If technology is to be effectively used in todays classroom to engage and educate, change begins with instructional practice and acceptance

of new roles for students and teachers.

4
Using technology to engage and educate youth
Monica Martinez, Susan Schilling
in february 2009, Thomas Friedman wrote about two college students who embarked on a twenty-one-hundred-mile climate solutions road tour from Chennai to New Delhi to train Indian students to start their own climate action programs.1 The students traveled in modied plug-in cars retrotted with a solar roof to extend the travel miles on a six-hour charge and made stops in more than thirty cities and villages. They lmed more than twenty videos of Indias top home-grown energy solutions along the way and uploaded those to YouTube so that others could learn about climate reduction ideas. The YouTube videos generated interest, and more young people hopped on the caravan so they could highlight their innovations. Friedman used this inspiring story to show that todays youth are not going to wait for business or government to solve problems. Instead they will use technology to take collective action to nd and disseminate new solutions. Tapscotts Grown Up Digital and Wikinomics offer further insight into todays students.2 Tapscott surveyed eleven thousand

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young people and found that they yearn for and demand participation, collaboration, and an opportunity to contribute to solving local and global problems. For this generation, the Internet is not a tool simply to nd information but a tool to share information, collaborate on projects of shared interest, organize, and socialize. They do this through social network sites such as Facebook and MySpace; live chats; blog posts; participation in multipleplayer online games and virtual worlds; remixing content such as songs, art clips, stories, photos, and videos and uploading them to YouTube, Flickr, or other specic interest sites; and instant polling or rating systems on songs, movies, and games. These tools helped President Barack Obama win the 2008 election. Before this, youth in South Korea, Spain, and the Philippines tipped elections using their cell phones and personal digital assistants to get out the vote. Given that information age technologies are now as natural to the Net generation as breathing, it is time to provide learning experiences that maximize their use in school. We argue that integrating technology into learning is central to creating the meaningful learning opportunities that will engage and motivate youth. Half of the students who drop out cite boredom and lack of interest in their classes as primary reasons for leaving school.3 Youth are far more likely to be engaged in learning when the tools they use in school are the same as those they see used in workplaces and that they themselves use to access information and communicate in their everyday lives. Technology must be accompanied by a new paradigm of teaching and learning, however, to achieve its full potential to engage and educate youth.

How to use technology in education

Information age technology has been part of our world for decades. As early as the mid-1960s, technology was coming to
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classrooms as computer-assisted instruction. By the mid-1990s, interactive drill-and-practice software was a major school application, especially in elementary schools. Research initiated in the 1980s to track these uses of technology for a decade found that students who had access to computers in the classroom were generally more engaged and more positively disposed to learning. Research also found that computers did not have positive effects in every area. The average effect of computer-based instruction in thirty-four studies on attitude toward subject matter, for example, was near zero.4 Other studies conclude that tutorial uses of technologies (such as drill-and-practice programs, tutoring systems, and satellite transmission of lectures) may be useful, but are essentially doing the same things that schools have traditionally done for more students, albeit perhaps more systematically and efficiently.5 Reform that starts with or stays limited to technological enhancement of current practice has proven to be of small incremental value but little transformative effect. To accomplish true transformation, the change needed in classrooms has to start with how we teach and what role we expect students to assume. Prensky has determined that the role of technology in our classrooms is to support the new teaching paradigm.6 By starting with changed teaching practices, we start to understand how technology can be effectively deployed to educate and engage students. The old teaching paradigm of standing and lecturing students existed for centuries because students themselves had limited access to informationa textbook, an encyclopedia, a local library. Of necessity, they needed to sit and listen to someone who had access to codied knowledge. Todays world is different. Students have access to vast amounts of information through the Internet. They have robust search engines and other tools that help them nd, analyze, and understand what they have discovered. When students have access to these powerful tools to ultimately learn how to teach themselves, the role of the teacher must change to one of expert guide and navigator of knowledge acquisition, application, and extension. By starting with changed teaching practices,
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we learn how technology can be effectively deployed to educate and engage students.

Putting students at the center

Student-centered learning is a process by which students become active participants in their own learning with goals of deep understanding of concepts. The teacher takes on a facilitative role, and students become more responsible and accountable for their learning. Students also demonstrate greater autonomy with self-led and self-formed groups in student-centered learning.7 Project-based learning (PBL), one of several student-centered approaches to instruction, is gaining traction as an alternative to lectures. Research on the PBL approach indicates a positive relationship with student learning. Boaler conducted a three-year case study of two British schools. One school took a traditional textbook approach to math instruction, while the other used an openended, project-based approach in which students worked in heterogeneous groups. He found that students learning math using a PBL approach had signicantly higher test scores on achievement tests than the students receiving traditional instruction, although both groups were below the national average. The study noted that the PBL students test scores could have been boosted by their exibility in approach, combined with the students belief about the adaptable nature of mathematics and the need for reasoned thought.8 Thomas examined the current PBL literature in a review of exploratory studies, case studies, and descriptive research studies, most of which came from three university research centers. He found that PBL is equivalent to or slightly better than other traditional methods of instruction in generating gains in students academic achievement and development of both low- and high-level cognitive skills. The analysis also found that PBL is an effective method for teaching planning, communication, problem solving, and decision making.9
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Technology as the tool

