How Do We Know When Technology Helps—or Hurts—the Classroom? Educators
at ISTE Weigh In
https://www.edsurge.com
“We dropped over $10,000 last year on a math product,
but I’m not sure if it’s really helped our students learn.”
Sound familiar?
"Regardless of the test, the
impact of tech has been negative. Google is distracting, ethics are a
mess."
Alan November, Edtech
commentator and former school technology director
Over the past few years, “efficacy” has entered the
edtech lexicon as a word commonly used to reference whether or not edtech is
driving student learning. But as educators and edtech companies look to track
the most effective tools and practices, two big questions are at the fore: How
do we measure technology’s effectiveness? And if there’s an answer to that
question, then is the technology actually improving student learning—or has it
been a waste of time and money?
With nearly 20,000 people in attendance at this week’s
ISTE conference, I chatted with a few teachers, administrators, and the
president of ISTE during the conference to gauge their take on these questions.
How
Should We Measure Technology’s Effectiveness?
Educators frequently agree that it’s challenging to draw
a direct correlation between technology and student success. On the other hand,
many feel that the most useful indications they have aren’t data but instead
their own observations about how students are reacting to the technology.
Shana White, for example, is a 15-year veteran P.E.
teacher and tech coach from Georgia who “loves conducting classroom visits” to
get a firsthand look at students on tech platforms. Similarly, over in
Minnesota, a K-6 STEM teacher named Rachel Pierson relies on feedback from the
students themselves. “If students are engaged, that’s success. But if they’re
turned off, it’s time to try another method,” Pierson told me, while Shelly
Stout, a Texas teacher, feverishly nodded in agreement. Stout adds that she’s
also used SurveyMonkey to gather students’ point of view
on which platforms they do and do not like.
“If students are engaged, that’s
success. But if they’re turned off, it’s time to try another method."
Rachel Pierson, K-6 STEM
Teacher
Administrators were a bit more tempered in their
responses, expressing hesitation about whether live observation is the be-all,
end-all in assessing edtech impact. Blake Gould of DSST Public Schools in
Denver, for example, says he pays attention to whether students are excited
about learning--but that’s not enough. His team at DSST looks at data like
shortform student mastery checks and longform MAPP testing scores, feeding them
through data analysis platform.
Mike Dorsey, Director of Secondary Curriculum,
Instruction, and Assessment for the Houston Independent School District, felt
the same. Even as his team has tried to integrate observations of “technology
integration” into teacher evaluations, he says that it “seems awfully
subjective from time to time.”
How then, can schools integrate quantitative data into
those classroom observations?
Multiple choice tests and high-stakes assessment had few
fans at ISTE. Minnesota’s Pierson conceded she understands the utility of
standardized tests from a state perspective: “If you ask every student [the
same] question, you can compare it across the state, which can be useful.”
Stout, on the other hand, doesn’t like multiple-choice testing at all:
“Standardized tests measure skills of a factory model.”
However, adaptive technologies and tech-enhanced
projects that allow teachers to find gaps in student learning received a
thumbs-up from several of EdSurge’s interviewees, with Pierson referencing one
platform in particular as “the best way to get immediate feedback, both for
myself and my students.”
“It’s important to find a sort of assessment
that’s generic enough to be flexible. Trends change. Products come and
go.”
Wanda Terral, Instructional
Technology Specialist at Lakeland School System in Tennessee
For instance, last school year, Shana White’s P.E.
students took to the Internet to do research on a nutrition unit. Students
posed as dieticians, received fictitious descriptions of patients with dietary
restrictions, and researched restaurants to answer questions such as: “Would
someone who’s gluten-intolerant be able to dine here?” Her data points included
student work and formative assessment—and after the project, two of her most
overweight students ended up losing 30 pounds.
Balancing quantitative and qualitative data, say the
educators, can create a holistic view of edtech’s impact—and can be practical,
given how quickly edtech products change. Instructional Technology Specialist
Wanda Terral (of Lakeland School System in Tennessee) warns that relying on
numerical data alone can be misleading, especially if a school decides to
switch its focus to, say, student portfolios during the following year.
“It’s important to find a sort of assessment that’s
generic enough to be flexible,” Terral says. “Trends change. Products come and
go.”
So…
Is All This Tech Implementation Work Going Somewhere?
Talk to former K-12 edtech director and education
thought leader Alan November, and you’ll find that he’s not too pleased with
how technology has impacted classroom learning.
“Regardless of the test, the impact of tech has been
negative. Google is distracting, ethics are a mess, and the industry has to
come to grips with the fact that this is all a mess,” November says. He adds:
“Students don’t know how to approach messy questions! There’s no inquiry!”
There’s data to back his concerns. A 2015 OECD reportassessing
the impact of tech across 30+ countries reported that those countries investing
the most money in school technology have declined the most in student
performance. “I’m quoting Stanford’s Larry Cuban when I say that technology is
way oversold, and it has under-delivered,” November says.
“You have to remind yourself that it’s
not about the new toys. It’s about teaching kids to think.”
Mike Dorsey, Director of
Secondary Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment for the Houston Independent
School District
Part of the problem, observes ISTE President Brian
Lewis, is that too much emphasis has been placed on the products themselves
rather than on schools designing effective rollouts or implementation
strategies. “We’ve all seen that distributing hardware becomes the impetus [for
all of this change],” Lewis observes, “but that’s not effective.” Instead, he
recommends that schools take three steps--and do that in the following order:
1.
Create a plan
to tie technology to curricular objectives;
2.
Organize
professional development to get teachers prepared, and then
3.
Choose the
best technology for the job.
Many of the educators I encountered at ISTE echoed the
sentiment that the technology itself isn’t as important as how one chooses to
use it or the training that educators receive. And no one made the point
more strongly than Houston ISD administrator Mike Dorsey. “Unfortunately, the
measures of success that public schools look at are too narrow. It’s time that
we look at the whole package, evaluating teachers based on their use of the
tools and resources.”
Dorsey also had a message for all of his fellow
administrators out there, one that he takes to heart.
“You have to remind yourself that it’s not about the new
toys. It’s about teaching kids to think.”
Mary Jo Madda (@MJMadda)
is Senior Editor at EdSurge, as well as a former STEM teacher and
administrator. In 2016, Mary Jo was named to the Forbes "30 Under 30"
list in education.
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