of 1992) is RAMA 3, a multi-subject computer-assisted instructional program for grades 1-8 created at the Center of EducationalTechnology in Tel Aviv, Israel. Earlier versions of the ILS are being used by over 100,000 students, or almost 10 percent of the total schoolpopulation. The system not only includes powerful computers and software programs but printed booklets, continuous staff development forteachers, and a large maintenance department. See Luis Osin, “A Computerized Learning Environment Integrating Prescribed and Free StudentActivities,” Proceedings of the East-West Conference on Emerging Computer Technologies in Education, Moscow, April 1992; Centre forEducational Technology, “Annual Report,” November 1992, Tel Aviv, Israel. Also see Trish Stoddart and Dale Niederhauser, “Technology andEducational Change,” Computers in Schools 9(2/3) 1993, pp 5-22.

20 Karen Sheingold and Martha Hadley, “Accomplished Teachers: Integrating Computers into Classroom Practice” (Center for Technologyin Education: Bank Street College of Education, September 1990), pp. 1, 13.; Also see Decker Walker, Bruce Keepes, and George Chang,“Computers in California High Schools: Implications for Teacher Education,” (unpublished paper, 1991) and their designation of teachers whowere “pioneers.”

21 As I said earlier, “predicting” walks the thin line between risk and foolishness but, for purposes of prodding discussion, I will do so. Indoing so, I assume that no major political, economic, or social trauma dramatically alters popular perceptions about the expected role or orga-nization of schools in this culture. Were a serious political upheaval in the national government to occur, a severe economic depression, or graveurban disturbances requiring sustained military intervention, popular views of what schools ought to do would probably alter and calls for fun-damental changes in the purposes and organization of schools would ensue. Under such conditions, the notion of “likely scenarios” would befoolish.


will remain exceptions and, in time, will probablydisappear as the next generation of technology, in-variably cheaper and improved, comes of age.Thus, although such schools exist now, I find itunlikely for two reasons that they will spreadwithin districts or to most other schools.

First, technophiles typically underestimate theinfluence of the age-graded school organization inshaping teachers’ workplace routines. Further-more, they often minimize the power of social be-liefs that have endured for centuries and performimportant functions in society. Beliefs that teach-ing is telling, learning is listening, knowledge issubject matter taught by teachers and books, andthe teacher-student relationship is crucial to anylearning dominate much popular and practitionerthinking. Most parents expect their schools to re-flect those centuries-old beliefs.

In not paying much attention to the age-gradedschool, technophiles fail to see how this century-old form of school organization shapes classroompractice with its self-contained classrooms sepa-rating teachers from one another, a curriculum di-vided into segments of knowledge and skillsdistributed grade by grade to students, and aschedule that brings students and teachers togeth-er to work for brief periods of time. These struc-tures, profoundly influencing how teacher teach,how students learn, and the relationships betweenadults and children in each classroom are especial-ly difficult to alter after a century of popular andpractitioner acceptance. Because of these factors,school practitioners have learned how to tailortechnological innovations to fit the contours of theage-graded school and the self-contained class-room. For the most part, technophiles disregardthese beliefs and organizational traditions.

Second, previous experiences of instructionaltelevision, language laboratories, and pro-grammed learning in the 1960s and 1970s suggestcaution to policymakers. Districts built newschools, purchased and installed hardware forthose technologies. In less than a decade adminis-

trators found that the machinery was either unusedby teachers, obsolete, or could not be repaired af-ter breakdowns.22

These reasons suggest strongly that districtswill be reluctant to make major investments innew hardware beyond a model program or demon-stration school. Thus, the technophile’s scenariois least likely to occur.

HOW LIKELY ARE THEPRESERVATIONIST AND CAUTIOUSOPTIMIST SCENARIOS?The other two scenarios are most likely to occurbut there are important differences between them.Both are basically the same story of modest com-puter use in schools, but each scenario stresses dif-ferent facts and, from them, derives entirelydifferent meanings.

Preservationists argue that schools are durableinstitutions, taking any new technology and tai-loring it to fit millennia-old social beliefs aboutthe nature of teaching, learning, and knowledge.Thus, when IBMs and Apples appear in schoolsthey get drafted to continue what is deemed im-portant. Even when a few teachers creatively usecomputers, preservationists acknowledge suchpioneers but see them as mutants, exceptions farremoved from the evolutionary trajectory oftechnology in schools.

