Techno-Promoter Dreams, Student Realities

To understand more clearly how recent infusions of technology into the schools have affected students, the authors undertook a yearlong investigation into technology use at two San Francisco Bay Area high schools. They share their findings here and measure them against the dreams of the techno-promoters.

By Craig Peck, Larry Cuban, and Heather Kirkpatrick

AN 18-YEAR-OLD senior with long brown hair and a thoughtful, engaging manner, Jason Swift does not fit the prominent cultural stereotype of the bespectacled, socially awkward "techno geek." Nonetheless, Flatland High School's tech coordinator, teachers, and other students all rely on his substantial technical and computer expertise, almost entirely self-taught, to help solve various computer problems. Mr. Marsh, the Computer Information Technology (CIT) teacher, and Mr. Colburn, the technology coordinator, immediately mention Jason's name when asked about technologically proficient students. A classmate says, "If there is a PC problem, Jason can fix it." Renowned as the most potent member of the "tech gods," a self-named group of students vital to Flatland's technology efforts, Jason notes, without any undue gloating, that most people turn to him when there is a network, hardware, or software problem in the school.1

On a typical day, although Jason's academic subject teachers rarely employ computers for instruction, he does use computers in two of his classes. In his second-period CIT class, Jason checks his e-mail and surfs the Net at the beginning of class. Then he and his classmates move to another room to disassemble and rehabilitate old computers that local businesses have donated to Flatland. Eventually, many of these reconditioned computers will be used in the school. Mr. Marsh, the instructor/entrepreneur behind the operation, typically employs Jason as an assistant teacher who aids less able students and also as a repair expert who fixes staff machines. Jason reports that twice this year Mr. Marsh has sent him to fix a guidance counselor's computer. Today, Jason is helping individual students test their reassembled computers.

In his sixth-period Cisco Networking Academy (CNA) class, Jason and his classmates sit individually at 25 high-end computers secured through a district grant. While some students chat with their neighbors or surf the Web, many students read text, listen to audio through headphones, or watch graphic simulations presented in an online curriculum prepared and hosted by Cisco Systems, the world's leading manufacturer of networking products. The overriding course objective is to prepare students to earn Certified Network Technician status.

The instructor, Mr. Colburn, is the technology coordinator. He works with individual students or pauses to engage in an extended dialogue with an observer. On other days in this class, students have wired the room's network, listened to short lectures in which Colburn brought them up to speed on new technologies, taken multiple-choice tests online, or completed "labs" in which groups configure and troubleshoot routers, devices that determine how information flows over a network. However, Jason notes that most days the class uses the online curriculum. Though he sometimes finds it "hard on my eyes," he likes it because "you can go at your own speed, and a book doesn't have sound and animation."2 When asked if he is learning a lot in this class, Jason shrugs his shoulders and says "yeah."

In certain respects, Jason's computer knowledge eclipses that of Mr. Colburn, especially when it comes to solving PC hardware or software problems. Jason comments, "If it is something that I can't deal with, then I do usually talk with [Colburn] or someone that I know knows stuff. But most of the time . . . either he doesn't have time to deal with it, or he doesn't know what is going on with it, so they have me fix it." Mr. Colburn agrees, noting, "Jason often does things that nobody on the staff could accomplish."

Jason's substantial technical skill has helped him land a position as Mr. Colburn's teaching assistant during third period. Jason notes that he usually "fixes computers and stuff," and Mr. Colburn adds that "Jason is free to do various jobs because he does them so well." Today, Jason decides to visit the career center, which has a malfunctioning printer. After patiently listening to the instructor describe her deep exasperation with the machine, Jason spends a few minutes assessing the system. Eventually, he determines that the problem is that the sheets of paper are sticking together. He advises her to "flip through the papers to get more air between them" before putting them in the tray. The instructor notes somewhat sheepishly to an observer, "I know these machines are really easy to work with, but I don't know how, so I call them."

* * *

This portrait illustrates how greatly information technologies have affected Jason's school day. His work in CNA and CIT classes and the duties he carries out for Mr. Colburn suggest a high school experience unimaginable just 10 years ago. In a broader sense, his technology-rich experience symbolizes the partially realized dreams of some techno-promoters who, believing that technology can transform education and offer students new learning possibilities, have encouraged schools to make heavy investments in information machines.