A key component to support students with a PBL learning experience that is structured around challenging tasks is to provide them with access to technology. One-to-one, or ubiquitous, computing has been implemented across various school settings with the goals of increasing student achievement, implementing new instruction and learning techniques to offer more student-centered approaches, increasing equity of access to technology for all students, and teaching students twenty-first-century skills.10 One study concludes, Giving students experiences in selecting appropriate technology tools and in applying technologies . . . to their work supports the performance of complex, authentic tasks and provides experiences that prepare students for the world outside of school.11 Another study came to the same conclusion. Means and Olson focused on the manner in which technology fosters educational reform, with a specic look at innovative instruction.12 They found that technology supported improved instruction in these ways: Added to students perceptions that their work is authentic and important Increased the complexity of schoolwork that students can successfully negotiate Dramatically raised student motivation and self-esteem Made obvious the need for longer blocks of instructional time Fostered greater collaboration, with students helping peers and sometimes even their teachers Enabled teachers to embrace a coaching and advisory role Other research has explored the use of one-to-one computing in situations where both teachers and students have personal computers. In an analysis of a districtwide implementation of one-toone computing where twenty-ve thousand teachers and students had laptops, teachers reported that the laptop initiative created efciency in the design and creation of materials, lesson plans, and
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communication with students and parents. They also noted a stronger professional community among teachers where collaborative planning, development of instructional materials, and efforts to improve instruction increased.13 Software programs for e-learning, a category of programs variously identied as course management systems, learning management systems, or virtual learning environments, can be leveraged through the use of technology and the Internet to enrich teaching and learning, manage the classroom, and develop students skills. Many of the mechanics of classroom operation, such as assignments, scheduling, and quizzes, can be set up through resourcebased courses. A learning management system can also allow for shared documents, team work spaces, organized resource les, and authentic assessment of a wide range of skills including academic competencies.

Challenges
The challenges of using technology to transform teaching and learning are largely ones of implementation and resources. Teachers must be trained and comfortable with technology and understand how to plan, manage, and assess PBL instructional activities. Students with little academic support outside school also may need supplemental supports to successfully complete independent projects.14 An additional challenge is unequal access to technology, despite unprecedented advances in computing and communications over the past forty years.15 New data from the National Center for Educational Statistics show that 97 percent of teachers had one or more computers in the classroom every day and that Internet access was available for 93 percent of classroom computers. The average ratio of students to computers in the classroom every day was 5.3 to 1. The report also found that technology access and use was lower in high-poverty schools, reinforcing appropriate concern about a persistent digital divide fueled by ethnic, geographical, societal, and economic factors.16
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Nonprot groups and other organizations are working to close the digital gap in their communities. Initiatives include community technology centers and community technology access points, from well-established comprehensive community technology centers offering a comprehensive range of services to libraries, community centers, after-school programs, and project learning rooms with computer stations. These efforts are supported by recent authorization of the Federal Communications Commission to develop a national broadband plan to ensure every American has access to broadband capability. Schools also are reallocating textbook dollars and grant funds, eliciting in-kind donations of hardware and software from local businesses, using leasing options for computers, and pursuing other strategies for creating a one-to-one computer-to-student ratio to support their instructional priorities.

Pointing the way: Theory in action

Technology and student-centered pedagogy are emerging in many places around the country to support both the education and the engagement of students, mainly through one-to-one computing initiatives. Some school development organizations, such as the New Tech Network (NTN), and charter management organizations, such as High Tech High, Big Picture Learning, and Envision Schools, are using innovative, student-centered teaching practices, supported by a solid technology foundation that allows exible, adaptable use of a variety of technologies, all to support engaged learning. Such organizations serve students who are ethnically diverse and from low socioeconomic status. For instance, in 2009, approximately 50 percent of the forty schools in the New Tech Network were in urban areas and served low-income students. More than 70 percent of the schools in the network serve ethnically diverse, primarily Latino, students. Envisions serves more than 60 percent minority students in urban areas, and part of High Tech Highs vision is to serve diverse students. Three common elements exist in these models that, when implemented in concert, cause the transformation so desperately
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needed in high schools across the country: a changed role for students fostered by student-centered learning pedagogies, a fully supported learning management system with a one-to-one student-to-computer ratio, and changed teaching practices to include team teaching and interdisciplinary teaching teams. The pioneering high school models where these elements are in place are articulations of the changed paradigm. Once the classroom is correctly designed to accommodate student-centered learning and a team of teachers guides and directs the learning though authentic projects that require application of information and skills, both education and engagement happen. Once these school cultures are established, there is no going back.