Preservationists also point out how the popularage-graded school not only persists through re-form after reform but offers many advantages fora democracy seeking to educate millions of stu-dents from diverse backgrounds. Such schoolshave moved wave after wave of immigrantsthrough a system with much-admired efficiency,preservationists argue. Such schools have learnedto customize technological innovations to fit thecontours of the age-graded school and its self-con-tained classroom. Thus, this scenario will contin-ue for the immediate future, given the power ofsocial beliefs and organizational forms.

22 Cuban, op. cit., footnote 1, pp. 27-50.


Cautious optimists, however, reinterpret thesame facts, giving them a breezy, sunny-day spin.The optimists’ version of the story displays muchpatience with the time that it will take to makeschools technologically modern. Conceding thatthere are many instances of technologies beingused to reinforce existing practices, optimists shifttheir attention to the slow growth of technologicalhybrids, those creative teacher mixes of the oldand the new in schools and classrooms.

Optimists point to hybrids of teacher-centeredand student-centered instruction and see them asthe leading edge of an evolving movement—rath-er than mutants—that eventually will bringschools more in sync with the technologicalimperatives of the larger society. These hybrids ofteacher-centered and student-centered instruction,the optimists say, are early signs of the near and vi-tal future, not instances of powerful machines be-ing used for trivial purposes. Thus, the currentreasons for the fumbling incorporation of high-tech machinery into schools—e.g., not enoughmoney to buy machines, teacher resistance, inade-quate preparation of teachers, and little adminis-trative support—gradually will evaporate as thehybrids slowly spread and take hold. It is an evolu-tionary scenario using a clock that measures timeby decades rather than years.

If preservationists assume the familiar realitiesof popular beliefs about schooling and age-gradedschools as permanent and make straight-line pro-jections into the future, prudent optimists recog-nize that these familiar realities continuallyundergo imperceptible changes. They acknowl-edge that the age-graded school needs to be trans-formed into a more flexible, ungraded,collaborative organization. They see it occurringsteadily albeit at a glacial pace. All of the hybrids

of teacher-centered and student-centered instruc-tion that optimists point to with pride reveal teach-ers working differently with their students, moreas coaches and helpers, and, in doing so, ever soslightly altering school structures.

Finally, optimists know that schools adapt ev-ery innovation to fit organizational imperatives,but they also know that administrators and teach-ers have brought new technologies into class-rooms after putting their fingerprints on them.These practitioner-made hybrids are instances,optimists argue, of the power of practitioners to al-ter their circumstances and make students grinrather than groan over school work.

WHICH SCENARIO IS MOST LIKELY?I argue that the preservationist’s scenario will con-tinue in the immediate future for high schools, andthe cautious optimist’s scenario will emerge forelementary schools. My evidence for both scenar-ios occurring at different levels of schoolingderives from how schools are organized forinstruction at the two different levels and my stud-ies of how teachers have taught over the last centu-ry.

Public elementary and secondary schools differmarkedly in the complexity of content studentsface in classrooms, teachers’ formal training, al-location of time to instruction, and external ar-rangements imposed upon both levels from otherinstitutions.23

Children in elementary grades learn basic ver-bal, writing, reading, and math skills. Content issecondary and often used as a flexible vehicle forteaching skills. But in the upper grades of elemen-tary school, and certainly in high school, not onlyare more sophisticated skills required of students,

23 Note that I use the phrase “secondary schools.” In doing so, I refer to both middle (or junior) and high schools. I draw sharp distinctionsbetween elementary and high school because the structures, roles, and teacher cultures are obviously different. For those middle schools thathave embarked on fundamental changes, i.e., eliminated departments, created interdisciplinary teaching teams, teacher advisers, and largeblocks of time where students and teachers work together, then they have recreated an elementary-like school. For such middle schools, what Isay about elementary schools applies. Many middle schools, however, have adopted only one or two of these reforms and still resemble a juniorhigh school or a miniature version of senior high school. Such places, then, would be counted in my analysis of high schools. See Larry Cuban,“Why Reforms Last: The Case of the Junior High,” American Educational Research Journal, summer 1992.


but these skills are embedded in complex subjectmatter that in and of itself must be learned. Liter-ary criticism, historical analysis, solving ad-vanced math problems, quantitative analysis inchemistry—all require knowledge of complexfacts and their applications. High school teachers,therefore, university-trained in subject matter,often turn to didactic methods because contentoften drives classroom teaching practices.

