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Technologies available in classrooms today range from simple tool-based applications (such as word processors) to online repositories of scientific data and primary historical documents, to handheld computers, closed-circuit television channels, and two-way distance learning classrooms. Even the cell phones that many students now carry with them can be used to learn (Prensky, 2005).

Bruce and Levin (1997), for example, look at ways in which the tools, techniques, and applications of technology can support integrated, inquiry-based learning to "engage children in exploring, thinking, reading, writing, researching, inventing, problem-solving, and experiencing the world." They developed the idea of technology as media with four different focuses: media for inquiry (such as data modeling, spreadsheets, access to online databases, access to online observatories and microscopes, and hypertext), media for communication (such as word processing, e-mail, synchronous conferencing, graphics software, simulations, and tutorials), media for construction (such as robotics, computer-aided design, and control systems), and media for expression (such as interactive video, animation software, and music composition). In a review of existing evidence of technology's impact on learning, Marshall (2002) found strong evidence that educational technology "complements what a great teacher does naturally," extending their reach and broadening their students' experience beyond the classroom. "With ever-expanding content and technology choices, from video to multimedia to the Internet," Marshall suggests "there's an unprecedented need to understand the recipe for success, which involves the learner, the teacher, the content, and the environment in which technology is used."

In examining large-scale state and national studies, as well as some innovative smaller studies on newer educational technologies, Schacter (1999) found that students with access to any of a number of technologies (such as computer assisted instruction, integrated learning systems, simulations and software that teaches higher order thinking, collaborative networked technologies, or design and programming technologies) show positive gains in achievement on researcher constructed tests, standardized tests, and national tests.

A classroom that has successfully integrated technology into the curriculum would be one where you would not really notice it because it would be so second nature. The teacher would not have to think up ways to use whatever tools were available, but would seamlessly use them to enhance the learning of whatever content was being covered. Technology [would be] used to assist in acquiring content knowledge, and the acquisition of technology skills [would be] secondary. Contrast this depiction with what the International Society for Technology in Education’s (ISTE) National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS-S; ISTE, 2002) say about technology integration: Curriculum integration with the use of technology involves the infusion of technology as a tool to enhance the learning in a content area or multidisciplinary setting….Effective integration of technology is achieved when students are able to select technology tools to help them obtain information in a timely manner, analyze and synthesize the information, and present it professionally. The technology should become an integral part of how the classroom functions—as accessible as all other classroom tools.

his urging to shift the focus from the learning tools to what is being learned and how that learning happens still needs to be heeded—almost 20 years later.

Integration is defined not by the amount or type of technology used, but by how and why it is used.

I use a variety of technologies that help to engage, enhance, and inspire children to want to pursue their ideas. I have found that once you are inspired to learn, you learn how to learn through your ideas about what you understand.

Developing Relationships/Making Connections. I have used Kidblog prior to kindergarten even starting! I set up an account each year and email directions on “How To” blog with a rationale about why, etc. My new students and their families begin in the summer before they begin kindergarten! They post photographs of things they are doing. Then others who are new also to kindergarten begin to post comments on their posts and introduce themselves! A lot of blogging has happened BEFORE we even begin kindergarten and BEFORE we meet face to face! One year one of my kindergarten students wrote, “Only 2 more sleeps until kindergarten.” This is so great! It reflects a beginning of an understanding about how blogging is used to communicate and meet new friends in a safe way.

Kidblog hasn’t changed how I approach the writing process, but rather it has helped me to showcase and enhance the writing that my students are doing. Through blogging, my students experience the same things they experience when writing on paper. They use inventive print, leave spaces in between their words, use periods to end their thoughts, and of course they check their sentences for meaning. This is HUGE. Young children are beginning to re- read and reflect about what they understand and THEN they are able to make changes/edit.

One final comment, a funny one.  On Monday, in my "Twenty-First Century Literacies" class where laptops are required for a whole range of experiments and inclass collaborative work, I caught one of my students with his laptop open and with a book propped secretly inside it, reading away in his book when he should have been paying attention.   So maybe that's the next class, "Should Professors Allow Students to Use BOOKS in the Classroom Devised for Computer Learning?"   I'm being facetious but that's the point.  A book is a technology too.   How and when we use any technology and for what purpose are the questions we all need to ask.

Do you see the difference?   "Computer learning" doesn't exist.   In 2011, it exists less than it did a decade ago and, in a few years, that phrase won't exist at all.   Students learn.  Computers are tools for all kinds of things, from checking the Facebook page, to making notetaking easier, to being fact checking or calculating devices that can take a class to a more sophisticated level to interactive social networking devices that can either distract a class or allow for new forms of group collaboration.   There are many other uses as well.   The point is that most profs have (a) simply "adapted" (as a colleague told me recently) to computers without understanding the intellectual and pedagogical changes they can enable; or (b) resigned themselves to their present, gleefully or resentflly; or (c) made them into a pedagogical tool; or (d) all of the above.    

The following is a fairly universal list of education design principles for tomorrow’s schools, though it would be tailored to the needs of particular communities: (1) personalized; (2) safe and secure; (3) inquiry-based; (4) student-directed; (5) collaborative; (6) interdisciplinary; (7) rigorous and hands-on; (8) embodying a culture of excellence and high expectations; (9) environmentally conscious; (10) offering strong connections to the local community and business; (11) globally networked; and (12) setting the stage for lifelong learning.

we still think that yesterday’s classroom equals tomorrow’s school.

These initiatives would not necessarily get rid of classrooms, but instead redesign and refurbish them to operate as “learning studios” and “learning suites” alongside common areas reclaimed from hallways that vastly expand available space and allow better teaching and learning.