Will Technology Really Change Education? From Blackboard to Web

School Administrator, June, 2000 by Daniel M. Rodriguez

This slim volume provides a conceptional framework for fitting technology into a K12 curriculum. Its practical, classroom-oriented perspective is helpful, as is its discussion of the successes and failures of previous attempts to integrate technology into schools. The chapter on technology in the future is extremely well written.

The authors raise four principal questions: 1) What do we know about the current use of technology and education? 2) What are the instructional implications of our current knowledge base? 3) How can we use knowledge of teaching to guide our use of technology? and 4) What role might technology play in the future?

The book looks at how technology can be used to influence tasks or objectives that the model is meant to address; the sequence of activities in which teachers and learners engage; teachers' reactions to students; and the social system in which teaching and learning occur and even the assessment of learning.

This book is concisely written with examples that support technology at all levels. Additionally, the tone is one that doesn't preach. It is written in a manner to help.

(Will Technology Really Change Education? From Blackboard to Web, by Todd W. Kent and Robert F. McNergney, Corwin Press, 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks, Calif. 91320, 1999, 66 pp., $16.95 softcover)