Also, student and teacher contact time differmarkedly at both levels. While the self-containedclassroom remains the dominant form of deliver-ing instruction at both levels, elementary schoolteachers generally spend five or more hours withthe same 25 or more students. They see far moreof a child’s strengths, limitations, capacities, andachievements than a high school teacher who seesfive groups of 25 students less than an hour a day.Over a nine-month school year, the elementaryschool teacher sees her 25 children nearly 1,000hours; a high school teacher sees 125 studentsabout 200 hours in class during the year, or aboutone-fifth of the time that elementary school col-leagues spend with pupils. Contact time becomesan important variable in considering organization-al issues of grouping, providing individual atten-tion, varying classroom tasks and activities, andrearranging furniture.

In elementary schools, the potential to make or-ganizational changes in these and other areas ispresent because the teacher has more contact timewith the same children than high school teachersdo with their students. Whether such changes oc-cur in the lower grades is, of course, an entirelyseparate issue, but the organizational difference inallocation of instructional time allows for changesin elementary school classrooms.

Finally, external pressures from accreditingassociations, college entrance requirements, andjob market qualifications have a far more direct,unrelenting influence on high schools than onlower grade classrooms. In the high school, strong

pressures on teachers and students derive frommeeting the demands of Carnegie units, CollegeBoards, Scholastic Aptitude, Advanced Place-ment, state and national standardized achieve-ment exams, certifying agencies, and otherexternal constraints.

While some urgencies press teachers and stu-dents in the lower grades, especially in getting stu-dents ready for the upper grades, flexibleresponses are possible. Grades (e.g., fourth andfifth) can be merged. Groups within a class can in-clude a range of ages and performance. Wholedays and even weeks can be set aside for specialconcentration in academics or other events. Not soin high schools.

These four structural differences—emphasison subject matter, teachers’ prior training, contacttime, and external pressures—may well accountfor why I found many shifts in elementary schoolteaching practices and fewer changes in highschool classrooms.

My research into how high school teachershave taught subject matter since the 1890s clearlysupports the preservationist’s story. High schoolteachers, bound by a social organization ofinstruction that includes teaching two or three dif-ferent subjects and seeing 150 to 200 students dai-ly in five or more 50-minute classes, have createda durable, practical pedagogy that researchershave documented consistently in English, history,science, and math over the last century.24

In elementary school classrooms, I also foundevidence of this practical pedagogy but I alsofound strong evidence of substantial changes inteaching practices that resembled the hybrids thatoptimists identified. I found, for example, that inthe 1890s, the one form of grouping for instruc-tion in both elementary and secondary schoolclassrooms was teaching the entire group of stu-dents at the same time; within three decades, un-der the insistent pressure of progressive educators,

24 Cuban, How Teachers Taught, op. cit., footnote 6; Also see Ernest Boyer, High School (New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1983) TheodoreSizer, Horace’s Compromise (Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin, 1984), and Arthur Powell, Eleanor Farrar, and David Cohen, The Shopping MallHigh School (Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin, 1985).


newer forms of grouping began to appear in ele-mentary schools to teach reading and math. Agrowing array of instructional materials made itpossible for teachers to tailor teaching to studentdifferences. A century later, elementary schoolteachers routinely use a mix of whole-group,small group, and individual options in their class-rooms. While some high school teachers do usevaried groupings in their classes, dominant prac-tice remains teaching the entire whole group forfifty-minute periods.