But what about students less technologically inclined and less immersed in technology-related electives than Jason? In what ways has increased access to computers and other information technologies in high schools affected the general experience of secondary students? Before we can answer that question, we need to provide some background information.

Background

Since the early 1990s, increasing student access to high-end technology has become a national priority, underscored by Presidents, Presidential candidates, governors, state legislatures, and corporate leaders. Responding to this call for technological excellence, schools have dramatically lowered their student-to-computer ratios. Calculated by dividing total school computers by student population, the national student-to-computer ratio has decreased from 92 students per computer in 1983-84 to 27 in 1988-89 to just under six students per computer in 1999. With regard to Internet access, in 1994, 35% of U.S. schools were connected to the Internet; by 1999 that number had increased to 90%. In 1994, just 3% of classrooms were connected to the Internet, while by 1997 that figure had risen to 27%. The figures today are certainly even higher. This increase in high-tech access represents a staggering national financial investment in school technology over the last 15 years.3

For educational technology enthusiasts, however, schools' infusion of technology suggests a battle that is only half won. Their larger vision is for the information machines, especially computers, to directly affect student learning in at least four ways, each involving "hands-on" student experience.

1. Ensure that all students are computer and technology literate. Most techno-promoters insist that all students must become "technology literate" and learn "basic technology skills" in order to pursue and fill future positions in a rapidly changing information-based economy.

2. Offer improved educational resources in order to increase student academic achievement. Most technology enthusiasts believe that technology -- especially computers -- presents students and teachers with better educational resources. Software and CD-ROM programs, they claim, offer motivation through games, images, and sound; instant diagnosis of student inaccuracies such as misspellings; and a revolutionary graphic interface that creates, for instance, three-dimensional views of the cell. The Internet allows students to access enormous amounts of information and, quite literally, to bring the world to their desktops. These improved resources, the techno-promoters reason, will help ensure students' improved academic performance, whether measured by test scores, grades, or the development of final products with a decidedly professional touch (e.g., multimedia project presentations).

3. Change the nature of education. A few groups have suggested that computers and other high-end technologies will foment classroom and schoolwide pedagogical revolutions. The enthusiasts believe that computers offer the possibility for students to engage in simulations, create multimedia projects, and use graphing and drawing programs and the Internet for classroom tasks. Under this conception, technology might spark a new type of pedagogy -- student-driven, student-centered, project-based, and thoroughly hands-on -- to replace the days of teacher-centered, text-based instruction.

4. Provide select students with high-tech skills in order to satisfy student, school, and business interests and needs. Led by Cisco Systems, a few techno-promoters have claimed that students, schools, and corporations alike can benefit from starting intensive technology training programs within high schools. Students learn, for example, how to implement computer networks and in the process accumulate scarce high-tech skills attractive to businesses. Schools benefit in that they train students as effective technology support personnel to help maintain their expensive high-end technology. The business sector, meanwhile, receives aid in addressing its critical shortage of information technology workers. However, unlike the other three initiatives, which are broadly conceived reforms intended to affect all students, these types of courses target a particular and relatively small segment of the student population.

These are the techno-promoters' fundamental dreams. How do they correspond to current student realities?

Our Study

To understand more clearly how recent infusions of technology into the schools have affected students, we undertook a yearlong investigation into technology use at two San Francisco Bay Area high schools.4 The two schools we studied are located in Silicon Valley, the world capital of high-tech industry that stretches from San Francisco south to San Jose. At the time we were carrying out our study (October 1998 to June 1999), this Northern California area, once known mainly for earthquakes and a lovely orange bridge, had become an investor's wonderland, instantly turning savvy technology whiz kids into billionaire power brokers. Today, even in a struggling economy, much of the mystique remains. High-tech hyperbole and signs of conspicuous consumption suffuse Silicon Valley, where luxury SUVs dominate the roadways and cell phones have replaced earrings as a principal fashion accessory. Members of the working class, however, live on the underside of this techno-utopia, paying exceedingly high rents and earning low wages in their mostly nontechnical jobs.5

The students at the two schools we investigated, Las Montanas and Flatland, represent an ethnic and economic cross-section of the area, and of high schools nationwide, in terms of number of students in the schools, SAT scores, and college attendance rates. We consider these schools to be "typical" American high schools -- in all ways but one. Indeed, the high access to technology that these schools provided their students was quite atypical when compared to the nation's schools. In the end, the high access to technology in these two schools made them ideal for our study of ways in which technology has affected students' experience.

