Cyberspace and the Classroom - June 1998

It's tough not to get excited when we talk to teachers and homeschoolers about technology and education. The technology itself isn't the exciting part; it's what the educators communicate - open thought, curiosity, excitement for their students. Educators who use the Internet aren't necessarily sold on all it offers. To them, it seems, the Web - like education, their students, their teaching - is a work in progress. They tell us they see the Web as a tool, one that brings a new element to their students' learning: real-time, national/global interactivity with peers and experts. That has a lot of implications, and you'll see some of them as you read our educator interviews below.

Meanwhile, the debate continues about the value of tech in education. According to a special report by Education Week (and funded by Michael Milken's Exchange on Education Technology), spending on education technology approached $5 billion last year, even though the payoff is still quite unclear. Some research has been done, but it's inconsistent state-by-state and country by country. Education Week says few studies have looked at what kinds of technology experts find valuable, little time has been spent on how the tech will be used or maintained, and few resources have been spent on ensuring that teachers use tech tools effectively.

But we do have a handle on how quickly US schools are getting connected to the Internet. The National Center for Education Statistics says 78% of all US public schools were connected last year, though only 43% of them had five or more classrooms connected. A lot more such data can be found in the NCES's February '98 brief on "Internet Access in Public Schools". And, as we reported in Sage Extra! (our weekly for subscribers only), a whopping 84% of US schools surveyed are either applying for the FCC's "e-rate" for discounted Internet connectivity, or they plan to do so.

What Education Week's report does bring out, and what we've all seen in our own experiences, is that individual teachers are blazing their own trails, a lot on faith. Technology use in schools, the report says, "has evolved partly through the grassroots efforts of a handful of teachers and administrators who were dissatisfied with traditional teaching methods and who experimented with their classes and schools, sometimes exchanging their own time and money for training. They gradually won over more colleagues and formed idea-sharing networks and then coalitions of educators - prodded by technology vendors, to be sure - who toiled to win political support and funding for technology."

So, let's get to some individual experiences in this, our school-year wrap-up issue. Here's what we've got for you:

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Junior high revisited
Last fall we interviewed Judy Whitcomb for our October issue. She uses the Internet to teach 7th- and 8th-grade science at Jordan Community School, a low-income pre-K-through-8 public school in Chicago. Her work is supported by CoVis, a National Science Foundation-sponsored project of Northwestern University, the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and Bellcore in New Jersey. They're supporting and studying the use of technology in education across the country. More than 100 public-school teachers like Judy are involved.

We thought we'd check back in with her - to see how her year of teaching with the Web went. She said her favorite project was one she gave her eighth-graders: "Locate a world city (when given latitude and longitude), then research the city, identify an environmental problem, and propose a solution that could have been implemented to prevent or modify the problem."

She continued: "Since the project required a multidimensional research effort, students then had to examine various solutions to environmental problems as well as see how the solutions would impact the culture and mores of a city. If the solution would be in direct opposition to these factors, it could not be considered viable. Needless to say, without the technology of the Web, this type of research in a junior high would be improbable at best. Time spent in the public library would have been unrealistic (more like you would expect from advanced high school or college endeavors), and most junior-high libraries do not have sufficient resources to carry on this type of research. Additionally, book research most likely would not have provided the most current information necessary for solution proposals. And the research was aided by telementors [experts in companies, research organizations, and government who communicated with students via phone and e-mail], many of them site mentors who had first-hand information about the cities being investigated.

"Students proposed car-use laws for air pollution in Mexico City; flood plain modifications for Portland, Oregon; nuclear plant adaptations for Harrisburg, PA; alternatives for industrial waste dumping in Tokyo to prevent minimota disease. I don't believe I could have introduced a project as diverse or with so many dimensions without the Internet and the telementors.

"Eighth graders are now involved in investigating the question of whether or not global warming is accelerating. They are looking at the same types of data that scientists are exploring in their debates. Much of this data is coming from 'Net sources." 