Also teachers’ repertoire of classroom practic-es have broadened over the last century. In the1890s, lecturing, using the textbook, questioningstudents on what they know, assigning home-work, and tests were the primary tools of the class-room teacher. A century later, these tools persistas standard practice in secondary school academicsubjects. In elementary schools, however, thatteaching repertoire has expanded with the addi-tion of visits to community institutions, new ma-terials and technologies. While field trips, films,videocassettes, television, and computer labs maynot yet be mainstays of most classroom instruc-tion, they testify to the slow growth of instruction-al hybrids. Such instances of changes inclassroom practice provide additional evidencefor the cautious optimist’s scenario of technologi-

cal hybrids slowly changing the conduct ofschooling.25

The point that I wish to make is that how theage-graded school is organized for instruction atthe two levels determines to a large degree whichscenario will most likely occur. The preservation-ist’s scenario is most likely in high schools whereacademic subjects reign, teachers’ training was indisciplinary content, and the number of classesand students teachers teach remain high. The cau-tious optimist’s scenario is more likely to occur inelementary schools where organizational differ-ences make shifts in practice possible and wherehybrids of teacher-centered and student-centeredinstruction have, indeed, evolved slowly over thelast century.26

There are, however, emerging national policiesthat may influence both the pace and direction ofthese scenarios materializing in the 1990s. One isthe current movement (and legislation) for nation-al goals, standards, and testing. If the movementcontinues its momentum, especially in its con-centration on national examinations with strongconsequences for individual students’ futures andschool funding, the movement may largely chan-nel new technologies to fit existing patterns ofteaching and learning because what fuels the drive

25 Cuban, How Teachers Taught, op. cit., footnote 6, pp. 135-136; 199-200.26 One way to assess this prediction of what will occur in high schools, for example, is to compare the penetration of computers into college

and university classrooms. High school teachers are much closer to college professors in their training and allegiance to subject matter thanelementary school teachers. Hence, one would expect, given my interpretation, that professors would use computers for their classroom teach-ing about as much as high school teachers, which would be less than elementary ones.

While there is much evidence that individual professors across most disciplines, including the humanities, have adapted with gusto the useof the computer for their writing (as word processors), research (for statistical analysis), and communication (e-mail, internet bulletin boards)there is much less evidence that in their weekly teaching the presence of the computer has altered traditional lectures or seminars. See Donald R.McNeil, “Technology in College: Where Is the Impact?” The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 7, 1989, p. A44; Robert Jacobson, “AsInstructional Technology Proliferates, Skeptics Seek Hard Evidence of Its Value,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 5, 1993, p. A27. In asurvey of its 32,000 members, the Modern Language Association found extensive computer usage among its English and foreign languageprofessors in preparing manuscripts (95 percent) and routine correspondence (84 percent). Almost 80 percent said they used the computer toprepare teaching materials. But there was no category for responses of whether professors used computers in classroom instruction—an amaz-ing omission. See The Chronicle of Higher Education, Apr. 21, 1993, p. A27. Stanford University Professor Patrick Suppes, an early advocate ofcomputer-assisted instruction in the 1960s and a teacher whose courses in logic and math were taught wholly by computer in the 1970s and1980s answered a reporter’s question about the future impact of the machine on teaching at Stanford by saying it would be “substantial over thenext half-century.” When the reporter expressed surprise at the length of time, Suppes replied: “[T]he actual structure of universities is extraor-dinarily conservative.” The Stanford University Campus Report, Jan. 12, 1994, p. 4. In short, for all the organizational and governance differ-ences between colleges and high schools, there is a striking similarity in the limited use of computers in both sets of classrooms.


toward national goals, standards, and testing is thelure of increased student productivity. Concentra-tion on quantitative standards reinforced by high-stake test results usually diminish practitioners’appetites for taking risks in classroom and schoolinnovations. My guess would be that continuednational pressure would bolster the preservation-ist’s scenario for both elementary and highschools, while limiting innovations in informa-tion technologies that might not meet the standardof higher test scores such as the ones pushed byneoprogressive reformers.

SUMMARYWith all the talk of school reform and computersover the last decade, why has electronic technolo-gy been used far less on a daily basis in classroomsthan in other organizations? My answer is thatschools are different from those organizations inwhich telecommunications have spread swiftly.Moreover, technological innovations never havebeen central to any national movement to improveschooling since the origins of public schools acentury and a half ago. Not until the 1980s and1990s have new technologies been part of the rhet-oric of reform. Yet after all has been said and done,more has been said than done.