Technology's Impact on the High School Experience

Various data we collected helped us determine what types of technology teachers and students used and how they used it during the school day. First, we shadowed for a full day 12 students, who represented each grade level and who took part, cumulatively, in all of the two high schools' academic subjects. On these randomly chosen days, we saw 35 different teachers (one-fourth of both faculties). Eight of these teachers had students working at computers. In these classes, which included computer-based electives, social studies, and an integrated English and social studies course, students typed papers in word-proc-essing programs and completed Internet searches. Furthermore, four of the 35 teachers used slides, videos, or overhead projectors to supplement their instruction. None of the math teachers we visited had their students using graphing calculators. From our observations, then, it was clear that certain teachers had adopted different technologies to enhance their teaching and, by extension, that students in those classes received at least some exposure to technology.

Other data we collected suggested that certain teachers at each school had formed a technology vanguard and that students who took courses from them received a great deal of exposure to technology. For instance, the 33 students we interviewed reported that certain teachers in particular subjects (mostly English, social studies, and tech-related electives) employed computers and other technologies (including VCRs, televisions, laserdisc players, and overhead projectors) for instruction frequently -- at least twice a month or even several times a week. Furthermore, in a survey we administered to one-quarter and one-third of each school's student body, students reported computer use in certain courses, especially in computer-related electives and a handful of academic classes. They also reported occasional to rare use of graphing calculators in their math classes. Teacher surveys at each school stressed that a few teachers and their students were on the leading edge of technology use.

Moreover, certain courses at each school ensure a technology-rich experience for the students who take them. At Las Montanas, all students used computers in a required one-semester introductory course taken during their freshman year. The curriculum for this ninth-grade class was a hands-on tour through basic computer programs. Students were expected to demonstrate their proficiency in using word processing, databases, spreadsheets, drawing and painting programs, and the Internet. Following worksheet explanations, students worked on various computer projects at their own pace while their instructor circulated from student to student to check progress and answer questions.

In the school's computer-based electives, known as Advanced Multi-Media (AMM), a technologically elite core of about 20 students worked at their own pace on extended projects such as the development of short videos and animated children's books. Students built a portfolio of this work over the year and in the process demonstrated their proficiency in such advanced programs as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Premiere, Infinity, After Effects, and Page Maker. The atmosphere in the class was more like that of a workplace than a classroom. Provided the freedom to wear headphones and walk around to help one another, students were simply expected to do the job they had in front of them and, once they were finished, to move on to another one.

Though Flatland did not require a freshman introductory course, it did offer a specialized multimedia course like the one at Las Montanas. In keeping with the school's vocational education legacy, however, the more popular technology electives at Flatland were the CNA and CIT classes, to which we've already alluded in our opening vignette. In CNA, students learned the basics of network construction and maintenance; in CIT, students learned the basics of computer construction and refurbishing. Like other vocationally oriented offerings at Flatland, such as auto shop and small-engine repair, CNA and CIT, with their often-overlapping enrollment of roughly 60 different students, were intended to provide students with marketable trade skills.

Technology as Open Door

Teachers at both schools who were enthusiastic technology users reported that a few of their students became particularly tuned in academically when using computers. These students were among their finest performers, helping less technologically able students learn the basics while simultaneously stretching the instructors' own technological knowledge. Technology offered these students what we called an "open door" toward improved academic work and, in some cases, fuller participation in the social side of school life.

