HE noise level in Jen Butler's fifth-grade language
arts class in Viola Elementary School in Suffern, N.Y., was more
fitting for a gymnasium than a class dedicated to reading and
writing. But seven days into the school year, the children could
not contain their excitement.
In groups of two and three, they poked away at new wireless
iBook laptop computers, navigating through three Web sites
chosen by their teacher to prepare a report on Gary Paulsen, a
popular author of books for young readers.
Down the hall, third graders in Ashley Schuck's class were
learning how to scan photos into the computer and waiting to use
the three digital cameras that float from class to class in the
school. Upstairs, Patty Marina's sixth-grade science class was
peering into the world of weather, comparing information culled
from a weather satellite receiver on the school's roof with data
from weather Web sites on the six computers in the back of the
classroom.
"We're tracking tropical storm Florence, and we just
predicted it won't hit land," Ms. Marina said. Jacob Morales,
10, pointed to a map on the Weather Channel Web site. "See," he
said, "the storm is going here." To emphasize his point, Jacob
held up an actual globe, pointed to a spot somewhere off the
Florida coast and said, "It's right here."
Viola Elementary, in Rockland County, is just one of
thousands of wired schools in the United States, as the Clinton
administration nears its goal of connecting all public schools
to the Internet by the end of this year.
But while at least 96 percent of public schools now have
Internet access, according to the National Center for Education
Statistics, it is often unclear how that access is being used to
enhance learning. At some schools, the problem is that there is
little else besides an Internet connection — only out-of-date
computers running antiquated software. At other schools,
teachers have been reluctant to adopt computers. And some
educators and parents question how much computers and the
Internet really help children learn.
But then there are schools like Viola Elementary, which is
loaded with computers and seems to love it. Along with
construction paper and crayons, computers are front and center
at Viola, not buried in a separate lab to be used once a week to
learn word processing and graphics programs.
The Ramapo Central School District has a technology budget of
about $1 million a year for 4,200 students. At Viola, which has
544 students in kindergarten through sixth grade, 22 iBooks are
lodged on a cart and make their way into various classrooms for
use throughout the day. Six PC's sit in neat rows in every
classroom. There are 12 computers in the school library, a
computer lab with 20 PC's, and a digital video camera that
students can use with the Macintosh iMovie program.
Viola Elementary and schools like it are unusually saturated
with technology, but that makes them good places to examine the
variety of ways in which computers are used. Students as young
as kindergartners may be doing research on the Internet and
using e-mail. They learn desktop publishing, use Microsoft Excel
to create spreadsheets and use PowerPoint to make slide shows to
supplement reports.
In the best-case scenarios, experts say, computers in
elementary school classrooms can create learning experiences
that help students see the relevance of their studies. These
lessons are meant to encourage children to develop what
educational theorists call higher-order thinking. Parents may
refer to this as fostering plain old imagination and
problem-solving skills. The goal, at least for now, seems to be
to keep children excited about learning in school.
In many schools, the impetus for computer use comes from
outside, from what the students and families are learning at
home.
"As early as kindergarten, kids often come to us with
computer skills they've learned at home," said Roger Woehl,
superintendent of the wired West Linn-Wilsonville School
District in Clackamas County, Oregon. "It's a challenge to keep
up with the kids. In those early years, students are defining
their world, and the environment creates that identity. If
technology isn't a part of how they perceive the world, they're
going to be at a disadvantage."
David T. Gordon, editor of The Harvard Education Letter and
its book "The Digital Classroom," published this year, said:
"Kids are growing up with the assumption that technology and all
its wondrous forms is part of how we communicate. Introducing
computers into the classroom is not just a case of going along
with some fad. It's a case of responding, in some way, to what
students expect and want."
But the integration of computers in the classroom is still
slow, often because of technophobia among teachers. Teachers, as
a group, have little time to apply themselves to learning how to
use computers and often have even less support from the school
districts when they seek training.
Even in districts with a well-conceived technology plan,
educators say, the process of adaptation can run off course.
Sometimes computer programs are introduced before the students
are able to grasp the basic concepts of the lessons. And in many
classrooms, computers may still be used to reward students for
finishing work early, or to allow students to do drills to
prepare them for standardized tests.
No set of teachers is more primed to use computers as a
powerful educational tool than are those at the elementary
school level.
"Elementary school has been historically the best place to
introduce computers," said Barbara Kurshan, executive vice
president and chief education officer at bigchalk.com, which
provides educational tools for teachers, parents and students.
"The curriculum allows teachers to have some flexibility about
how to present a topic. When you get to high school, computers
are used much more as an application device."
Dr. Kurshan said elementary school teachers were the most
creative people she had ever met. "They're scavengers who know
how to make things come to life," she said.
Diane Waud, a kindergarten teacher at the Brookwood Forest
Elementary School in Mountain Brook, Ala., a suburb of
Birmingham, taught kindergarten for 5 years before taking a
12-year hiatus to rear her children. She returned to the
classroom four years ago. "I feel like the children are more
grown today," she said, adding that with the introduction of
four computers in her classroom and a small lab down the hall,
her teaching had changed along with the children's
sophistication level.
