The Three R's ... and a T?

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Technology is speeding to the forefront of elementary school education faster than you can click a link. And although some protest the unconditional embrace of technology in education, the future will likely be more of the same.

In ten years, a fifth-grader might gather scientific data in the field using her hand-held computer, upload it to her desktop computer back at school, and then transform her conclusions into a multimedia presentation. As a final touch, she might use a projection system to present her project.

“You'll see smaller, probably wireless computing devices with fairly sophisticated projection systems. And you're likely to have speech input” for many devices in the future, said Barbara Means, co-director of the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International, a non-profit research group.

Hardware alone will not transform the classroom. Others note the profound impact the Internet will have on education in the coming years.

“Instead of moving data (by diskette) or having to log into a server and only be on that server where that information is available, we see a future where everything is up on the cloud, on the net, and you can access it from anywhere because it's your information and you're the only one who has access to it,” said John Litten, program manager for Microsoft's Youth and Learning program.

The combination of Internet connectedness and Microsoft's planned “curriculum management software,” said Litten, will allow students to access their work from home, school or anywhere. The software, to be released in 2001, will monitor and regulate each student's advancement through the teacher's lesson plan. This will individualize instruction for each student, and allow the teacher to assess students' weaknesses and strengths.

While researchers and technology companies develop the tools, schools across the nation are embracing technology in the hopes that children will learn, learn better and learn faster.

Not everyone agrees that technology is worth the expense. Some herald the benefits of the Internet, both for students and teachers, but others bemoan the shift away from more traditional forms of learning.

“Talking with experts...whether it's by e-mail or video conference...is a real, very exciting way to use technology to bring expert views into the classroom as primary sources for the kids to speak with,” said Sara Armstrong, director of content at the George Lucas Educational Foundation, which disseminates information on successful teaching methods.

“And other primary source materials such as the Library of Congress, which kids...would not normally have access to, they have access to those materials through the Web,” said Armstrong.

Not only students are benefitting. Teachers now use e-mail to communicate administrative details that usually eat up staff meeting time.

“We find that e-mail really preserves time for staff so that when they actually move out of the virtual world into the face-to-face world they can work on the business of teaching and learning, and not logistics,” said Peggy Bryan, principal of Sherman Oaks Community Charter School in San Jose.

However, opponents claim that computers take much needed resources - both time and money - away from other programs and methods, such as music and research using books instead of the Internet.

“In education you're playing a zero sum game in that for everything that's added something else has to be eliminated,” said William L. Rukeyser, coordinator at Learning in the Real World, a non-profit group advocating for a more critical look at technology in schools.

The importance of technology skills at the elementary school level is also debated, both because these skills are said to be easy to learn and because of the inherent obsolescence of technology.

“Especially in elementary education, a lot of the machine-specific skills which may be acquired by the students in using educational technology are extremely temporary or transitory skills and both those skills and the machines on which they are learned will be totally obsolete long before the students leave high school,” said Rukeyser.

“You can be positive that by 2010 HTML is going to be as dead as ... COBOL is today. COBOL is what everybody who wanted to be computer literate in 1975 had to know. Today it's fit only for the Smithsonian and that's going to be true for HTML,” said Rukeyser.

For his part, Rukeyser is not opposed to technology in the higher grades, noting that the Internet allows students to keep up on current events, and that some science software has greatly increased the variety of experiments students can now conduct.

Just as opponents admit positive uses for technology, advocates say technology is not always the answer.

“I certainly would not approve of kids spending long hours at computer screens. I think you need a balance in the kinds of media and activity kids are exposed to ... at all ages,” said SRI's Means.

Even for those schools who have wholeheartedly embraced the medium, there are pitfalls.

“You buy a computer, now you have to have a memory upgrade, and then a scanner, and the scanner doesn't talk to the workstation without the upgrade. That's very hard for us educators to keep on top of,” said Sherman Oaks principal Bryan.

“Technology is like a barbie doll. Buy one, and it's never enough. You buy one, you have to have Ken, and then you have to have the camper. Technology is the same.”

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