From our research, several consistent patterns emerged regarding "open door" students. They were predominantly -- though not exclusively -- male, and they came from varied ethnic backgrounds. Whether aided by family and friends or self-taught, all had gained most of their computer expertise outside of school. As one student explained, "I started with my dad's Atari, then moved to his 486 in sixth grade. Learning on your own is better." All of them also reported that they were heavy home users, whether engaging in complex tasks such as repair and programming or simply completing their homework. Finally, all were quite cognizant of the fact that their computer use, both in and out of school, greatly outweighed that of most of their classmates.

Individual "open door" students were quite candid about the importance of having access to computers in school. One reported, "It's an outlet where I am good at something, where I can produce good work and get good feedback." Another student explained simply, "I am good at computers, so I am good at school." He added that "everyone knows how good I am, and I use that to help me with people skills." Though small in number (teachers at each school were able to identify at most 10 such students), "open door" students seemed to find not only satisfaction in using school technology but also empowerment. They were playing on home turf, so to speak, where they were the experts.

Tech Gods

Many of the "open door" students used their expertise to serve their schools in a tech-support capacity. These self-anointed "tech gods," like Jason, were well aware of their importance to their schools. As one deity explained, "I like seeing how people look stupid when they don't know what they are doing on the computer. I say, 'This is how you do it,' and they go, 'Thank you, you are my god.' It makes me feel good."

We can forgive this student's hubris, since having such student experts on hand was clearly vital to the two high schools. First, students with vast technological skills fortified the schools' small number of proficient teachers. For instance, students at Flatland created a Web club that helped Mr. Taylor keep the school's website filled with compelling, up-to-date content. Other students aided teachers as they tried to more actively incorporate computers into their own instruction. One "tech god," for example, reported that he had helped a science teacher create a program to monitor what sites his students were surfing.

Moreover, the "tech gods" helped ease the demand placed on the schools' technology support teams, which, as at most schools nationwide, were understaffed and overburdened. At Flatland, the official support staff consisted of one teacher, who also taught three classes; at Las Montanas, it consisted of one full-time technology coordinator. Consider the difficulties of their tasks: establishing the schools' networks, maintaining their 300 or so computers, writing grants for updated equipment, determining the schools' technology policies. It should not be surprising, then, that the tech coordinators actively cultivated select cadres of technologically proficient students to aid them. Though numbering only about five students in each school, these techies-in-arms helped the tech coordinators with a variety of tasks, from the mundane (searching for a SCSI cable) to the essential (routing a network). In the end, Jason and "tech gods" like him have become a crucial -- and an incredibly cost-effective -- part of high school technology support teams.

General Student Population

Clearly, some groups of students were greatly affected by increased access to technology, especially "open door" students, "tech gods," and other technophiles attracted to advanced, technology-based electives. Furthermore, students in classes taught by teachers who have embraced technology, like Mr. Taylor, received a technology-enhanced academic experience. Taken together, these students represented at most 5% of the total student population.6

More striking, however, was how rarely technology came into play in most classrooms and how little it affected the students who did not voluntarily enroll in computer-based electives. For instance, teacher use of technology during our random observations was the exception rather than the rule. Of the 35 teachers we saw on random days, 23 teachers in social studies, science, English, math, and foreign language presented a familiar teaching repertoire -- lecture, review of homework, recitation, and whole-group instruction -- that eschewed any use of electronic technology.

In interviews, students reported little to no use of computers in the vast majority of their academic classes, though they did mention that many instructors occasionally used VCRs (and, in math, graphing calculators) and frequently used overhead projectors. Moreover, in schoolwide student surveys we conducted, students reported a modicum of computer use in English and social studies, but negligible to absolutely no use in math, science, and foreign language. For example, at Las Montanas, 89% of students claimed they "never" used computers in math; at Flatland, the number was 99%. At Flatland, 94% of students "never" used computers in foreign language, while at Las Montanas, 82% of students "never" used computers in science.

Teacher surveys supported these findings of little usage. At Flatland, 100% of foreign language teachers claimed that their students used computers "less than once a week" or "never." There was also much variation within departments. At Flatland, for instance, while students in one teacher's class (Mr. Taylor's) identified their computer use as "several times a week," a few teachers' students reported occasional computer use, and the majority of teachers' students claimed that they never used computers.

