Technology and the Transformation of Schooling

Special Issu. TeCHNOIOGY AND THE Transformation of Schooling Jan Hawkins Editor's note: Dr. Hawkins made considerable use of media that cannot be presented in a text format. These remarks are an edited version of a transcript of her presentation. her direct quotations are italicized, indented, or enclosed in quotation marks. ow do you design technologies to support discovery -oriented learning inschool? How do you redesign schools, and classrooms within the schools, to absorb technology well in order to do things differently? What kinds of specific problems reL·ted to learning can technology help us to address? We are in a time of considerable historic significance in this country with regard to schools and schooling. "Lots of people are concerned with restructuring or reforming education in particular ways." Simultaneously, "There's a great deal of interest in technologies and technical systems for reforming schools." However, these two "conversations" have been taking place pretty much independently of one another. The people interested in new forms of communities and schools are not necessarily talking very much to the people interested in how technologies are being absorbed. They've been going on separate tracks, and we must try to bring those tracks together. A fundamental question in this regard arises: "What roles can technologies play in helping schools to change in the ways they want to change?" [It is clear that] technology is here to stay, and it's crazy to think about the design of schools without it. We can't separate the educational sector from a society that is using computers and visual technologies in all sorts of ways. And it's crazy to think about compartmentalizing technology in our schools; it needs to be part of the overall plan for curriculum , for how the school is organized , for everything about the school. Technology is not separate from what else is happening in the school; it is an integral part of what is, in fact, happening. Conditions for Learning Educators speak about two widely accepted conditions under which students generally learn well. The first American Annals of the Deaf has to do with active learning, and the second has to do with community. Active Learning Students need to be in circumstances where they actively grapple with information and materials, really work on them, interpret them, discuss them, debate them, make sense of them. They need to work with cognitive and material "stuff," where they compare what they think with others, where they learn what else they can think about this "stuff," where they can learn to use new tools. One way to promote active learning is through "project-based learning" that involves activities aimed at engaging students in thinking. There is considerable interest today in projectbased learning as a way of involving students in complex tasks, individually or in small groups. Project-based learning helps students acquire information in the course of writing an essay or participating in a complex science project. It is an alternative to "individual problems that are shot at them every 45 seconds. And technology can support this kind of learnercentered pedagogy." But there is a difficulty with projectbased curriculum. "It comes into tension very quickly with issues about the structures of individual disciplines and concerns that we may not be covering enough to help our students know the things they need to know." In addition, "project-based curriculum means not just looking at students' products, but also at process. It means enabling the student to have an 'Aha!' experience." An Aha! Experience What kind of experience is an Aha! experience? It's possible to be surprised at thinking something entirely new or at least something you've never thought before. In most schools, in most circumstances, there's not much possibility for that. We should open up the possibility of students having the chance to experience 'Aha!' more often, the feeling that they've seen something in a new way, in their own way—a new insight , more than new information they've merely acquired. Community A second condition under which students generally learn efficiently is in circumstances in which they are well known both cognitively and on a personal /social level by the people from...