John Dewey, meet R2D2.
The sagacious educational theoretician and the "thinking" computer may seem like an odd couple, but the ideas personified by these icons do intersect. Technology, some experts say, can contribute substantially to the active, experiential learning that Dewey advocated decades ago. In fact, some new and emerging technologies are rendering more permeable the four walls of the classroom, allowing students to take part in activities and projects that blur the distinction between learning in school and in the "real world."
Dewey's theories on learning by practical experience are buttressed by cognitive research showing that students learn better when they solve real-life problems, as opposed to being drilled on decontextualized bits of information. As a result, many schools are trying to reorganize curriculum and instruction to support "authentic learning," the new catchphrase for learning by doing.
Some of these schools are finding that various technologies can help them reach this goal, say experts. With existing computers and telecommunications equipment, for example, a student can search vast databases or collect weather data and share "online" with scientists and students at other sites. A pupil doing a research project on a planned landfill site can create a multimedia report—text, graphics, sound, and video—and present it to a community group or store it for other students to use as a resource.
"What we're talking about here is the technology allowing the participant to change the real world—not just simulate it," says Glenn Kessler, director of the division of office and media services for the Fairfax County, Va., public schools. Instead of working on hypothetical problems, students increasingly are using technology to address some of the same issues and problems as adults. In some cases, such as when students collect data as part of a scientific research project, their work is contributing directly to advancing professional knowledge. "Students are doing real science, real economics," says Kessler.
Information `Superhighway'
The future holds out even more such possibilities, thanks to advances in computer chip design and fiber optic technologies. The power of information technology is doubling every few years for the same cost, notes Christopher Dede, director of the Center for Interactive Education Technology at George Mason University. By the year 2000, desktop computers will harness the power of today's supercomputers, at today's prices. In addition, advances in "digitization" have made it possible to transfer data at lightning speed and to combine text, sound, and video images to create "multimedia" environments.
Moreover, the means for delivering this information are being revolutionized. Ground has been broken for a nationwide "information superhighway" that will allow high-speed transfer of text, voice, and images along fiber optic lines. Communications, cable television, and entertainment companies are currently forming strategic alliances to make use of this "superhighway." Although home entertainment uses are currently the focus of attention, this superhighway—with its capacity to transmit multiple media in an interactive, user-friendly environment—will have educational applications as well. Once established, the scenario goes, students could easily "tour" Versailles electronically, "browse" the vast holdings of the Library of Congress, or swap E-mail with a paleontologist. "That single fiber would mean escape from the bounds imposed by limited school budgets or poorly equipped classrooms," Vice-President Albert Gore, a key proponent of a fiber-optic superhighway, has noted.
Unfulfilled Promise
If such promises have a familiar ring, they should. Cynics point out that one technological innovation after another has been touted as the "breakthrough" that would promote radically different teaching and learning. Yet desks are still arranged in rows, teachers lecture more often than not, and textbooks serve as a de facto curriculum. In fact, computers and other technologies sometimes have reinforced the present, antiquated educational practices: students perform skills drills on computers or passively observe videos.
At present, "schools are about 10 years behind the technology" used in the workplace and other areas, says Michael Sullivan, executive director for the Agency for Instructional Technology. Many schools aren't yet using personal computers as tools, let alone taking advantage of newer technologies, Sullivan says. Until educators begin to create classroom environments that promote authentic learning, they will be using only a fraction of the power of current and forthcoming technologies, Sullivan and others believe.
Technology has a powerful role to play in creating conditions for authentic learning, "but only in concert with people changing their minds about what education is," says Jan Hawkins, director of the Center for Technology in Education at the Education Development Center. If technology "is to be used authentically, it's going to demand that learning environments change," agrees Charles Mojkowski, president of Technology Applications Associates.
Linking Up
While the probable impact of future developments in information processing and communications is debated, existing technologies already are playing an important supporting role in promoting authentic learning. One of the most exciting, experts say, is in the area of computer-assisted telecommunications.
Telecommunications can promote more authentic instruction in several ways, says Frank Betts, director of ASCD's Education and Technology Resources Center (ETRC). Students' capacity to do basic research is greatly enhanced when they are able to search far beyond their local libraries. Thus, teachers can hold higher expectations that students' research will be more thorough. "There's no excuse for having out-of-date or inaccurate information" in research projects if students have the capacity to "go online," says Michael Eisenberg, director of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology. Moreover, students' projects can be much more specialized and focused on current issues, because they'll have access to timely materials that would not have been available in years past.
