FROM CLASSROOM use in the 1980s of the Bank Street Writer and students programming with Logo, research on the effectiveness of learning and educational technologies has found "there really is great significance. But there's a lot of work left to do," said Roy Pea, Director of the Stanford Center for Innovations In Learning. Research needs to be contextualized, driven by real educator issues, and applied by classroom teachers focused on student learning.
The dilemma, Pea noted, is that while there is a body of evidence on successful uses of learning and educational technology, "it's embedded in a matrix of other reforms. Because the education system is so complex, it's difficult to have carefully nuanced, clinical, randomized trials as with pharmaceutical industries to whom we're often compared."
Pea is particularly excited about K-12 e-learning that brings students, teachers, and scientists together by using powerful sensors, probes, tools, and models in understanding the environment, such as the Globe Program. And students who struggle with calculus and other mathematical concepts are finding success through simulations and dynamic graphing tools. Pea also pointed out the tremendous impact on learning environments from recent scientific research on how children learn to read.
Moving to 'Systemic Understanding'
But we need to move from this "fragmentary knowledge" to a "systemic understanding" of learning technology uses, Pea said. "'Does technology work?' just isn't the right question. Educators need to know by age or developmental level, by subject matter and topic, classroom context including English language learners, school culture, and by specific district, community, and state context."
Building the workforce capacity to integrate learning technologies with instruction is critical. "Teachers are a lynchpin to this," Pea said, adding that they have to be "empowered and full of knowledge to continue to learn how to educate with technology." Instruction should be guided and shaped by ongoing, continuous assessment of student learning in the classroom.
As the instructional curricula are re-conceptualized through the integration of technology, academic performance standards need to keep up. Pea pointed out the six-year-old National Science Education Standards "barely mention simulation, modeling, and technology in a way that's fundamental in the sciences."
Use-Inspired Basic Research
Pea advocated that research needs to be focused on the issues that educators have. "We need to break the image of a linear path of research in the laboratory to people that then go off as change agents transferring knowledge into practice. It doesn't work that way." He added that research needs to seek basic understanding based on applied use. Pea proposed that states get involved as "use-inspired research partners" and industry be involved in order to go to scale with implementation.
Another strategy Pea proposed to integrate research-based best practices with learning technology into instruction is through teacher communities. "We are inspired when we see teachers working together - both face-to-face and online - on best practices with a focus on student work," he said.
Lastly, one-to-one e-learning models hold "tremendous promise for continuous improvement that will give us accountability that matters," Pea said. When every student and teacher has a computer, "it fundamentally changes the dynamic of ownership around learning and time on task. It's going to be really hard not to have more dramatic effects when we have regularly supported one-on-one e-learning that offers teachers ongoing assessment information."
Roy Pea is a member of the WestEd RTEC Advisory Board of Experts. Stanford University's School of Education has numerous ties to projects and staff at WestEd.
