| One thing I pointed out at the time was that most technological progress in schools represented isolated pockets of progress and useful models, rather than broad systemic change, or critical mass.
I also argued that most teachers experience change as something that happens TO then not THROUGH them.
Many of the points I made in the article and broadcast were confirmed in John Merrow’s PBS broadcast Promises Promises. They were reiterated in the 1997 presidential report on technology in the nation’s schools. Among other things the report said:
“As schools continue to acquire more and better hardware and software, the benefit to students will increasingly depend upon the skills with which some 3 million teachers are able to use the new tools…Yet teachers currently receive little technical , pedagogic or administrative support for these fundamental changes , and few colleges of education prepare their graduates to use information technologies in their teaching . As a result most teachers are left largely on their own as they struggle to integrate technology into the curricula”.
[Report to the President on the Use of Technology to Strengthen K-12 Education in The United States. March 1997]
What is tragic and fiscally inexcusable is the degree to which this statement and others throughout the report mirror and repeat the very ideas addressed by Paul Saettler in his 1968 [yes 68] study of technology in teaching during the 19 teens, 20s, 30, 40s and 50s.
Citing research from the 1920s, Saettler reported that while teacher training with the new audiovisual technology had commenced, “ much training in service has been concerned with the technique of handling visual equipment rather than the technique of instruction”.
It is a complaint I continue to hear from teachers today whether addressing distant technology or SmartBoards.
In A History of Instructional Technology, Saettler draws upon comprehensive research that documents poor administration of technology, poor communication about programs and technology, a failure to learn from and apply the research results and the absolute and essential role the teacher, not the technology plays.
In a sentence that today would surely be greeted by DUH, F Dean McClusky stated in 1923 that “ the movement for visual education will progress in direct ratio to the number of teachers who are trained in the technique of visual instruction”.
Yet- replace the phrase visual education with computer education, or media literacy or distance education and you will see just how much it applies to the present and sadly enough the future.
If we wish to develop media literacy in a single site, at the district level, or for a whole state, we must do more than write mandates or standards. We need to look vary carefully at the culture and climate of the schools we expect to embrace the change and plan .implementation strategies that will be successful.
As Seymour Sararson wrote in, Re-visiting the Culture of School & The Problem of Change: “You can have the most creative, compellingly valid productive idea in the world , but whether it can be embedded and sustained in a socially complex setting will be primarily a function of how you conceptualize the implementation change-process”. [ 1994]
While the 1997 presidential report gives us a look at the national picture, I do not have to venture outside of my own county and our board of education to see these problems. During the 1990s for example a technology budget was passed without a component for teacher training. As one board member put it, “the teachers will figure it out for themselves”. That’s a quote that always evokes howls of laughter from teachers in my workshops and lectures. They’ve got enough on their plate without trying to find the spare time to figure out how to operate and utilize a piece of equipment that they probably never asked for in the first place.
So who ordered it? Well that’s typically someone in an administrative position, not a classroom position, not a curriculum position. While these individuals may indeed have the power and the purse they do not necessarily understand technology and the circumstances under which it succeeds or fails.
According to a report in Education Week in May 2006, only 9 states require administrators to complete a technology test or coursework for licensure. While they may rely on their library media personnel or technical assistance [if they are lucky enough to have it] on site or at the district level, this typically represents an absence of vision, leadership and teamwork. In fact when it comes to technology our approach to staffing is a formula for failure, a triangulation of administrators, library media personnel and the actual classroom teachers expected to effectively use each successive wave of technology that enters the schools. That is further compounded by a one-size-fits all approach to staff development irrespective of their career stage or comfort level.
Common sense would dictate that not all training is of equal relevance to all teachers and that both cognitively and emotionally there may be profound personal/professional factors that would support or hinder the success of staff development initiatives.
In my 1985 article for example I describe three attitudes to media/technology among school personnel: ADVOCATES ADVERSARIES and ACCOMPLICES. The first 2 categories are relatively self-explanatory. The third category requires a brief explanation. Media/technology accomplices use the hardware and software but often in ineffective ways with little learning taking place.
Some years later Renee Hobbs documented this category quite clearly when she described teachers grading while showing a video, or not connecting the program to course content or using it for a reward or not allowing time for discussion and feedback after the screening. What I did in 1985 was to distinguish and differentiate between types of teachers in the schools as a way of suggesting we acknowledge these differences and approach them in ways that focus on their nature and needs.
Contemporary research continues to validate the way individual differences characterize individuals and their interactions with media and technology. In spring 2007 for example, a report from The Pew Internet and American Life project identified distinct categories of attitudes about technology in our society. It identified percentages of people in various groups:
*31% Technology Elites 20% Moderate Users, 49% who “have little or no usage of Internet and cell phones.
They also documented divisions within the groups The elite split between
a. omnivores who embrace and fully express themselves through tools like blogs compared to
b. the connectors who simply see such tools as conduits for communication,
c. the productivity enhancers who see it related to job skills and d. the lackluster veterans who use but with little enthusiasm.
They also identified what they called the “mobile centrics” compared to the “ connected but hassled” group. Such differentiations are to be expected. Recognizing such differences would go a long way to helping plan faculty development initiatives based on the nature of the faculty we want to embrace change rather than simply on the nature of the change itself. Mandates in and of them selves do not provide motivation. Motivation is internal and differs among various personnel.