Judy went on to describe the impact of this project on one student - "a bilingual student who was a good student but came into eighth grade reading about a year below grade level." By the end of the project, he "was able to stand in front of the class for 40 minutes during final presentations being grilled by questions. The questions came from his peers, me, and two Northwestern research Ph.D. candidates. He was able to demonstrate a deep grasp of his subject (dams to aid in the Portland flood plain regions). It brought to mind the problem that we have been alerted to through the TIMSS (Third International Math and Science Study) data where, as one researcher put it, American science education tends to be a mile wide and an inch deep. Esau showed that his ability to focus on a problem, develop a strategy for investigating that problem, and propose a solution based on data gathered was indeed an in-depth learning experience. As a side note, the local standardized-norm test this spring indicated his reading level had gone from a year below level to 2.1 years above reading level (a 3.9-year gain). I attribute this to the work in science. Students are challenged to look at multiple sources for information and there is no guarantee that they will be at a seventh- or eighth-grade level. In addition, students had to communicate effectively with adults throughout the world, writing and reading communications that are appropriate."

We asked her, "What have you learned from working with the Internet this year?"

"Once again I was confronted with the fact that the new technology is not going to make an instructor's life 'easier.' To effectively use this technology, careful and time-consuming preparation must take place. To construct a curriculum that uses the technology to promote inquiry rather than just the use of technology for the sake of looking like we are 'state of the art' is not an easy task. But once it is implemented and you truly become a 'facilitator,' the excitement of seeing your students involved in a constructivist learning process reminds you of why you put in the time and effort."

And she described the support system behind a successful tech-integrating project: "Another issue is that of how important it is for institutions of higher learning, businesses, and governmental institutions to work closely with classrooms in developing effective uses of these technologies." She wanted to acknowledge several government agencies, the U. of Portland, Northwestern U., U. of Michigan, Toronto U., and others!

We asked which URLs she and her students have found particularly useful this year.

"This is always a tough one for me. We have not yet published our work on the 'Net. And, due to the nature of the research we do, the sites we use are extremely numerous. I can give you some site sources that I have found helpful": 

At the end of the interview, Judy wanted to send separate messages to teachers and parents:

Teachers:
"For instructors who are thinking about moving into a project pedagogy supported by the collaborative tools of the Internet and computers, do it. Anything that I may have said that seems intimidating minimizes as you see the results. Look for research universities on the Web to support your endeavors.  Seek out governmental agencies and businesses that will help enhance your curriculum. Turn to NSF-funded programs in the area of technology in the curriculum. These are very strong initiatives that will help you in your task."

Parents: "This technology has a tendency to catch on more quickly in the elementary and middle schools. Students going from these innovative programs into more traditional high schools, may experience some disappointment [see "The great ed-tech debate" below about one of those students]. In a suburban district near me, a school that has an exemplary program has had pressure put upon it to revert to a more traditional program because students going on to the district high school from that school reported science classes to be boring, not challenging. Rather than seeking ways to have the high school revise their approach, the junior high was pressured to revert to more traditional methods (after all, the other elementary and junior high schools weren't causing this disruption). However, in spite of administrative changes, teachers are 'hanging tough' because they have seen the difference it has made in their students. They continue to create effective learning environments that are process-oriented. 

"If you have similar situations arising in your district, take part in understanding what is happening.  Acquaint yourselves with what research is indicating. A good place to start in math and science is the TIMSS information. Be a voice in how both your elementary and high school districts are preparing your kids for the scientific/technological future that awaits them. It not the future that we entered 40, 30, 20, or even 10 years ago. Let's make sure that our curricula have grown to match the challenge."

A private school in the San Diego area
Irasema Triana is director of Educational Technologies and chairperson of the Computer Science Department at The Bishop's School, a 7-12 college-prep school founded in 1909. Here's what Irasema told us of her experiences this past year:

Sage: How was the 'Net effective for you and your students this year?
Irasema: "The Internet has been a very resourceful tool for our students. They have mainly used it as a tool for research. We have a T1 connection, with about 550 nodes (of which 250 nodes are active.) They use the Internet for research on assigned essays, reports, and projects. Students in a course called "Design of the Digital Computer" also use the Internet to post some of their projects. They design hardware from the ground level, making schematic drawings, logical flow charts, etc. After doing all of this, they post it on the Web in order to get world-wide feedback on their designs and their findings. The criticism that is received allows them to enhance their products and their findings."

Sage: Describe your favorite project or site.
Irasema: "They are numerous. Outlining just one can be of a hindrance to the students. I find that this limits the students to think that one is better than the other. One of our main goals here has been to not limit the students' level of creativity. Allow the students to view things differently. Telling them that one is rated better or superior than another just simply tells the students that if they want to create a project or a site of such stature, they should try to incorporate some of the same ideas which that site or URL has used. This is wrong. Have the students come up with their own ideas and then allow them to go beyond their own expectations. Often times, they'll surprise you and go beyond any expectations that you might have had."