New tech: A scalable example of transformed teaching and learning

New Tech Network is one reform model that is gaining recognition among educators, businesses, and states. New Tech serves students in diverse locations with diverse demographics. As of fall 2009, it had been implemented in forty high schools in nine states across urban, rural, and suburban communities, with most of the schools serving primarily low-income students and populations with a high proportion of students of color. In all, more than ten thousand students attend schools that are part of the network of schools implementing NTN reforms. Perhaps most unusual in NTNs approach, in addition to the use of one-to-one computing and project-based learning, is the focus on the creation of a set of custom-designed Web-based tools that directly support changed teaching and learning practices. These tools represent a fully integrated suite of tools optimized for the creation and management of a collaborative teaching and learning environment with templates that can be customized for content. The tools are accessible through a Web-based portal that is standardized and independent of a particular operating system. As a portal, this solution is designed to support the needs of a
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collaborative learning environment. Whereas other technology tools may support traditional methods, this environment is founded on project- and problem-based learning instructional practices. They represent: A place where teams of students share their work on projects A place where teachers develop, share, and modify projects A place where authentic assessment tools capture real-world skills in a formal and consistent manner A shared library of resources continuously evolving through teacher use and development A hub through which best practice is shared across a quickly expanding network of schools In spring 2009, NTN conducted research into the impact of its model on student achievement across thirty-three network schools. This study examined 20072008 state test results and other indicators, such as graduation rates and attendance, where data were available and found modest but signicant impacts on reading and mathematics test scores relative to comparison schools.17

Conclusion
G. M. Kleiman states, While modern technology has great potential to enhance teaching and learning, turning that potential into reality on a large scale is a complex, multifaceted task.18 New Tech and other new high school models that incorporate studentcentered learning with a highly supported technology-rich classroom environment and changed practices for teachers are pointing the way forward. Perhaps these school networks can lead to more fundamental change in teaching and learning with the strategic and integrated use of technology blended with an engaging instructional approach. After decades of trying to answer the question of how to use technology effectively in the classroom, perhaps technology integrated into this new teaching and learning paranew directions for youth development DOI: 10.1002/yd

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digm shows not only promise but, more important, a concrete blueprint for success in engaging and educating all students. Notes
1. Friedman, T. (2009, February 14). Yes they could. So they did. New York Times. Retrieved November 1, 2009, from http://www.nytimes. com/2009/02/15/opinion/15friedman.html. 2. Tapscott, D. (2008). Grown up digital. New York: McGraw-Hill; Tapscott, D. (2006). Wikinomics. New York: McGraw-Hill. 3. Gerald, C. (2006, June). Identifying potential dropouts: Key lessons for building an early warning data system (white paper). Achieve and Jobs for the Future. See also the article by Bridgeland in this volume. 4. Kulik, J. A. (1994). Meta-analytic studies of ndings on computer-based instruction. In E. L. Baker & H. F. ONeil Jr. (Eds.), Technology assessment in education and training. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. 5. SRI International. (2000). Technology and education reform. Menlo Park, CA: Author. Retrieved August 24, 2010, http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/ EdReformStudies/EdTech/index.html. 6. Prensky, M. (2008, NovemberDecember). The role of technology in teaching and the classroom. Educational Technology. Retrieved August 24, 2010, from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky-The_Role_of_ Technology-ET-11-12-08.pdf. 7. Lea, S. J., Stephenson, D., & Troy, J. D. (2003). Higher education students attitudes to student centered learning: Beyond educational bulimia. Studies in Higher Education, 28(3), 321334. 8. Boaler, J. (1998). Open and closed mathematics: Students experiences and understandings. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 29(1), 4162. 9. Thomas, J. W. (2000). A review of research in problem-based learning. San Rafael, CA: Autodesk Foundation. 10. Penuel, W. R. (2005). Research: What it says about 1 to 1 learning. Cupertino, CA: Apple Computer; Abell Foundation. (2008). One-to-one computing in public schools: Lessons from Laptops for All programs. Author. Retrieved June 11, 2009, from http://www.abell.org/pubsitems/ed_onetoone_908.pdf. 11. SRI International. (2000). 12. Means, B., & Olson, K. (1995, September). Technologys role in education reform, ndings from a national study of innovating schools. Menlo Park, CA: SRI. 13. Zucker A. A., & McGhee, R. (2005). A study of one-to-one computer use in mathematics and science instruction at the secondary level in Henrico County Public Schools. Washington, DC: SRI International. 14. Thomas, J. W. (2000). A review of research in problem-based learning. San Rafael, CA: Autodesk Foundation. 15. National Educational Technology Plan. (2010). Transforming American education: Learning powered by technology. Washington, DC: Ofce of Educational Technology, U.S. Department of Education.
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16. National Center for Educational Statistics. (2009). Teachers use of educational technology in U.S. public schools. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. 17. Lee, P. (2009). Student achievement results in the new tech network: A compilation of existing school data. Unpublished manuscript, New Tech Network, Napa, CA. 18. Kleiman, G. M. (2000). Myths and realities about technology in K-12 schools. LNT Perspectives, 14. Retrieved September 21, 2005, from http:// www.edc.org/newsroom/articles/myths_and_realities_about_technology_ k-12_schools.

monica martinez is president of New Tech Network. susan schilling is an independent consultant who led the New Technology Foundation, now New Tech Network, for nine years.

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