From our shadowing, interviews, and survey data, it is clear that teachers most frequently used technology to support, rather than alter, their existing teacher-centered practices. Overhead projectors, for instance, supplemented teacher-led lectures and discussions, while VCRs replaced a flesh-and-blood "sage on the stage" with an electronic one. Students also reported that, when they actively used computers, even in their computer-based electives, they mostly completed low-end, teacher-driven assignments (e.g., typing up essays or working on reports) rather than constructivist, computer-based projects. In one science class we observed, students did in fact use computers, but they simply searched a CD-ROM encyclopedia for worksheet answers.

National studies support our findings on how teachers' rare use of technology precludes any sustained impact of technology on students' academic experience. In a recent "Technology Counts" survey, for example, 53% of teachers used software for instruction, while 61% used the Internet, suggesting that there are still large numbers of teachers who eschew any use of the machines. Even among those teachers who do use computers for instruction, 77% consider the computer a secondary rather than a primary resource. In addition, a comprehensive study published in 1999 found that "the 'typical' teacher provides students with fewer than 10 opportunities to use computers during a school year" and that "a majority of high schoolers' frequent computer experiences occur outside of the academic subjects" (emphasis in original).7

In the end, as is true nationally, a typical day for a typical student in our two typical high schools involved little classroom or instructional exposure to technology. We do not mean to claim that there was no evidence of technology use by students or teachers. Nor do we mean to claim that students received no exposure at all to computers during a typical day. In fact, most students surveyed at each school reported home access and serious rates of usage. In interviews, most students were quite candid about how important computers had become in their lives. Some used computers mostly for schoolwork; others used their home access mostly for social pursuits. Students also expressed much enthusiasm about computers and other technologies. "They're fun" and "They're easy to use" were typical comments.

Yet despite experience with home computers, enthusiasm for technology, and abundant access to technology in school, technology had but little impact on students' school experiences. Let us return for a moment to the techno-promoters' dreams that we examined above and see how they measure up to student realities.

1. Ensure that all students are computer and technology literate. Since most students' exposure to technology in classroom instruction is so minimal and sporadic, typical students are not ensured access to any school-based technological literacy initiatives -- except in cases like Las Montanas, with its one-semester freshman requirement. And in the case of Las Montanas, there seems to be little carryover from the required technology course to other courses. If students achieve more than a smidgen of computer literacy, it is most likely through their independent efforts at home.

2. Offer improved educational resources in order to increase student academic achievement. Teachers largely eschew the use of instructional technology on a sustained, systematic basis. Therefore, students receive little exposure to what techno-promoters consider to be improved educational resources. Most notably, students do not use many software programs, and they access the Internet only as a sporadic, infrequent supplement to text-based instruction. Videos, the technology resource teachers employ most often, are still regarded as a supporting or diversionary device best used sparingly. In the end, since teachers rarely employ technology-based educational resources, they can have little impact on student academic achievement and outcomes.

3. Change the nature of education. In all but the rarest of classrooms, tech-related or otherwise, the pedagogical revolution sparked by technology is still waiting to begin. When teachers do employ technology, it usually supplements a familiar, teacher-centered repertoire -- lecture, class discussion, textbook-based assignments, and factual transmission. Furthermore, the occasional and rare users among teachers most often employ computers as low-end instructional devices that allow students to type final drafts of essays or to conduct an Internet search. Rarely did we observe anything resembling the type of student-centered, constructivist learning that many techno-promoters hope computers and other machines will inspire.

4. Provide select students with high-tech skills in order to satisfy student, school, and business interests and needs. Techno-promoters who advocate this approach have come closest to realizing their vision. Programs like the Cisco Networking Academy, which according to the company's website is offered in more than 3,000 places and enrolls more than 21,000 students worldwide, have become an increasingly popular vocational education option for students and schools.8 Though courses such as this appeal to a small, vocationally oriented segment of the student population, undoubtedly these students receive training in some of the technology industry's most highly sought technical skills. Finally, though little evidence exists currently that Cisco graduates actually obtain industry jobs thanks to their coursework, certainly the program seeks to fill a fundamental business need in that it focuses on transmitting scarce job skills that are in high demand.