Sage: What have you learned from working with the Internet this year?
Irasema: "I have learned that there is a lot of potential for improvement and for growth. Companies or schools should not just be on the Web to be on it. They should take this wonderful opportunity to market their product on a level that is interactive with the world. Push technology forward, but in a positive manner. It's very obvious that the schism between good and poor information has grown. This is largely attributed to the lack of ability that many companies have to visualize technology and its place in the future."

On to the East Coast
We revisited the classroom of Marel Rogers, library director and Web-using teacher of ninth-graders at Kent School, a private boarding school in Kent, CT. This was Marel's second year of incorporating the Internet, and we asked her, too, how it went.

Well, she told us, early on there was a bit of a wrench in the works: "They reverted to quill and parchment. Their laptops didn't arrive till almost Thanksgiving [Kent School participates in the Microsoft-Toshiba Laptop Learning Program].... By the time they arrived we didn't have five class days to get going with them - we were almost into final exams for that quarter."

Once they received and fired up their 'Net-connecting machines, was there a favorite project this year? "What I've done is in-house projects [putting links to useful parts of the Web on the school's own site] - a virtual tour of the Mediterranean is on the Web site. They each did a particular city in the Mediterranean. They wrote about it themselves, found their own graphics, made their pages. One girl got really interested in how this stuff works - she had image maps and some really sophisticated links on her page.

"My favorite project is coming up: a sequel to the Kenterbury Tales [of last year]. The kids are building the Cathedral of St. Cyberspace." One student is building the outhouse page, two others are stained glass artists. "It won't all hang together perfectly, so the cathedral will end up being like a jig-saw puzzle somebody sneezed over. The objective, though, is to learn about daily life in the Middle Ages - and to do relative links within the section to one another's pages, instead of to an outside source. Because these are ninth graders and have wild imaginations, things happen: The stained glass windows were stolen. Lady Clark, the lady-in-waiting [the role of one of the ninth-graders] was the one who stole them...." We asked about her role at St. Cyberspace. "I'll just create a title page and make sure all their links work...."

As soon as the site's up and Marel e-mails us the URL, we'll publish it in Sage Extra! so you can have a look at the "cathedral." Marel pointed us to a site her class found useful for this project: "Internet Medieval Sourcebook", by Paul Halsall at Fordham University.

When we asked Marel what she's learned from working with technology this year, she used her vacuum cleaner as a metaphor. "Using laptops in the classroom is a lot like vacuuming. There's a lot of up-front work - finding a plug that works, locating all the attachments, etc. It takes 5-to-10 minutes of classtime for everybody to be up and running. It's worth it, but we have to commit that classtime.... If we want them to hook into the school server or the 'Net so we can all look at a wonderful site on the Middle Ages, we all have to load Netscape, type the URL in right - you know. It's like teaching your two-year-old how to make a bed."

(Speaking of beds - for the gardeners among us, Marel has some lovely ones of the perennial sort - both around her house and in cyberspace. We thoroughly enjoyed visiting the latter garden.)

* * * *

A homeschooler's school year
Trish Donahue uses the Web for research and for finding and buying school materials for the eight-year-old boy and six-year-old girl she homeschools in southern California. We asked her pretty much what we asked our other teachers for this issue:

Sage: How was the 'Net effective for you in teaching your children this year?
Trish: "The 'Net plays a rather valuable role in the research that I do, in order to better teach my children. I used it to evaluate the various, and I do mean various, curriculum publishers, reading material, and educational games, as well as to purchase fine materials through the various, and again I do mean various, used booksellers."

Sage: Please describe your favorite project/lesson for which the Web was useful.
Trish: "The Internet is most useful as support when researching individuals in history or events in time. There have been many useful sites that have provided background into particular subjects we are covering, The Sea and Sky Web site was very useful and fun in our studies of the ocean."

Sage: What have you learned from working with the Internet this year?
Trish: "I would have to say that I have learned more about the various perspectives of individuals than I ever could have possibly experienced without the 'Net. One is not normally exposed to so many views on any one particular subject as when a person enters a chat area or newsgroup, or a specialized Web page! As for my children, they are learning that technology is interesting and fun and should be respected and properly prioritized in our lives." Sage: Why do you use the Internet in homeschooling?
Trish: "I like to use the Internet as a "break" from traditional methods of education. It is a hands-on, interactive experience that is not a video game!"

