Literature Review

                It wouldn’t be unfair to say that modern technology is, in a sense, taking over the world. Nearly everybody nowadays has some way of being “plugged in,” whether it’s through a laptop, cell phone, iPod, or tablet, so it’s no surprise that modern technology is becoming more and more prevalent in the classroom. From classroom sets of iPads to white boards that work together with projectors, the entire spectrum of gadgets is used in education nowadays. So does the application of technology in the classroom actually help students, or is technology a harmful distraction?

                In their essay, The Effectiveness of Educational Technology, Cheung and Slavin define educational technology as “a variety of electronic tools and applications that help deliver learning materials and support learning processes in K-12 classrooms to improve academic learning goals (as opposed to learning to use the technology itself).” The authors make sure to differentiate between teaching kids to use technology, and using technology to teach kids more classic skills, such as math and reading, the latter being educational technology. This distinction is important because while teaching kids to use technology may be an important skill in this modern day and age, this essay discusses the use of technology as a tool to aid in teaching.

                Cheung and Slavin also propose in the same paper that previous works concerning educational technology have been flawed in their experimentation. They cite things such as small sample sizes, short observation durations, lack of control groups, and the cherry picking of evidence as reasons to be wary of previous studies. It’s important to know to be cautious when looking at a variety studies and results, especially knowing that it not only happens, but that it has been recognized and documented by other authors. “Cherry picking” evidence is a serious problem to be aware of. By only choosing the findings that the researcher wants, said researcher can effectively make their results convey any message that they like.

                When it comes to teaching children using technology there are two major points to be considered: how the technology works, and how the teacher applies said technology. “The Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework represents a new way of thinking about preparing teachers to teach and learn with technology.” (Wetzel, and Marshall). Wetzel and Marshall discuss strategies for preparing teachers to instruct using technology in their paper. They discuss many previous strategies for teaching, how to integrate technology into teaching, and their own strategy (TPACK) and its results and effectiveness.

Their strategy involves incorporating technology into a combination of many different teaching styles. Marshall’s teaching stressed giving the children a task to do on a program that the children had little experience in and letting them figure out for themselves the finer workings of the software or device. This strategy allowed the kids to have fun learning how to use the technology while aiming toward a more classical learning goal. For example, she had them make videos and podcasts about the Renaissance using the program Garage Band, a program they had very little experience in. Her techniques proved effective and entertaining for the students.

Technology in the classroom can also prove to be an enormous distraction for the instructor. In his paper on educational technology in the secondary classroom, Gardner cites his time as a student was made more difficult because of the presence of a Smart Board (a specialized white board programed to work with a projector) in the classroom. On top of learning how to put together lesson plans and teach, Gardner was required to learn how to use a new resource that he had no experience with, and then incorporate it into his lesson plans. The added stress of learning the technology’s ins and outs proved frustrating and time consuming for him.

Gardner used Google Documents to compile graphs based on surveys. Through his surveys he found that all of the students that he surveyed at the rural high school he was at had used a computer in the previous week, eighty-five percent had used a SmartBoard, and eighty percent had used some kind of projector or television. He also surveyed teachers and administrators on how long they had been teaching, and thirty-one percent had been teaching for twenty- four years or more, showing that it was not just younger teachers using new technology in the classroom. In fact, only fifteen percent had been teaching for less than five years, an interesting finding considering that technology is often associated with a younger generation.

In their essay, Predictors of Teacher-Directed Student Use of Technology in Elementary Classrooms, Miranda and Russel point out the two different views on how technology works in the classroom. Some suggest that the needs of the students and teachers drive the introduction of technology in the classroom, while others contend that the advancement of technology fuels the desire of students and teachers to have technology in the classroom. Because different schools and districts follow these different beliefs, the success of instructional technology can be affected. A school that only asks what each teacher needs in terms of technology will develop and use their resources differently than a school or district that puts out the same technology to every classroom in leaps or waves.

Miranda and Russel also point out that there are no uniform answers that are always successful. There are a number of factors that go into deciding whether or not any kind of technology will be effective in the classroom, including organizational issues on a larger scale, as well as more precise and personal issues in the classroom itself.  They also cite things such as resources, leadership, vision, training, and planning as important factors toward the technology’s success.

Most available literature on the subject of educational technology does not confront how effective the technology itself is, but analyzes different techniques for utilizing technology. It is assumed in most literature that the way that technology is being taught in most cases currently is not as effective as it possibly could be.