The seemingly marginal use of computers andtelecommunications in schools and classrooms isdue less to inadequate funds, unprepared teachers,and indifferent administrators than it is due todominant social beliefs about what teaching,learning, and proper knowledge are and howschools are organized for instruction.

There are at least three plausible stories forwhat the next decade holds in store for teachers’use of computers. The likely scenarios point tolittle substantial change in the closing years of the20th century. Where two scenarios differ is thatcautious optimists see hope in the hybrids thathave emerged, a hope that over the ensuing de-cades these hybrids will become routine, produc-ing significantly different classrooms andschools; preservationists see far more stabilitythan change in the years to come, with teachingand learning staying pretty much as it currently is.

The most likely scenario is the one predictingslow but dynamic changes in both teaching andschool structures that will occur as more hybridsof old and new forms of instruction are mergedwith the next generation of computers. Thosechanges will seem glacially slow to impatient re-formers but, perhaps, just the right pace for thoseaware of the complexities of changing uniqueplaces called schools.

APPENDIX E REFERENCES1. Cohen, D.K., “Educational Technology and

School Organization,” in Raymond Nicker-son and Philip Zodhiates (eds.) Technology inEducation: Looking Toward 2020 (Hillsdale,NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1990), pp.231-264.

2. Collins, A., “The Role of Computer Technol-ogy in Restructuring Schools” in K. Sheingoldand J. Tucker, Restructuring for Learningwith Technology.

3. Cuban, L., Teachers and Machines, (NewYork, NY: Teachers College Press, 1986).

4. Cuban, L., How Teachers Taught, 2nd edition(New York, NY: Teachers College Press,1993).

5. Heuston, D., “The Future of Education: ATime of Hope and New Delivery Systems,”unpublished paper, WICAT systems, Orem,Utah, 1986, cited in Royal Van Horn, “Educa-tional Power Tools: New Instructional De-livery Systems” Phi Delta Kappan, March,1991, pp. 527-533.

6. Hughes, T., American Genesis: A Century ofInvention and Technological Enthusiasm(New York, NY: Viking, 1989).

7. Newman, D., “Technology’s Role in Restruc-turing for Collaborative Learning,” (paperpresented to the NATO Advanced ResearchWorkshop on Computer Supported Collabo-rative Learning, Maratea, Italy, September1989.

8. Quality Education Data, Technology in Pub-lic Schools, 1991-1992: Extract (Denver, CO:Quality Education Data, 1992).


9. Sheingold, K., and Hadley, M., Accom-plished Teachers: Integrating Computers intoClassroom Practice (Center for Technologyin Education: Bank Street College of Educa-tion, September 1990).

10. Texas Technology Model for 2061 Project,Draft,1991.

11. U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assess-ment, Power On!: New Tools for Teaching

and Learning, OTA-SET-379 (Washington,DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988).

12. U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assess-ment, “Project Proposal: Teachers and Tech-nology,” Washington, DC, 1993, pp. 1-12.

13. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau ofthe Census, Statistical Abstract of The UnitedStates, 1991 (Washington, DC: U.S. Govern-ment Printing Office, 1991).

Appendix FContractor

Reports

Copies of contractor reports prepared for this study are available through the National Technical Informa-tion Service, either by mail (U.S. Department of Commerce, National Technical Information Service,5285 Port Royal Road, Springfield, VA 22161) or by calling NTIS directly at (703) 487-4650.

Appendix AJames Bosco, Western Michigan University, “Schooling and Learning in an Information Society,”November 1994, NTIS No. 95-172227.

Appendix BBeverly Hunter and Bruce Goldberg, Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc., “Learning and Teaching in2004: The Big Dig,” December 1994, NTIS No. 95-171005.

Appendix CMargaret Riel, Interlearn, “The Future of Teaching,”November 1994, NTIS No. 95-172219.

Appendix DRobert Kozma and Wayne Grant, Center for Technology in Learning, SRI International, “Year2005: Using Technology to Build Communities of Understanding,” November 1994, NTIS No.95-172235.

Appendix ELarry Cuban, Stanford University, “Public School Teachers Using Machines in the Next Decade,”October 1994, NTIS No. 95-172243.

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