Educational Leadership Commons^™

Financing Future Technology Requires Planning And Action Today, Joan Otting

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Schools are adding technology at an increasing rate. At first the goal was to get computers. As schools purchased more computers, the advantages of networking became apparent. CD-ROMS have had a major impact upon curriculum and upon media centers. Library automation, multimedia presentations, and on-line services have opened new worlds of opportunities for both students and educators. As great as these advances are, funding technology is a growing concern and constitutes a very real barrier for most schools. How can schools cope with the funding issue?

Ensuring Funding For An Uncertain Future, Ray Raser

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Perhaps the greatest task facing educators today is trying to determine what the world will be like when this year's kindergarten students graduate from high school. Educators must respond to both a challenge and a dilemma. We must offer programs in our schools that prepare students to be literate members of an information-based society and provide them with the tools necessary to obtain and keep a job in such a society. For many students, accessing, manipulating, and using information and technology will be their job. The tools they will use are now unknown. Yet, schools must prepare these students for …

Informing Stakeholders And Building Partnerships: Ways To Ensure Funding For New And Expanding Technologies, Michelle Tressel

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

One of the major issues facing society in this Communication Age is the management of rapid and pervasive change. As a result of emerging technologies, new hardware and different tasks are being introduced into work and school environments. School districts across the nation strive to keep pace in acquiring current hardware and software and providing training for a number of job categories. Data collected by Quality Education Data (QED) in the past decade shows that the amount of money schools have spent on technology continues to solidly increase. The challenge facing communities, school boards, administrators, and educators is to ensure …

Issue Area Four: In What Ways Will Technology Change The Role Of Teachers?, Al Bode, Susan Olesen

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Technology alone may not change the role of the teacher. However, technology, coupled with growing research on how people learn, does have the potential to positively alter the role of the teacher in ways that will facilitate student learning. In Pathways to School Improvement from the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory on the Internet, Jones (1992) suggested several elements that are common to high achieving learning environments for children:

1. The locus of learning is the learner and the goal of learning is the construction of meaning by the student.

2. Learning focuses less on low-level basic skills and isolated …

Facilitator Vs. Dispenser Of Information, Arletta Dawson

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Infusing technology into the curriculum will ultimately change the learning environment and the role of the teacher. Many authors have pointed out that teachers will become facilitators of learning rather than dispensers of information-"the guide on the side instead of the sage on the stage." Learning activities will involve "real problems" and students will work cooperatively in small groups. Peer teaching among students will increase. Rather than breaking the school day into blocks of time devoted to specific disciplines, education will be problem-centered and interdisciplinary. Teachers will be more involved in assuring access to information and resources from the external …

The Teacher's Tool, Mark A. Hunt

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Technology will not change all aspects of teaching, and if teachers think the computer will do the teaching for them, they will be a bit surprised. The computer will do nothing more than it has been told; it is a great tool that teachers did not have before, but it will never replace human intervention in the classroom. For most teachers, computers will provide them with a vast amount of information at their finger tips, and they must be prepared to use it in the most fitting way. The computer will have the capability to provide a challenge to a …

Student-Directed Classrooms Change Teachers' Role, Jo Kossow

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

I must confess up-front that due to my unusual job assignment, my views on technology and the changes it will cause in the role of teachers come from the front-lines since I am an educator. As a vocational child care instructor for Iowa Western Community College in the secondary program during a day's work I might be in and out of a daycare, an early childhood, a primary, an intermediate, or my own high school classroom. There's also my role as staff development coordinator for the college staff. And, if that's not enough, I have a spouse who is being …

Teachers As Information Specialists, Marjorie L. Pappas

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Today's children will inherit an information-rich world where knowledge and learning will be a critical part of their lives. Lewis Perelman (1992) suggested:

Learning or education was a task of childhood in preparation for entering adult life and work. Now learning is literally the work of the majority of U.S. jobs and will be what virtually all adults-whether employed, unemployed, or 'on welfare'-will do for a living the early years of the twenty-first century. (p. 23)

Technology is fueling this information-rich environment and enabling a paradigm shift as storage formats change from paper to electronic.

How Will Technology Change The Teacher's Role?, Raymond Smith

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Today, technology in the schools is causing several changes. With the advances in communications along with access to powerful computers in the world, we are seeing the role of the teacher being changed in several areas.

With high speed communications such as the Internet, students can now meet and exchange ideas instantly with others anywhere in the world. Students can now start to understand other cultures firsthand. World wide communications will create new educational materials that will allow teachers to set up "people to people" projects on the Internet. These projects could include "Keypal," the U.S. Post Office equivalent of …

Will Technological Revolution Happen In The Classroom?, Anthony V. Spencer

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

A major obstacle for teachers to overcome related to technology is fear of the unknown. Many teachers have not grown up with technology as we know it today and, as a result, they may not feel adequate using technology in their classrooms. In addition, they may fear that their students will know more than they do. Given these realities and others, a school-wide acceptance of the power of technology and what it offers is difficult, at best.

