Notes for Week #2: The Dismal History of Classroom Technology

"The worth of educational change is never self-evident; it is something that goes to the core of the purpose of education in a particularly society and must be confronted as such. Conviction is no criterion for determining worth." (Michael Fullan, from The Meaning of Educational Change)

"The property of being a piece of technology is not a physical property but a teleological property. It is not given but acquired with purpose." (Israel Scheffler, from "Computers at School?," Teachers College Record, 87, no. 4 (1986))

Choosing Projects

On Tuesday we'll ask for your preferences, and on Thursday we'll announce the project assignments.

Larry Cuban's Teachers and Machines I

• The importance of an historical analysis of the problem of implementing classroom technology. Examples of similar "top-down" implementation of computers in schools? Evidence of Cuban's "exhilaration/ scientific credibility/ disappointment/ teacher-bashing cycle in current debates about national investment in school computer technology?
• Forgetting the pejorative connotations of "technician" for a moment, in what positive sense(s) is a good teacher a master of technique?
• Unpacking the notions of "accessibility," "purpose," and "use".

Chapter 1 of Howard Gardner's The Unschooled Mind

• The child, the student and the expert: questions about the aims of education, and the goals of educational technologies.
• How should "understanding" be assessed; can it be assessed without reducing it to techniques of various sorts?
• What does/would it mean to design educational software with "multiple intelligences" in mind (!)?

Teachers and Machines II

• Cuban has said that he wants to revise the book for reflect the ten+ years that have passed. What do you think he should add to the discussion and what should he reconsider?
• What would it mean to make progress in the use of classroom technology regarding implementation issues? design issues?
• Going into the projects, after Ullman and Cuban, what sorts of questions do you want to keep in mind, and what sorts of empirical research would be valuable to have in hand?

Israel Scheffler's "Computers at School?"

• Recall Cuban's "Classrooms are steeped in emotions." (89)
• Let's consider Scheffler's 4 purposes for computers at school.
• Why do the computing metaphors matter?
• What from the Scheffler article will you keep in mind as you go to your first meeting with your project teacher?

In the next two weeks

• Next week: Meet the teachers & the tools.
• Evaluating educational software on the 19th; readings given out today and next week.
• Revised project descriptions due the 24th! We'll want to know: the setting, the goals, the tool(s), and the narrative description of what the software will do and how it will do it.