June 2002 — Features

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From Black and White to Color: Technology, Professional Development and Changing Practice

By Mary Burns

In 1998, the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) embarked upon a two-year project, "Applying Technology to Restructuring and Learning" (ATRL), with six schools - one each in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, New Mexico and Oklahoma. The aim of this project was to help teachers create learner-centered, technology-rich learning environments. For the most part, instruction in these schools was traditional and technology use was virtually nonexistent. At one particular school, 21 of 25 teachers either sat at their desks or stood in front of the room going over short-answer worksheets with students during my initial classroom observation. In several other classrooms, computers were like corpses in a morgue: enshrouded in sheets, still and silent. When I asked teachers why they weren't using their computers, they told me they were afraid students would break them.

Though this school was at the lowest level of technology use and learner-centered approaches, we were surprised because we were told that teachers had undergone district technology training - in some cases as much as 30 hours - to receive the hardware in their classroom. Yet, 80 percent were either nonusers or occasional users, using technology about once a month, with only a handful of teachers qualifying as serious users, i.e., using technology once a week (Cuban 2001).

The Technology Transformation

In our first professional development sessions in summer 1998, many teachers were clearly uncomfortable with computers. A few had no idea how to type or move the mouse. More critically, even after the first day of professional development in which teachers had clearly enjoyed making charts with Microsoft Excel, learning to create a museum exhibit with MS PowerPoint and exploring open-ended geography software, most said they would still not use technology with their students.

However, a good deal changed over a two-year period. Our spring 2000 classroom observations painted a very different classroom portrait from what we originally observed. Whereas 47 percent of project classrooms had originally been classified as low in learner-centered approaches, that number had fallen dramatically to 15 percent. Meanwhile, the number of high learner-centered classrooms had increased nearly sixfold to 29 percent (see Chart 1 above). The percentage of classrooms in which student use of technology was a regular practice exceeded 80 percent. By the second year of the ATRL project, between 80 percent and 85 percent of the "computer corpse" classroom teachers reported regularly using word processing, electronic presentation and concept mapping software, as well as the Internet.

The shrouds had been removed from the computers, which now functioned as essential learning tools as students used technology for research, problem solving and creative expression. Moreover, students were active and engaged, collaborating with peers, and clearly comfortable with the operation and learning potential of technology. Teachers were facilitators, mentors and producers (versus directors) of the learning production. They appeared to learn with and from students about technology. These kids clearly felt comfortable and confident using technology, and they made the teachers feel this way too.