Issue Are Five: How Will We Prepare Educators To Fully Utilize Available Technology?, Robert R. Hardman

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

There are many forces today which influence systemic change in education including the changing needs of society, educational approaches to teaching and learning, the explosion of information, and information technology. Many educational institutions see technology as a major means of bringing about educational reform. These institutions often make major investments in new technologies, software, and specialized learning facilities believing that these investments will be the catalyst for educational change. While these investments are important, they do not ensure that educators will embrace and infuse them in the teaching/learning process. Investments in human resources must go hand-in-hand with investments in hardware, …

Effective Staff Development For Technology Requires Time, Money, Karen Appleton

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

To fully and effectively discuss the utilization of technology by educators, a definition of technology itself should be made commonly known and understood. Technology is too easily and too readily narrowly defined as using computers, or at least as using peripheral electronic hardware. While it is justifiable to include equipment of this sort as a part of the total vision of technology, to focus solely on the machinery is to implicitly endorse a sort of elitism of haves versus have-nots, and to possibly cause the general citizenry to shrug off the applications of technology in their daily lives (Puk, 1992). …

Easy Access And Training Keys For Technology Usage, Douglas A. Bengston

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

I believe that if educators are to fully utilize the available technology two things need to happen. First, they must have easy access to the technology, and second, they need to have training in how to use technology. Technology covers a broad range from the basics of telephones and copy machines to computers and equipment yet unknown. Providing easy access is the first step in preparing educators to use technology.

Attitude Is Everything!, Stephen Foster

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Making effective use of the technology available in a school is a vital issue in light of the tremendous amount of public resources devoted to its purchase. Schools that are not effectively using the technology they have available do so at their peril, for the message sent is extremely damaging to the students’ learning and to the public's perception of the school. Fortunately, there are ways to encourage a more complete use of the technology that schools have available. When done well, effects spread into other areas. Here is how it is done at our school. I believe there are …

Getting Every Teacher "On Board", Susan Jacob

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

If educators in the 21st century are going to guide their students into the jobs of the computer age, both teachers and administrators must possess the ability to use the computer as a tool for work themselves. Four components will help bring this about.

First, a computer must be on every teacher's desk. Without the necessary hardware readily available to facilitate its use, faculty members will not come on board unless they have the tools at hand to do the job. A teacher cannot perform his or her appointed tasks without the necessary equipment-textbooks, curriculum materials, supplies. Likewise, computer use …

A How-To For Guiding Teachers Into Technology Usage, Debbie Kollman

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

We should use a five-year training curriculum that will increase teachers' comfort levels, raise their level of concern, and infuse technology into our curriculum.

Before implementing a plan for training teachers to use available technology in their classrooms, a technology plan should be adopted. It should include a mission statement, an inventory, goals, and a vision of future acquisitions, both hardware and software. It should also include a long range plan for teacher inservice, funded by a generous share of the technology budget. If it is possible, a technology coordinator should be hired who would, among other things, oversee a …

Technology, Reform, And Fortitude, Michael Simonson

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

In 2001, technologies must be readily and widely available, for learners, and also for teachers and administrators. At a minimum, a school of the 21st century should have the following technologies:

1. A computer network that reaches every desk-top and that is linked to local services, the Internet, and the World Wide Web

2. A computer for every child, probably a powerful portable computer with software, that could be transported from classroom to classroom and used at home.

3. An extremely powerful computer with software for every teacher.

4. A connection to the Iowa Communications Network, with plans to quickly …

Issue Area Six: How Should The Increasing Use Of Technology Be Integrated Into A School's Planning Process For School Improvement?, Diane Gross, Richard Gross

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Technology planning for schools is not a simple issue. Issues related to technology planning cover a large spectrum of considerations including faculty and staff involvement, student involvement, community involvement, funding, long-term planning, evaluation, identifying required student skill areas, partnerships with the private sector, other schools and higher education, goal setting, educational missions, teacher training, new ways of teaching, research, design, facilities, and a variety of other issues.

Technology planning, per se, should not exist in a vacuum. Rather, it should be integrated into the entire school planning process. However, for purposes of managing the issue at hand, the following process …

Integrating Technology Into Planned Curricular Goals, Judy Hemphill

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

For the effective integration of technology into school improvement models we will need carefully-crafted, flexible plans. These blueprints will need to be designed with a solid basis of curricular goals, a critical eye on research, and numerous points of analysis and formative evaluation which will allow for adaptation.

As an operational base, a broad definition of technology will be required to encompass current tools and emerging capabilities. In November of 1989, Dr. Clinton R. Bunke admonished attendees at the Iowa Association of School Boards (IASB) Early Bird Workshop to not think in terms of "computer literacy," but in terms of …

Making A Technology Plan To Support Student Learning, Dan Mart

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

The rapidly changing use of technology both in education and all other professions has educators, administrators, and communities searching for solutions on how to make technology "fit" in their respective school districts. It (is) no longer acceptable to be an observer of the information and technological revolution (Richman, 1995). As schools attempt to conquer this matter, the question of "how will technology improve our school" is frequently asked.