Another strength of telecommunications is that it allows "cooperative learning at a distance," says Betts. Increasingly, students are able to team up with students at other schools (even in other countries) to work on joint projects or just to swap electronic mail. In projects such as the National Geographic Society's "Kids Network," students at different schools collect scientific data on problems such as acid rain and share observations about the patterns that emerge. Another poignant example is cited by Chris Morton, director of information systems in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. During the Persian Gulf war, students in one New York high school traded electronic mail messages with students in Israel who gave regular accounts of Scud missile attacks. Students not only swapped information on breaking events as they occurred; they discussed their attitudes and opinions about war, Morton reported in a recent ETRC publication.
Telecommunications technology also opens doors to "cross-age mentors" outside the school, says Betts. This is one advantage of the "Internet," a huge network of computer users at educational and scientific institutions. An article in a recent Scientific American on uses of Internet recounted how a researcher stationed in Antarctica described his experiences via E-mail to a 3rd grade class in Las Vegas. When teachers link classroom work to ongoing scientific projects, they bring another element of authenticity to the students' work and reinforce the connections between the academic work of students and work in the "real world."
Merging into Multimedia
A second technological area that can support authentic learning is the merging of text, video, and sound in "multimedia" environments. Things have changed since the days when scratchy audio recordings supplemented filmstrips as students watched passively. Multimedia products now available on videodisc and CD-ROM permit greater "interactivity" for the user.
For example, students can electronically take a "visual" tour through the National Gallery of Art: choosing which corridor to enter; viewing, reading, and hearing about the art and artists; and having the option to learn more about an artistic movement or a particular artist's other works at the push of a few buttons. Or students can search through multimedia resources, save pieces of text, video, and sound, and later synthesize them in new ways as part of a project.
Peakview Elementary School in Cherry Creek, Colo., a "restructured" school built three years ago, is one school taking advantage of multimedia applications. Students routinely use computers to prepare multimedia projects or presentations, says Karen Peterson, technology coordinator for the school. These are sometimes stored in a computer-based "student library," where other students can use them as resources. The addition of multimedia resources has also reduced the school's dependence upon textbooks as vital sources of information, says Peterson. "We have no math, social studies, or science textbooks."
A `Living' Curriculum
Vast quantities of specialized information available through fiber-optic networks at the touch of a few keystrokes. Opportunities to stimulate the human senses through multimedia. What will these developments mean for schools?
As schools tap into these new capacities, the curriculum is bound to become more fluid and personalized, some experts predict. In the old order, classrooms depended heavily on textbooks, printed "predigested" documents that are reviewed by adoption committees and then serve as the main classroom tool for years until they are replaced. In the future, single mega-sources like textbooks will fade in influence as learners scan vast electronic resources to find the information they need, some experts say. "We're not going to have a predigested curriculum," says Kessler. Instead, what may replace it is "a living curriculum where the student creates the curriculum." The curricular possibilities for creating authentic learning experiences are virtually limitless.
But where Kessler and others see exciting potential in curriculums that tap into these new capabilities, some see dangers: students foundering aimlessly for hours or nibbling on tiny morsels of information without digesting the big picture.
The prospect of students racing online through various information nuggets, snippets of text, video "bites," and so on, bothers Tom Snyder, chairman of the software firm Tom Snyder Productions and an industry gadfly. New technologies promise that students "can navigate information in any way they want," he says. But is that necessarily learning? "There's nothing that bothers me more" than the idea of students consuming little sound and video bites of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, for example, without any guarantee that they will receive a fuller treatment of King, his speech, and how it fits into the Civil Rights movement, says Snyder. "That is stripping away all the context."
As the sources of information expand dramatically, the challenge of gathering information quickly and usefully to pursue a learning activity grows, experts point out. "The fundamental dilemma of the information age is that there's too much information, and you can't find the information you want, when you want it," notes Eisenberg. Adds Hawkins: "Having access is great, but it's a very big leap to use that well" to support authentic learning activities. The bigger question is, "What are kids going to do with it?"
Experts agree that the process of creating more authentic and engaging curriculums must accompany the process of integrating the latest technological developments in schools. Mojkowski, for one, is confident that "educators will find ways to take the most useful of these [technologies] and make them available to kids." Still, there's no guarantee that schools will benefit from these technological breakthroughs. Much of the current discussion around multimedia and telecommunications applications centers on home entertainment and business uses. How the coming technological revolution will affect schools is another issue. "It will happen in the home and in the workplace," says Frank Withrow, director of learning technologies for the Council of Chief State School Officers. "The question is whether it will happen in classrooms."