Integration: Building 21st Century Learning Environments
David Warlick
Phase One: a Review
It has been only 20 years since computers began to appear in our classrooms - and it is easy to see that we have come a long way in only two short decades. In many classrooms today, we see students using word processors in the place of pencils. They use digital multimedia in the same way that we used textbooks, and sophisticated drill & practice software for flash cards. Increasingly, students are using the global Internet to find information that we searched for in encyclopedias and other reference books.
In less than twenty years, we have made great strides in integrating computers and related technologies into the classroom. Each of the activities mentioned above represents giant leaps beyond the pencil and paper, and chalk and board way that I was taught in the '50s and '60s.
- We know that students write better, and learn to write better with a word processor. Writing becomes a craft and not a task of manual labor.
- Multimedia is the domain of our children. They are surrounded by video, sound, and computer generated graphics and animation - and they are increasingly interacting with this rich information in ways that put them in control of content and knowledge.
- The Internet and other electronic sources of information have provided schools with unprecedented access to information in its vastness, convenience, media formats, and variety of perspectives.
- We also know that some students learn some things better with sophisticated drill & practices software, which tracks their performance, adjusting the content and skill levels to the students' performance.
Each of these examples clearly illustrates how we have adapted these powerful new tools to help us teach and to help our students learn - integrating these technologies into our current classrooms. Yet, we are increasingly asking ourselves if these practices are making the best use of expensive new tools.
We are also wondering if our current classrooms can effectively prepare our students for their future, a future that for the first time in history we cannot clearly describe.
We find ourselves at a cusp between the industrial and knowledge ages. We also continue to carefully work a fragile line between the current trend toward modernizing our classrooms and a reactionary push toward high-stakes accountability and the educational paralysis that could easily result.
It is a critical time where we must ask ourselves, "Is sending students to the computer lab to key their reports into a word processor going to help them become better producers of knowledge?" "Will a comprehensive drill & practice math program help every 4th grade student develop the number-crunching and analytical skills they will need twenty years from now?" "Should we be asking students to look up information on the Internet that we know could more easily and quickly be found with an encyclopedia?"
We have integrated technology into the Classroom...but!
Phase Two: It's Up to You
The next phase of using new technologies in schools will happen as we begin to identify what sets these new tools apart from the old, what are the unique qualities of computers and the Internet and the ways that we use them? We have to ask and explore how these new technologies are significantly changing our work, our pursuit of personal fulfillment, and our families and circles of friends. What are the new capabilities and opportunities, especially those that are less obvious to educators but potentially empower us to create learning experiences that were never before possible?
The next phase of classroom technology will be characterized by a shift away from adapting the technology to help us do what we are already doing, and toward adapting our classrooms to take advantage of first-time opportunities. This requires classrooms that are technologically flexible, ready to be plugged in and lit up with the world that our students are learning about.
It requires classroom practices that are geared toward preparing our students for an unpredictable future. It also requires classroom leaders, facilitators of learning, who know when to use the right tools that help us accomplish our goals.
If the students' work can easily be done with pencil and paper, then they should use pencil and paper. If their work is to be compiled and published as a school literary magazine or to be communicated digitally to a distant audience with an authentic goal, then they should use a computer.
If the information is available in an encyclopedia, then use the book. If the information or perspective that you seek is not available in print, or if the information is to be processed using computer software, then go to the Internet. When we use tools for teaching and learning, then we should use the tool whose qualities will help us accomplish our goals.
We will begin to reach the potentials of these new tools only when we are released to retool our classrooms, connected to share and grow effective practices, and trained to recognize what we need to do and to select the right tools to do it.
This article is an edited excerpt from Raw Materials for the Mind by David Warlick (ISBN 0-9667432-0-2)