Like many kindergarten classes nationwide, Mrs. Waud's
celebrates the 100th day of school. Last year, instead of
carrying in, say, 100 lollipops, their assignment was to collect
100 e-mail messages. Within a week, students received messages
from 42 states and from people on five continents, including a
governor. Ms. Waud used the e-mail for lessons in math, maps and
social studies. She will repeat the exercise this year.
Computer use is well entrenched at Brookwood Forest, part of
a district that is well ahead of the technology curve. Those
districts that are advanced have the same explanation for their
programs' successes: districtwide support, from the schools'
superintendents on down. That support includes not only the
proper hardware and software but also a well-established policy
of teacher training. These efforts require a great deal of
money. The Mountain Brook City Schools district started a
private foundation five years ago that now has $5 million
earmarked for technology training and integration, said Sharon
Mumm, technology coordinator at Brookwood Forest.
The $1 million in the Ramapo Central School District, which
includes Viola Elementary, for technology includes salaries for
technology coordinators.
The Mountain Brook school district has a technology academy
for teacher training. Ramapo Central's teachers have a contract
that includes a clause requiring technology training, said
Phyllis Brown, Viola's principal.
Still, integrating technology into the classroom creates
challenges. "I think you can be a good teacher and teach kids
well," said Jamie Burton, a sixth-grade science teacher at
Brookwood Forest, "and you can be good at computers, but putting
those thing together is a challenge. It takes time to become
proficient at being able to do the things you need to do on the
computer and do it as well as the kids." Last year, using
special software from the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, his students tracked the movement of Jupiter by
viewing data from NASA's radio telescope in California on their
computers in Alabama. The students, who showed up at 10:30 at
night to do their work, recorded their findings, graphed them on
the computers and shared the information with NASA
scientists.
"I've done computers long enough I don't draw a great
distinction between when I'm using it and not," said Mr. Burton,
who added that computers were simply a tool in the learning
process.
Teachers new to the process face a different challenge.
Technology has to be easy to use so lessons are not stalled
while teachers try to get balky computers to work. And teachers
need to understand how computers enhance learning, said Dr.
Robert MacNaughton, superintendent of the Ramapo Central School
District.
And that, it seems, is where even the most advanced and wired
schools may be overstepping their technological boundaries.
However stimulating computers are, there is a common trap that
even the best- thought-out curriculum plan can fall into, and
that is using the computer just for the sake of using it.
Back in Mrs. Butler's fifth-grade language arts class, some
students were using pencils to copy the information they found
on the Gary Paulsen Web sites into three- ring binders. Most,
however, were simply cutting and pasting blocks of text and
pictures from the Web directly into documents that would become
their reports.
In those classrooms where computers are as ubiquitous as
Magic Markers, computers are sometimes used in much the same
way: to put presentations together. The computers can be used to
create polished, professional-looking documents and PowerPoint
slides. In fact, using PowerPoint is a skill that now appears to
be as critical as mastering the cursive capital Q used to be.
The reports look less quaint than the old-fashioned pasted
variety. But even advocates of computers in the classroom say
that this focus on the bells and whistles of technology is
diluting what computers can really do.
"Using PowerPoint has no real thinking or content or rigor
involved," said Jamie McKenzie, a former school superintendent
who is now a consultant and speaker on educational technology
issues. "It's mostly about flash and special effects and sound
effects. It's not advancing the cause of student learning." Mr.
McKenzie said that many schools would necessarily move through
stages, starting off enamored of computers' flashiest functions,
then eventually realized that "it's about teaching, not
technology."
Sometimes it's about both. Last year, Rob Hoisington's second
graders at the Boeckman Creek Elementary School in West
Wilsonville, Ore., went to Mars. For a unit on the solar system,
the students first went to the NASA Web site to study the Mars
Sojourner. Working in teams, the children built a model of the
Mars environment and a computerized robot replica of the
Sojourner.
The models were then hooked up to a video camera, and the
students moved their modules to mimic the scientists' experience
of controlling the space module from Earth. The exercise brought
the solar system to life for the young students, who took to
referring to themselves as "scientists" at the family dinner
table. Many continued to do research about astronomy on the Web
throughout the year, sharing their findings with their
teacher.
"I want to be able to give kids experiences and have them
come to their own learning when I can," said Mr. Hoisington, who
views computers as a way to make learning "more real and alive"
for his students. "Kids are more self-directed and more
motivated to find what they need on the computer."
But even technologically literate teachers recognize the
value of powering down the computers.
At Brookwood Forest, Ms. Waud reported that her
kindergarteners spent as much time singing, dancing and putting
on plays as they did on their computer activities. "I don't want
the computer to replace what I do," she said. "Human contact is
the most important thing, but it's the world where they are
today."