As studies and researchers have proven, there is a direct relationship between student achievement and technology. It now becomes the role of these same educators, administrators, and community members to implement a …

Continuous Staff Development Essential For Teacher-Learner Communication, Bruce Pogue

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Since the beginning of the human race, the key factor in understanding the knowledge being passed on from one generation to the next has always been the ability of the one doing the teaching to pass on the knowledge and understanding. The second most important factor has always been the need and usefulness of the knowledge being taught as perceived by the one being taught. This is true whether one is taught how to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together or how to do a search on the Internet.

A school's planning process for integrating technology into its …

Unbridled Technology, Carol Thien

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

True school improvement is a huge issue that creates an ongoing challenge for educators, legislators, community members, and school board members. With the many trends and multiple demands in education today, it becomes nearly impossible to adequately analyze and confidently commit to the most appropriate priorities for school improvement in a local district. The reality of technology throughout the strands of our society would dictate that technology must be one of the priorities for a progressive school, but the struggle to understand its role and to utilize it to impact student achievement is unresolved in our district and, I believe, …

Focusing On The "How" Of Technology Integration, George Tuttle

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

The key word "how" supposes that the next word "should" has already been decided. I shall continue my dissertation under that assumption. This is my second edition. I tore up my first edition after the technology session that was on the Iowa Communication Network (ICN) on November 7. Attending the session at our POP site was a superintendent, a member of the Iowa House of Representatives, a member of the Iowa Senate, and myself.

It was very difficult to hear because of low volume at our site. After a half hour of such conditions, I noticed the lawmakers were getting …

Technology: A Key Plank In The Platform Of Successful School Improvement, Jim Verlenga

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Since 1983 and the publication of A Nation at Risk, school reform has occupied both national and state educational policy agendas. Initially reform efforts to improve schools were encouraged, and in some instances mandated, by state and federal policymakers (Lewis, 1989; Schlecty, 1990). Now, a decade later, Goals 2000 has been much heralded as the federal-level focus on school reform and improvement, while state legislatures and departments of education across the nation have issued their own statements about what schools should be doing to prepare students in their states for the 21st century. Schools at the local level have responded …

Using Technology To Combine Know-How With The Ability To Do, Andrew Woiwood

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

With the vast number of technological advances being used in the world today and their availability for use at schools, school districts have to prepare students for a future of advanced technologies in all areas of their lives. With this as the future for students, how students learn, are taught, and use the technologies available now will be the experiences they will carry with them as they become our nation's workforce.

Reassessing Models, Preparations, Support, And Student Assessment Through Technology, Nina Curran

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

"How do we assess the impact of technology on student achievement?" is a compelling but premature question. Premature because we must first be clear about what we mean by student achievement.

To attain clarity, three prerequisite questions need to be posed and addressed.

Experts universally agree that we must redefine the traditional models of teaching and learning if technology is to have an impact (Barron & Goldman 1994; Becker & Hativa, 1994; Carey, 1994; David 1994; Dede, 1995). The first question, therefore, becomes "what will be the redefined models?" This redefinition will result in bringing clarity to what we mean …

Gathering Data To See Technology's Effects On Student Achievement, Cal Halliburton

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

The question is too large for me to offer a general response of any meaning. I'll attempt to make sense of it in the context of my classroom. The data I gather will help me see the effects of technology on my students. I write frequently in my journal about what I anticipate and what I observe as students use computers in my classroom. And I ask students to write in their journals about what they experience while they use computers in class. We write about what we are thinking and what we think we are learning. Because I've used …

Assessing The Impact Of Technology On Student Achievement, Shirley Kelly

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

During the past decade of transformation in education, educators have struggled with many questions: What changes should we make? How should we implement new ideas? When do we inservice staff? How will we evaluate the impact of this change on student achievement?

Educators' most recent impetus for dialogue around these questions has been technology. The availability of a wide range of possible formats for technology application within classrooms has dictated a need to stop and evaluate the role that technology should play within educational systems. One of the most important questions to consider for any change is the impact that …

Using Appropriate Technology To Make Learning Fun, Ron Larsen

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

As we embark on this trip into the world of technology and its impact on education, I find many more questions than answers. The toughest task we have ahead of us is to ask the right questions, listen to the answers, and then try to make the changes the data suggests. Perhaps we have not been asking ourselves how technology should affect the way a teacher presents the material. If technology is to have an impact on education, it must change the way we present information. The only way we will ever assess how technology affects student performance is to …

Technology And Assessment Need To Fit With Delivery Methods And Learning Styles, Kent Mutchler

Institute for Educational Leadership Monograph Series

Assessing the impact of technology on student achievement is not an easy task. It is essential, however, to explore the current uses of technology in educational experiences and the implications for assessment that accompany these uses. Technology offers a variety of opportunities to us in education, and any type of meaningful assessment needs to be congruent with expectations, delivery methods, and learning styles.

Two keys to effective and meaningful assessment are validity and reliability. This simply means that assessments are truly designed to measure intended outcomes and that similar performance results are demonstrated when the assessment is given to subsequent …