Sage: Is there anything you'd like to add?
Trish: "Only that I love the Internet!!! It has brought an extremely useful 'library' to me in my home. I am an avid reader, some say addicted, I love research and the 'hunt' for knowledge. I have a caution, of course, in that not all opinions - simply because they are voiced - are good ones. The Internet is not a place to let your guard down; we must be wise in the handling and use of information presented in this vast Web, which can be sticky business indeed!"

Trish gave us some favorite URLs (besides "Sea and Sky"):

* * * *

The great ed-tech debate
"What we need is more interaction. That would be better than all these textbooks," said Riki Haley, who, as a high school senior, co-created the prize-winning "Online Planetarium" for the 1996 ThinkQuest contest. She's now a somewhat frustrated college sophomore. Why frustrated? Because - she told writer and former educator Neal Brodsky in "Learning from Learners, Internet Style" - "most everything's just tests down here, and we're not supposed to work with anyone else." Brodsky explains that "ThinkQuest students work collaboratively on their [contest] entries - some for up to 1,000 hours. After this, some of these kids are looking to match the power of that experience at college, but some institutions of higher education are lagging behind in encouraging students to learn the same way that they'll one day be required to work."

Brodsky goes on to describe this very interactive, very technology-savvy generation of high school and college students. They're not necessarily tech-savvy because of school, but because of videogames, computer games, chat rooms (see our May issue on kids and chat), MUDs (multi-user dungeons on the Internet), Web-surfing, and other forms of tech recreation. But those interests have shaped the way they learn, as well as play and communicate. They learn a lot through interactivity.

That's one side of the debate. The other is represented by David Noble, a professor at York University in Toronto and co-founder of the National Coalition for Universities in the Public Interest. His views are spelled out in his paper, "Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education". Noble says that, in 10 years, "we will look upon the wired remains of our once great democratic higher education system and wonder how we let it happen. That is, unless we decide now not to let it happen." In a May 27 story, the New York Times pointed to this view as the other edge of the spectrum from a Coopers & Lybrand study about "The Transformation of Higher Education in the Digital Age."

There is no question that the growing influence of technology on education is unsettling - for parents as well as educators. And because there is so little known about its impact, informed opinion and personal experience are valuable. There's plenty more to read on the subject, some of it in a wonderful resource called "First Monday," one of the first peer-reviewed journals on the Internet, about the Internet. If you occasionally check in on the debate in no other place, you'll stay well-informed on the basic concerns and issues.

First Monday, just now celebrating its second birthday, is a technology-&-academia story in itself, an experiment with the ambition to "expand the frontiers of academic publishing by combining the traditional values of peer-reviewing and strict quality control with a new form of publishing on the World Wide Web." It's published by Munksgaard International Publishers Ltd., publishers of scientific journals in Copenhagen, and its editorial office is at the University of Illinois in Chicago. The people behind the editorial side are well-known 'Net luminaries of an academic stripe. You've heard of at least two of them: Vint Cerf, one of the Internet's founding fathers, and Esther Dyson, pundit, venture capitalist, and editor of Release 1.0. First Monday's chief editor is Edward Valauskas, Internet consultant and co-author of the 1994 book, "Internet Troubleshooter: Help for the Logged-On and Lost."

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Thanks to our subscribers for these comments...
Last week's Sage Extra! dispatch included an item about two different types of Internet safety software available to parents: filtering, which has been around for a while, and now monitoring software. The former filters out sites parents deem objectionable; the latter allows parents to track their children's movements from site to site. Some critics of filtering software call its use a form of "censorship," and detractors of monitoring tools call them a form of "surveillance." We asked subscribers what they thought of both the tools and the terminology. Here are two very useful comments we received:

"Hi to the SageNet team! As a librarian and a grandmother, I find monitoring much less offensive than filtering. It sounds a little scary to talk of surveillance - especially when you think of Big Brother watching you. However, this is exactly what parents should be doing - keeping an eye on their kids.

"The degree of monitoring and the activities monitored depend on the child, but I'd much rather have a caring adult reviewing what the child is seeing than to have a mindless computer eliminating possibilities on the basis of a set group of 'naughty words.' I would hope that parents who monitor would be talking to their kids about what they are doing (both the monitoring and the kids' viewing) and eventually the kids would be able to select for themselves. 