The work of Everett Rogers with Diffusion of Innovation, makes this even more clear. Rogers looked at how change occurs within organizations and classified different levels of response to change. Only 2.5% of people are classified as Innovators. 13.5% are the influential Early Adopters. 34% are the crucial middle group, the Early Majority. But it is hugely important to understand that some 50% of individuals are not predisposed to change. These are the late majority at 34% and the Laggards at 16%.
Now it doesn’t matter if you are promoting a shift from phonics to whole language or the compulsory introduction or rubrics in all courses or laptops for all faculty. Whatever change we try to bring to an institution- including by the way the change called MEDIA LITERACY, we have to go about it incrementally and individually if that change is to be embraced and sustained.
Those who insist on mandating staff development or technological innovation with scant regard for the nature and needs of the individuals they expect to embrace the change, guarantee the failure of the very change they wish to bring about. One of the first suggestions I make to any administrator regarding technology is to JUST SAY NO! STOP SPENDING. Right NOW! B 4 we buy anything new let’s find out what we already have, who’s using it, who they are using it with and how effectively they are using it.
A TECHNOLOGY INVENTORY is a powerful tool providing useful data that can improve both administrative efficiency and educational effectiveness . If we want to keep spending money on equipment it is fiscally responsible to identify high users, moderate users, low-level users and non users. None of which tells us anything about the quality of use but it at least starts to examine what we know about what we are already doing with technology in our schools B 4 we add more. Haste does indeed make waste! The same goes for software. Does it work? How do the kids respond? What do they like, what do they dislike? What can a teacher do to improve the program and the way students respond to it?
Filling out simple index cards or entering opinions and evaluations into a data base can be an excellent form of record keeping to helps teachers understand how their colleagues and students reacted to individual programs. For the most part we do not keep these records so other than professional reviews or promotional blurbs on the packaging there’s no data at the local level to tell teachers that a video or some other type of software is for example developmentally appropriate or standards -based. None of this is to say that there aren’t terrific schools with technology teams, a mission statement, a vision plan and some creative teaching and learning taking place.
In such schools it is not uncommon to find the use of a Needs Assessment instrument before equipment is purchased, or a social constructivist pedagogy, authentic or portfolio assessment, and an approach to education based on what we know about how students learn. In short such exemplars attempt to match tools, tasks and learners with supportive and nurturing environments. They are the exception rather than the rule.
The more things change, the more they remain the same. A report presented at the American Educational Research Association’s annual meeting in 2006 questioned the effectiveness of technology in schools and indicated that using computers to teach reading in elementary grades actually had negative results. Two major studies a few years earlier raised similar concerns.
 In August 2002, The Digital Disconnect Report was released by The Pew Internet and American Life Project. Among other things the document saw a growing gap between how teachers used technology and what students wanted to do with technology: “Students repeatedly told us that the quality of their Internet-based assignments was poor and uninspiring . They want to be assigned more- and more engaging –Internet activities that are relevant to their lives . Indeed many students assert that this would significantly improve their attitude toward school and learning”.
These concerns in many ways echoed the Bell South report, The Big Difference. In 2000 Bell South had launched the Power to Teach program to encourage teachers to creatively incorporate technology into their classes. While some progress was evident, researchers documented what they called a “lightning bolt…vast differences between student and teacher perceptions of instructional technology practices”. While they said “it’s probably no surprise that students are outpacing teachers in their familiarity and use of technology”, they called the perception gap “a startling red flag”. Why startling? Because, the researcher wrote: “students may look for learning content outside of the classroom and may no longer see the school as their only, or even primary source for building knowledge”.
Published in 2007, Candice Kelsey’s, Generation Myspace described part of this technological landscape beyond the supervision of both teachers and parents: “Imagine in a world dominated by adult supervision, that every teen was a member of a private club. In the clubhouse they can do as they please . They can socialize with their friends, discuss their innermost feelings , gossip, rant, flirt, curse , trade pictures, share music , and express themselves openly because there are no parents anywhere . What’s even better in this parents-free zone every teen can pretend to be anything or anyone they want. Whatever they like, they can re-create their own persona- real or imagined- and everyone will believe they are as cool as they appear to be”.
As I wrote in 1985, “students exist beyond the school in an electronic communication culture. The means by which information is imparted in the traditional classroom is often either ineffective, inefficient or both”.
Today, beyond their school and community, they have access to technology that taps in to the adolescent need for experimentation, role-play and identity formation. Of course my 1985 comment was hardly a new realization. The great Canadian media guru Marshal McLuhan had told us in the 1960s that, “our education system is actually a rear view mirror, a dying and outdated system founded on literate values and fragmented and classified data, totally unsuited to the needs of the first television generation”.
The phrase television generation has now been updated. Some call them digital natives, the Kaiser Family Foundation calls them Generation M and as we have just seen, Candice Kelsey call them Generation MySpace.
Those of us who support media literacy are well aware that an enormous amount of learning by children and teen takes place away from school, away from the curriculum of the classroom and inside what I call the curriculum of the living room or bedroom where contemporary kids increasingly have access to the wide, wire-world through the Internet, movies, videogames, music and other sources. None of which is to say they understand it. Hand -eye coordination is not synonymous with the ability to recognize bias, identify stereotypes, draw inferences about the purpose and perspective of an author, producer, or director, or make effective presentations that do not distract by an over-use of bells and whistles.
 So OK today’s young people can ACCESS information. That’s the easy part. Beyond accessing it however can they do the work of media literacy? Can they ANALYZE it, EVALUATE it, put those media texts in CONTEXT, or are they caught in what I sometimes call a struggle between the visible and the vulnerable.
Are they to use John Naisbitt’s phrase, “drowning in information and starved for knowledge”?
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