Is your school's technology up-to-date?: A practical guide for assessing technology in elementary schools

Childhood Education, Summer 1997 by Gatewood, Thomas E, Conrad, Susan H

We can hardly open a newspaper or magazine, attend a conference or watch television these days without being bombarded by information about technology. How do we react when we hear terms like Internet, Information Highway, Email, World Wide Web, networking and CD-ROMs? Do we feel like the technology train is leaving the station and we are running after it, desperately trying to get on board? If we do, we are not alone. Many educators today feel that their technological skills are inadequate and outdated.

This guide is meant to help educators assess elementary schools' technology programs and determine their needs in this increasingly important area. The authors hope to bring schools into the "fourth wave of technology" ("Changing the way we learn," 1996). It is generally agreed that the first wave took place in the early 1980s, when a small number of personal computers were used in schools, mostly to teach students how to write programs using the BASIC language and to run a few educational software titles. The second wave crashed with the introduction of computers into laboratory settings, such as writing and math labs, and with the use of general purpose software, such as word processing and spreadsheets.

In the early 1990s, the third wave moved across the education landscape. Educational software and reference works started to appear on single CD-ROM disks, which combine text, pictures, sound, animation, video clips and greater interactivity. Software for word processing, databases and spreadsheets, as well as for specific subjects, became easier to use, more available and affordable, expanding the use of computers into areas like the sciences and the arts.

Now, in the midst of the fourth wave of technology, everyone from kindergartners to graduate students is using computers to connect to the Internet, send electronic mail (Email), browse the World Wide Web (WWW) and share information electronically. Another characteristic of the fourth wave is the interconnection of computers among schools, homes and community resources.

Unfortunately, few schools or teachers are adequately prepared for this fourth wave. A recent report reveals that only a few teachers in a relatively small number of schools have been trained to maximize technology use in classrooms (Teachers and Technology: Making the Connection, 1995). By the time this article reaches print, we may be approaching the technological fifth wave, in which digital technology will increasingly revolutionize how people produce, store, retrieve and use information.

Setting the Stage for a Needs Assessment

Before conducting a technology assessment, educators need to ensure that their schools' environment is suitable for higher level learning, not an end to itself. Technology is only a means to enhancing students' intellectually appropriate learning. Does learning in your school or classroom intellectually challenge students through sustained critical thinking and problem solving? Are your students actively constructing knowledge by using primary information sources, active research and open-ended inquiry they themselves have proposed? If your answer to these questions is yes, technology can and should play a vital role in improving teaching and learning.

Or do students in your school spend most of their time listening to teacher-led lectures and discussions, or doing worksheets and other forms of seat work? Do they participate in whole group activities with little accommodation of individual differences? If so, technology will not be very helpful. Instead, it would be far better to change the teaching and learning model of the school's program to make it more intellectually engaging and rigorous. As Chris Dede, an international expert in computer technology, warned, "If technology is used simply to automate traditional models of teaching and learning, then it'll have little impact" (Brandt, 1995). A technology plan that reflects a student-centered learning environment is a second prerequisite to a technology needs assessment. The technology plan should be integrated with and augment the school district's education program. The plan must be a vision for technology's role in the school.

Conducting a Needs Assessment Elementary schools commonly form a technology advisory committee, which is often composed of an administrator, two or three teachers, two or three parents, a technology coordinator working exclusively for the school, and a technology director assigned to the entire district. Typically, the coordinator is a staff member who is given reduced time or an extra duty assignment to coordinate and direct the school's use of technology.

The committee is responsible for conducting a comprehensive assessment of the school's use of technology. The following list of questions and guidelines can help to direct the assessment:

Are there enough classroom computer workstations and are they up-to-date?

Each classroom should have at least one teacher workstation and one or more student workstations (one for each five students is ideal); the computers should be equipped with both hard and floppy disk drives, color monitors, CD-ROM drives, modems, sound cards, speakers and sufficient RAM memory (8 megabytes minimum, 16 megabytes highly recommended).