In sum, based on our findings and on national data, we maintain confidently that, contrary to the dreams of most techno-promoters, technology has simply become a small and largely peripheral element of a familiar, long-running high school routine. True, computers and other technologies greatly affect the experience of the school day for as much as 5% of the student population. And our data also suggest that most teenagers relish the use of their home computers. Finally, the few techno-promoters who, like Cisco, emphasize the vocational potential of computers in schools can claim success, in that tech-heavy courses like theirs have become viable, well-enrolled curricular offerings and, arguably, have helped improve schools' technical support capabilities by creating groups of highly skilled students. But anyone attending or visiting a public high school in the last 50 years would clearly see that the presence of computers and other machines has caused almost no discernible change in the general student's school experience. High-end technology has simply not had the type of widespread, fundamental effect on students that most techno-promoters covet.

Why So Little Impact?

We are left, then, with a puzzle: Why has increasingly high access to technology in schools had so little effect on the classroom and the instructional experience of students? On the surface, the most obvious answer to this conundrum lies in the organizational norms of high school. Teachers hold the ultimate authority over what occurs in classrooms on a day-to-day basis. Students are thus subject to the pedagogical choices of their teachers. If teachers choose not to use technology, students will receive little exposure to the machines.

The situation, though, is more complex. Several factors directly affect the choice of whether or not teachers use information technologies in their teaching. Most often, lack of technical competency is the explanation offered for teachers' limited use of technology, though our data and national findings convince us otherwise.9 We believe instead that several other reasons better explain why teachers have not made more regular use of school technology for instruction. By extension, these factors help explain why technology has affected the general student population so little.

Structures. Two traditional school structures -- separate subject departments and cellular classroom arrangements -- work in tandem to forestall teachers' use of technology. With regard to departments, one or two technologically enthusiastic teachers in, say, the English department will rarely communicate more than briefly with members of other departments, thus limiting the spread of innovative teaching ideas. Departmental structures also lead to the deployment of computers in separate, department-specific technology labs, thus rendering the machines off-limits to those from other departments. Moreover, the individualistic and isolated nature of teaching, most noticeable in schools' cellular classroom arrangements, often prevents the spread of ideas from teacher to teacher, even within the same department. A Spanish teacher who begins to use technology in her room often has no impact on other Spanish teachers. Thus a technological uprising in a single classroom has little chance of becoming a schoolwide revolution.

Time constraints. The time necessary to implement instructional technology effectively has dissuaded many teachers from fully embracing it. Whether taking a course in Web design, evaluating educational software, or searching for appropriate and relevant websites, teachers find that technology use requires a sizeable time investment. Already burdened by various time-consuming tasks -- among them lesson planning, grading for 150-plus students, and school-assigned duties -- most teachers rely on the teaching methods that have served them well in the past. In addition, 50-minute periods limit the possibilities that technology might create for project-based and student-centered learning. Proponents of these teaching styles most often call for block scheduling and 90-minute periods instead.

Defects in the technologies. Teachers reported that server crashes and technological malfunctions doomed many lessons and forced them to construct -- and repeatedly resort to -- backup plans. As sporadic failure seemed ever more routine, these teachers just stopped employing what they increasingly considered to be unreliable technology.

The technical "triage" assistance that is available at the schools further exacerbated matters. While for-profit corporations have created elaborate tech support teams to ensure a smoothly performing infrastructure, schools can offer only a stopgap support approach, which, in the end, erodes confidence in the technology's value and helps to sustain largely technology-free teaching practices.

Competing educational priorities. Despite the best efforts of techno-promoters, the drive to integrate computers and other technologies into daily learning has also suffered greatly from the fact that it continues to be perceived as a secondary rather than a primary goal for American education. Policy makers approve million-dollar technology grants at the same time as they enthusiastically endorse standardized tests, which seldom encourage or reward computer use in the classroom. Administrators dutifully equip their schools with expensive equipment, while raising graduation rates and improving test scores remain their central concerns. Meanwhile, teachers make educating students in their particular subject matter a first priority, and their teaching practices suggest that they remain unconvinced that technology will aid their mission. Parents send a message that they want their children to be exposed to technology, but other concerns, such as their child's and their child's school's academic performance, usually take precedence. While there is much popular support for making computers and other technologies available to students, more pressing educational priorities and concerns have relegated the curricular integration of computers to a level of secondary importance.

