Just read the very brief article A computer per student leads to higher performance – International Business Times. The headline makes me cringe and reminds me why I wanted to start this blog. We need to take a more nuanced approach when thinking about the connections between technology, assessment, and learning.
The tendency to give technology (computers, Twitter, iSlate, iPad etc.) the credit for improving learning enables more important factors to be overlooked. Furthermore, if computers per student is the key then what happens when, eventually, there is one computer available per student? How do we increase performance then? Something tells me that increasing the ratio to 1.3 computers per student won’t help.
But I’m not being entirely fair. The International Business Times doesn’t really identify computers as a panacea. Key to the article is the caveat…
“Schools with a total approach — including training staff for best practices, supportive administrations, and strong leadership — exhibited tangible results.
Conversely, institutions that were “autonomous, idiosyncratic, non-collaborative, and non-differentiated teaching practices,” showed no benefit, the study states.”
To the author’s credit, this caveat is presented early in the article. The article summarizes research done as part of the Berkshire Wireless Learning Initiative (BWLI) that can be read in it’s entirety elsewhere.
The devil is in the details. What is meant by computers and higher performance? In this case, computers also include access to the Internet and performance was measured using a variety of instruments including performance on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System and a separate writing task (kudos to the researchers for including multiple measures here).
The real story, however, is not technology or even the increase in student achievement. The schools that saw results had made a concerted effort to change their approach to teaching with technology being only part of the equation. The importance of changing the larger system and not just the number of computers in the classroom won’t be a surprise to those who study the application of technology to promote learning. But maybe something else can be gleaned from this study and the associated media coverage.
Technology is sexy and can help facilitate less sexy measures. I’ve been lamenting the amount of credit that technology gets but maybe this is the wrong way of looking at things. In the case of BWLI, technology served to first get people mobilized to try to change how learning occurs and then get the attention of the media. Maybe trying to get the public, politicians, funding agencies, etc. excited about professional development initiatives aimed at improving the instructional design in schools is an unrealistic and misguided approach. On the other hand, is sneaking in initiatives with a proven track record of improving learning under the banner of technology integration ethical?
These types of questions are not new. As technology advances, jargon changes but the core debate remains the same.