Part 2: Lessons from the First Wave of Education Technology
In November 2020 there were more than four million new COVID-19 cases, more than doubling the record number set in October. Hospitalizations also doubled and more than 170,000 people in the United States were testing positive on an average day. The feared “second wave” of coronavirus had seemingly descended upon the nation and COVID-19 models indicated that the already staggering recorded death toll of 276,000 U.S. citizens could rise to 348,000 by the end of the year.
As cases mounted, school districts closed buildings anew. The New York City public school system, the nation’s largest district, closed abruptly with little advance notice to parents. Many other districts that had not yet opened their buildings decided to delay plans to do so. Many districts that had opened their doors — often in blended-learning experiments — were closing them again.
All the while, American educators were struggling to redesign teaching and learning during their sudden and forced experiment with education technology.
But this was not the first episode of widespread technology adoption in American schools. Indeed, the “first wave” of mainstream education technology had ended only a few years before the arrival of COVID-19. Unlike the current period, the first wave was voluntary and transpired largely in a physical space. The current period, in contrast, is involuntary and happening remotely. Yet the continuity in mindset between these two periods sheds light on the struggles that American educators are now facing.
—
From 2012 to 2016, American school districts spent billions of dollars equipping their students and faculty with iPads and Chromebooks. Three million iPads were sold to U.S. schools in 2013 alone. Chromebook sales reached nearly eight million in 2016. (Microsoft shipments jumped from less than one million in 2012 to three million in 2016.) Correspondingly, there was a significant increase in the creation of 1:1 (one device per student) classrooms and, more broadly, a big spike in technology adoption across the nation’s classrooms.
Before 2012, technology was not readily found in American classrooms and often existed on the periphery, both figuratively and literally. Schools often included a dedicated computer lab to house technology; these separate spaces required students and teachers to travel to them in order to utilize available tools, rather than making the tools inherent to the classroom. The few schools that purchased laptop carts, or created 1:1 classrooms, were often districts or schools with robust budgets. In other words, the vast majority of teachers and students mostly had to go to technology. Technology had not come to them.
With the widespread distribution of iPads and Chromebooks into classrooms, technology was no longer on the periphery. Its arrival spurred education technology proponents to envision a growth of innovative teaching and learning practices. In particular, they championed an increase in “student-centered learning,” with its focus on student autonomy in the learning process and the student creation of educational content. School administrators hoped, at the very least, that the significant expense incurred in purchasing these devices would be rewarded with overwhelming acceptance and regular usage by faculty.
However, by and large, a surge of innovation did not occur and device incorporation was uneven. While some extraordinary teachers leveraged these new technologies to create rich, student-centered learning experiences, for the most part, teachers attempted to use iPad and Chromebooks in ways that reinforced teacher-centered instruction. Moreover, many teachers outright rejected their usage. With lackluster incorporation or lack of enthusiasm, and other pressing monetary needs, districts and schools began to cut technology budgets, including 1:1 programs. iPads, in particular, fell out of fashion with secondary schools and largely receded from high school classrooms.
Upon arrival, many teachers pointed to perceived deficiencies in the devices for their lack of enthusiasm. For instance, many teachers complained that students, absent a keyboard, could not take notes effectively on an iPad. Teachers in Chromebook classrooms complained that their device did not include PowerPoint.
There were, of course, many valid complaints regarding technical limitations, but the complaints about device deficiencies were often symptoms of an entrenched, change-averse mindset. If students cannot take notes effectively on an iPad (they can) then it would negatively impact student notetaking during a traditional teacher-led presentation. If PowerPoint is not included on a Chromebook, then teachers might have to lessen their reliance on teacher-created slideshows, a staple of traditional teaching.
Whenever teachers are introduced to new technology, no matter how novel or flexible, they instinctively search for ways to use the technology to reinforce what they've always done. Teachers thus searched for ways to maintain an instructional status quo with iPads and Chromebooks and were either unprepared or unwilling to leverage these devices to empower students to use technology autonomously and creatively.
What many schools failed to envision or embrace at the time was that iPads had the immense potential to redefine the student learning process. iPads brought possibilities for creative, mobile, differentiated, and personalized learning that were heretofore unimaginable in American schools. For one, the touch-screen kinesthetic element of the iPad allowed for a new, interactive exploration of educational content — be it a molecule, a painting, a map — that went well beyond the affordances of a Chromebook at the time, let alone pen-and-paper. More importantly, iPads could be leveraged as powerful creation devices to nurture engaging and diverse ways for students to demonstrate what they had learned. For its part, Apple marketed the iPad as a creation tool and consistently highlighted what students could create using the device.
Yet, by 2014, iPad sales to schools were slumping, and Chromebook sales had skyrocketed. Chromebooks were significantly cheaper and offered tools that looked similar to Word and Powerpoint, old teacher standbys. And a Chromebook looked like a familiar laptop. The iPad was different. The first tablet in the market, it represented a portable, multimedia creation device that enabled students to create video, audio, and multimedia books. Students could leverage creative educational apps — e.g. Explain Everything, Book Creator, Tellagami — to create screencasts, write multimedia stories, and design speaking avatars. These creative apps, and many others, did not initially run on Chromebooks.
Yet, Chromebooks featured Google’s web-based online resource storage, file management, and file distribution system. Teachers became intrigued, in particular, with Google’s new course-management system — Google Classroom — which made it easy for teachers to distribute and collect digital files and centralize student communication and activities. As it added more features, Google Classroom became the most popular Google platform in K-12 schools. Very quickly, creativity and innovation in education technology had lost ground to efficiency and control. (Privately, Google educational representatives expressed some concern that Chromebooks were being employed primarily as “productivity” devices by schools and have worked diligently to enhance and promote its creative potential.) Symbolically, the ascent of Chromebooks and Google Classroom reflected a desire for teacher-control and productivity over student autonomy and creativity.
Most schools were simply not ready to embrace student autonomy and creativity as fundamental goals of teaching practice with technology. Teachers used technology largely to reinforce and streamline their instructional methods and student organization. A principal goal was the oversight and accountability of students online.
Despite the introduction of novel devices with new capabilities, many schools and teachers remained unconvinced that their instructional practices needed to change, so they felt unmotivated to change them. For their part, many school administrators expected that once a device entered a classroom, teachers would understand and leverage its inherent possibilities. On the contrary; teachers sought guidance and support — “How do I teach with it?” When teachers don’t have a vision of how learning can be different when technology is introduced, technology is often a minor upgrade within an existing system. Schools needed to go much further in communicating how student learning can be transformed with technology — and why it’s important to do so.
—
Over the past two decades, laptop computers, tablets, interactive whiteboards, mobile phones, and apps have entered American schools. Collectively, they have held the potential to transform teaching and learning. But only a relatively small (albeit growing) number of educators has been able to leverage these tools in transformative ways. In such innovative classrooms, students are often working autonomously and collaboratively to create their own multimedia books, build prosthetic limbs for needy children, devise apps to help those with dyslexia, share learning with students from around the world, and much more. On the whole, however, classroom instructional practices have remained relatively stagnant. In all, the country has not moved from select “pockets of excellence” to a broader metamorphosis of the student learning process.
So, what happens if schools do not prioritize student autonomy and creativity with technology? What are the consequences when teachers think of technology primarily in terms of teacher-led instruction (“How do I teach with technology?) rather than how might students learn using technology?
Part 3: The consequences of absent leadership.
