Technologies in Schools: Stimulating a Dialogue

Abstract

louanne smolin and kimberly lawlessThere is little dispute that technology has transformed our everyday lives. We shop online, download news in our iPods, communicate via text and video, take digital photos, and conduct all manner of personal and professional business via the Internet. While these technologies have afforded new opportunities to improve efficiency, exponentially increase access to information, and expand the notion of global citizenship, they have also caused many researchers and educators to rethink what it means to be literate in this post-typographic world (Leu & Kinzer, 2000). It is not enough for citizens in the 21st century to know how to decode and comprehend information as they have in the past. They are also now responsible for efficiently and effectively finding and evaluating information as well as quickly adapting personal learning goals in response to the varied structures and complexities of these technology-enhanced environments (Alexander & Fox, 2004;Dieberger, 1997;Grabinger, Dunlap, & Duffield, 1997). As argued by Dede (this volume), these differences are nontrivial and demand critical reform of our current educational approaches at all levels.Still, the infusion of technology in schools has not yet transformed everyday lives and learning in our nations' schools. Its progression has been slow and labored. Early pressure for integrating technology in schools came from contexts external to the school-most notably from the business sector (Scott, Cole, & Engel, 1992). The American business community became distressed about what was widely perceived as the inadequate preparation of their future workforce when "by the 1980s it began to appear that highly educated workers were needed to run high-technology machinery and that such workers were in increasing demand" (Sherman, 1985). Schools responded to this pressure, but