· The Technology Effectiveness Framework was developed to assist
educators, researchers, and policymakers in evaluating technology and
technology-enhanced programs/curricula against specific reform goals for a
school, district, state, or service agency."
Technology
Effectiveness Framework
Ask
yourself the following questions: What are the learning goals
to which technology applies? How are these learning goals
moving the school toward reform? How will a
technology-enhanced curriculum support instructions that addresses those
learning goals? Does the technology-enhanced
approach help restructure the school to meet its plant for educational
reform? Do the students achieve the
learning goals using the technology-enhanced curriculum? Can the school implement
cost-efficient technologies given its goals and current realities? Can the school extend or
adapt less functional technologies so that they are more functional to
support a global community of learners in sustained learning that is
challenging and authentic? Are there funding
strategies/partnerships that can reduce the cost? How can a school
continuously plan to use technology to reach for more powerful learning
goals and reform?
Keep in
mind the following variables that define learning: The goals and metaphors that
drive learning and instructions (vision of learning). The tasks that ultimately
define the nature and level of achievement as well as the curriculum. The assessment principles
and practice. The instructional model. The characteristics of the
learning context including where learning takes place, the nature of the
learning environment, the nature of the relationship among teachers and
students. The learner roles and the teacher roles.
Maintain
the new definition of Technology Effectiveness to include: Authentic and
multi-disciplinary task. Addresses important issues
and problems in the real world. Performance-based
assessment. Interactive models of
instruction. Heterogeneous groupings, collaboration, students exploration and teacher as facilitator.
What
are the features of technology that promote engaged learning and effective
instruction?
Access: connectivity and
interconnectivity, design for equitable use. Operability:
interoperability, open architecture, transparency. Resource location and
direction: distributed, user control of input, designed for collaborative
project. Capacity for engagement:
provide access to authentic and challenging tasks, interesting and useful
databases or information sets and powerful relationships, take charge of
learning, problem solving and exploring, provide information that is just
in time and just enough, make explicit what is typically implicit,
diagnose learning problems, adapt the system output and learning
opportunities in light of diagnoses, customize learning for specific
interests, levels of ability and learning preferences. Ease of use: effective help,
user friendliness, speed of processing and operations, user control,
training and support. Functionality: prepare
learners for diversity of technology functions used in the workplace and
homes in the 21sst Century, develop skills for programming and authoring,
develop skills related to project design and implementation.
How
can the administration use technology?
Administrator’s new
responsibilities must include supporting the efforts of their staff to adopt
and adapt new technologies in order to achieve new levels of productivity
and achievement. In effect, managers must
provide the vision of change that includes empowering teachers and
learners in new ways and then must learn how to effectively manage these
empowered teachers and learners. Administration - much
broader and more fluid group of players and functions to manage.Administrative uses of
technology allow teachers to spend less time on cumbersome paperwork and
more time on educational content and working with students. "In many ways, the
schools of brick and tradition we have built or inherited are threatened.
Our schools may yet incorporate the use of the Internet deep into their
psyche and embrace global learning opportunities, or they may ignore the
implications of an on-line environment, only to find that they, like the
clergy in a post-Gutenberg press world, are no longer the primary brokers
of learning and education."
How will students and teachers be impacted with the
implementation of new technology?
There is less
"teaching" when learning is happening online. "…teaching in an
on-line setting challenges teachers to shift paradigms and use a
constructivist model of learning that creates roles for other mentors and
experts." Teacher from sage on the
stage to guide on the side: mentor and coach. Teachers collaborate more.
In SRI Report (page 2)
it was found that when the discrete skills approach is discarded and students
are given tasks that are meaningful and challenging to them (e.g., describe
your city through an exhibit for museum visitors), the result will be working
on basic and advanced skills together (e.g., preparing displays will require
attention to both high-level issues of content and design and the basic skills
of writing mechanics). It will also usually involve doing multidisciplinary
work (e.g., describing the city means assembling geographic and historical
information as well as practicing composition skills). Such authentic tasks not
only bread with the convention of holding off on work involving advanced skills
until mastery of basic skills has been demonstrated but also transcend the
traditional disciplinary boundaries that are used to break up the typical
school day into short segments. The greater complexity of such tasks puts
pressure on the convention of small blocks of time for individual activities.
Serious intellectual activity requires more than 50 minutes of concentrated
attention.
Technology
offers the opportunity to change the roles that teachers and students have
traditionally played. With technology dispensing information, teachers are free
to coach and facilitate students learning. With technology monitoring learning,
students can become active learners, working to effectively acquire new skills
as they solve problems. If the goal of creating high-performance learning
organizations is to be realized, the reinvention of American education has to
incorporate these new tools."
Benefits
to Educational Practices:
"New
technologies provide the potential for drawing the policymakers themselves,
information resources, and all other components of the system 'toward a
politics of collaboration."
"Computers
and telecommunication systems are driving changes in how we manage educational
organizations, how we teach, and how our students learn."
"Technology:
Equity is addressed by an increase in state and local funding, school-business
partnerships, development of tech-based community learning centers."
"Technology-rich
classrooms are most successful when advanced technologies are linked with
advanced teaching strategies; such as cooperative learning, thinking skills,
guided inquiry, and thematic teaching."
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