In the ’90s, “technology in the classroom” meant sitting in front of an orange screen, driving a pixelated covered wagon down the Oregon Trail, or solving algebra problems with Carmen Sandiego, math detective. Now, toddlers slide a finger across a TV screen or a book cover, expecting apps to launch.
Technology weaves itself into every part of our lives. How can it not be a part of a classroom curriculum?
Yet there seems to be no consensus about how much technology is too much or what the best practices are for using it. As The New York Times reported in September, tech is no panacea: Arizona’s Kyrene School District invested $33 million in laptops, interactive whiteboards, and adaptive educational software in 2005, only to see its test scores stagnate—even as they rose in other parts of the state.
John Burroughs School is another technology-rich environment. All of the classrooms have wireless network access and ceiling-mounted projection systems. Students record podcasts, build wikis, and design websites. Seventh-graders recently submitted an English report by way of an iMovie book trailer, and the AP French class might post comments about a François Truffaut movie in French on a blog hosted on the school’s intranet.
Despite the pervasive technology, however, the balance at Burroughs continues to tilt toward traditional teaching methods. “We’re not a one-to-one laptop school,” explains director of academics Jill Donovan. “The focus is still in the classroom and on discussion, the Socratic method, active learning…versus staring at a screen. The core of what we are doing in all of the humanities classes here is teaching critical thinking—these deeper things you can’t Google.”
“We’re not about rote memorization,” adds Martha McMahon, Burroughs’ technology coordinator. “We want our kids to know the facts or to know where to find the facts, but our general goal is to make sure we’re producing good thinkers.”
Shining Rivers Waldorf School, a private grade school in Brentwood, shares the same goal. Here, teachers remain with the same students through multiple grades; the highest grade they’ll teach is eighth grade, which is about the time that the school suggests introducing kids to technology.
“It’s about reaching the child in a different way,” explains director Ann Weidemann, adding that Shining Rivers values direct experience, preferably with a physical component. “Our third grade starts every morning doing times tables while jumping rope… I like to call it the glue that sticks the lessons together.” Subjects like math are taught through storytelling or hands-on activities, such as splitting up a set of 30 marbles into five sets of six—a kid can’t jump rope or divide marbles while glued to a screen.
But won’t kids fall behind their peers when it comes to technology?
“These things are changing so quickly that it’s a challenge that we just don’t see as really detrimental,” says Weidemann. “The intuitive nature of technology makes it easy for children to pick it up when they need to.”
As counterintuitive as these methods may sound in today’s digital age, an October article in The New York Times, titled “A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute,” reported that the head of eBay and employees of Google, Apple, Yahoo!, and Hewlett-Packard send their children to Waldorf School of the Peninsula in Los Altos, Calif.
“Every family that comes to Shining Rivers makes decisions about technology in their home on their own,” Weidemann says. “We do ask that children have no screen time during the week, and families adhere to that to different levels.”
At New City School, an independent grade school in the Central West End, head of school Thomas Hoerr also makes suggestions to parents about technology in the home: No TV in the bedroom, and computers should be visible to parents. But New City doesn’t eschew technology. “I think a difficulty with the dialogue about technology is, people tend to wind up in either the ‘pro’ or the ‘anti’ camp,” says Hoerr. “The reality is, neither one of those is right.
“When I taught years ago, kids would go to the library and get a book on whales. The smart, talented kids would get two books. If the kid’s parents were teachers, he’d get two books and a National Geographic. Today, this kid types in ‘whales’ and is overwhelmed. So it’s thinking about, ‘What is it I want to know? What’s relevant?’”
Though students begin using netbooks in third grade at New City School, there are no computers in its library. “We want students to have a tactile sense of the book,” Hoerr explains as he opens the door to eavesdrop on a librarian reading to a group of kids. “We want to increase the likelihood that they will find a book and get lost by themselves or want to talk about it with peers.”
Ultimately, Hoerr says, New City School aims for “joyful learning.” That might involve a computer—but often, it doesn’t. Every February, for instance, fourth-graders prep for something called “The Living Museum,” in which they dress up as historical characters, assemble in the library, and then take on the roles of their characters. “They interact, they tell you who they are, and then when they finish, they ask you, ‘Do you have any questions?’” he says. “I would argue that probably it was always good for kids…but now, it’s even better, because they’re convening with this techno-flash world.”