Conclusion

"For it is our experience and belief that technology -- properly managed and applied -- provides the opportunity to restore rigor to children's learning, to rebuild public confidence in American education, and to help ensure that the equality of opportunity in which we pride ourselves as a nation has meaning."10 These words from Lowell Milken, who has led a nonprofit group that endorses school technology use, represent the dream that drives most techno-promoters. Whether they endorse increased technology literacy, improved educational resources, or changes in the very nature of education, Milken and others like him believe that technology should be a vital, even revolutionizing force in K-12 education.

Despite the dramatically increased presence of information technologies, however, the vast majority of students have school experiences remarkably similar to those of students over the previous 50 years. Indeed, the computer seems most like the automobile in the way it is currently treated in the larger high school curriculum. Like driver's education, advanced multimedia classes teach select students how to make use of an expensive machine; like auto shop, tech-based vocational education courses teach select students how to maintain and repair an expensive machine; in academic subjects, most students use computers in class as rarely as they ride a bus on a class field trip. In the end, innovative technology remains relegated to the periphery and has not made any dramatic inroads into the academic mainstream.

Whether or not you agree with our explanations for why high-tech access has generated low effect, we hope our findings will help spark open discussion and far more research about student use of instructional technologies. After all, school districts, in response to sustained promotional rhetoric from various quarters, continue to make staggering financial investments in technology. A dialogue about the apparent contradiction between techno-promoter dreams and student realities is long overdue.

2. For a sample of this curriculum, see Cisco Systems, Cisco Networking Academy Curriculum, available on the company's website at www.cisco.com. Search for "networking academy curriculum."

3. For student/computer ratios, see "Technology Counts 1997," Education Week, 10 November 1997, p. 8; "Technology Counts 1998," Education Week, 1 October 1998, p. 103; and "Technology Counts 1999," Education Week, 23 September 1999, p. 64. For Internet connections, see "Technology Counts 1999," p. 64. The value of both hardware and software varies. The cost of the hardware and software in schools today runs into several billion dollars.

4. Few previous investigations have undertaken such a case study approach. Existing case studies have most often offered celebratory glimpses of technologically enthusiastic teachers who generated increased student interest, more collaborative learning, or improved educational results. See Andrea R. Gooden, Computers in the Classroom (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass and Apple Press, 1996); and Judith Sandholtz, Cathy Ringstaff, and David C. Dwyer, Teaching with Technology: Creating Student-Centered Classrooms (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997).

5. For an overview of Silicon Valley, see David Kaplan, The Silicon Boys (New York: William Morrow, 1999).

6. We determined this figure by combining the handful of students whom teachers identified as "tech gods" and "open door" students with the enrollment totals in tech-based electives and academic courses with serious technology-using teachers.

7. "Technology Counts 1999," p. 7; and Henry J. Becker, Jason Ravitz, and YanTien Wong, Teacher and Teacher-Directed Student Use of Computers and Software (University of California, Irvine, and University of Minnesota, Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations, 1999), pp. 47-48.

8. According to the company's website, as of December 1999, there were 3,076 academies operating in all 50 states and 52 countries. Estimates were that 21,000 students were enrolled, with 10,000 graduates expected by summer 2000. Besides high schools, Cisco also offers its academies in colleges and other nonprofit educational organizations.

9. The majority of teachers at the schools we studied hardly qualify as technological Neanderthals. Approximately 80% of teachers surveyed at the schools own a home computer, and nearly 75% use a computer to prepare lesson materials. A national survey of teachers found that 97% used a computer at home or in school for professional activities ("Technology Counts 1999"). Moreover, as we interviewed teachers and watched them use computers for various administrative tasks and the preparation of lesson materials, it became clear that the "teacher as technophobe" was little more than a myth. If nothing else, teachers possess the same mid-level technological skills as your next-door neighbor.

10. Lowell Milken, "Learning Technology: The Opportunity and Responsibility," available online at web.mff.org/publications/publications.taf?page=290.

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