"It's a far different thing to monitor a library user's Internet use. That violates the basic principle of the right to privacy, and I don't think it's appropriate for adults or children. I believe parents have a right to know what their own children are doing - I don't believe the library (meaning the public library - therefore, the government) has that right. School libraries may be somewhere in between, since they do have some responsibility for what kids are doing while they are at school. However, it seems to me the best answer is to have the kids use the Internet for assignments that are demanding enough and interesting enough that they don't allow time for kids to wander off the subject at hand."

From another subscriber:

"Both censorship (filtering) and surveillance (monitoring) are undesirable because neither is foolproof. If you have to use the tool prudently and wisely anyway, then why not be prudent and wise at the source and accompany the kids on the Internet? After a bit of experience they learn to choose and how to get out of 'trouble' sites if they wind up where they don't want to be. 'Trouble' sites are family discussion food, sometimes these discussions are not easy but they are very necessary if kids are to develop a real critical mind.

"The critical mind is the only tool that will keep 'trouble' sites (and the kids will get there if they want to, sooner or later) from really causing trouble.

"Filtering and monitoring are no substitute for accompaniment. But if you can't accompany...

"And if the 'Net is big-time at your house, spend time on it with the kids."

* * * *

Links on learning
The following are links that give you access to the most current thinking on and illustrations of education and technology. As usual, we're not being comprehensive, here - the Yahoo! directory or a search engine does that. These are quality links, by which we mean sites for deeper digging into this month's topic.

Yahoo!'s Education page is a great place to start. We don't know why it's so helpful sometimes just to drill down through the layers of a topic, seeing all the strata as we go. The two sub-pages we found most helpful are Instructional Technology and News and Media.

We're not sure why Dawg Bytes, Spencer Dolloff's own page at GeoCities, is "the official page" for Grandville High's tech ed and not the school's own Web site - probably because Spencer's the technology teacher, and this was how he could make his and his students' Web experiences truly their own. It's representative of the power of one teacher's enthusiasm for his students and his subject. And it's a service to people interested in what's happening on the ground in teaching technology. Spencer's site includes a meaty Tech Ed Links page.

Educom: In addition to its long-standing service called Edupage (a thrice-weekly e-newswire that people in many fields have been using since the Web's early days), Educom provides Educom Review, which archives educators' papers on technology and learning. We found Neal Brodsky's paper (leading "The great ed-tech debate" above) in the "Teaching and Learning" papers index.

Education Week, a well-tuned education-news machine, seems to be (probably pays to be) at the top of virtually all the Yahoo! Education pages. Their "Best of the Web" education links page is a mother lode.

eSchool News is where we learned that Michael Milken's $1 billion tech training and consulting company, Knowledge Universe, has bought a piece of the US's fastest growing for-profit schooling company, Nobel Education Dynamics, Inc., viewing education as "a hot new market for Wall Street" (the view deplored by Professor Noble, who helps frame the ed-tech debate and believes technology in education is mostly profit-motivated).

Electronic School Online is an offshoot of The American School Board Journal. There we found "Brigid's Excellent Adventure," tale of a school board member's venturing into cyberspace. Her one-school rural school district is Greenwood Central School in southern New York.

Global SchoolNet Foundation, whose mission is "to harness the power of the Internet" for learning, has a valuable page of articles by Web-using teachers - a place to build on others' experience.

The Institute for the Transfer of Technology to Education, part of the National School Boards Association, has a rich education links page that would be an even better starting point for focused research than Yahoo!.

Web66's International School Web Site Registry brings you zillions of school sites, via a clickable map of the US and a hotlist of other countries (as well as special categories, such as Gifted & Talented, Private, Parochial, Montessori, etc.). If you'd like a collection that's a bit more manageable, go to the "Ring of K-12 School Home Pages," with just 62 sites of schools scattered all over the US and beyond.

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Have your kids benefited from using the Web in school this past year? Or do you feel education technology is over-hyped and over-funded? We'd love to hear your thoughts. Please e-mail us at feedback@sageway.com.

Next month: A summit and a conference. We'll be covering the White House's second summit about kids online, this time on content, and Jupiter Communications' Digital Kids conference, live (well, almost) from San Francisco. Virtually all the movers and shakers - in commerce and policymaking - with interest in our children will be represented. We'll let you know what they're saying.

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