This article is part of a special series of articles based on the new eBook Technology for Learning: A Guidebook for Change. The guidebook provides a process for creating effective, robust technology initiatives based on real-life practitioners' successes. It is based on the complex confluence of variables that impact today's schools. It is designed to help you get started with the process. If you find these articles valuable, you are invited to download the free PDF of the complete Guidebook.

We call today’s learners Millennials, Generation Next, or the Net Generation for good reason. They use communications, media, and digital technologies almost instinctively. They are connected, wired for the next moment’s activities, and view the world through the prism of their own interests. This worldview is different from that of previous generations and the difference affects their learning significantly. Within the context of their interconnected, always-on world, the path to student engagement has changed.

Young people carry personal communications devices and can text friends at will, get answers to questions, and stay in touch. According to the 2010 Horizon Report, K–12 Edition, “beyond the classroom walls, students can take advantage of online resources, explore ideas, and practice skills using games and other programs they may have on systems at home, and interact with their extensive—and constantly available—social networks.”

All too often when students come to school, they must turn off their devices and adjust to a world that exists nowhere but in that building. The Horizon report says, “Within the classroom, learning that incorporates real-life experiences like these is not occurring enough and is too often undervalued when it does take place.”

While no one would advocate allowing students to spend school time on purely social activities, schools can leverage students’ facility with and dependence on electronic devices to build a connection from outside classrooms to inside them and engage students in learning while also building essential technological competencies. Schools focus on student achievement, but only students who are engaged can achieve.
Clearly, providing technology for students’ use is one important aspect of engagement.

Trends
The Horizon Report identifies five key drivers of technology adoptions that are promising.
• Technology is increasingly a means for empowering students, a method for communication and socializing, and a ubiquitous, transparent part of their lives.
• Technology continues to profoundly affect the way we work, collaborate, communicate, and succeed.
• The perceived value of innovation and creativity is increasing.
• There is increasing interest in just-in-time, alternative, and nonformal avenues of education, such as online learning, mentoring, and independent study.
• The way we think of learning environments is changing.

Transforming Schools
In the real world, each person has at least one device to use as his or her own. Thus in schools, the move to anytime, anywhere computing—providing access to technology for learning to all students—makes sense. Research from Project RED in 2010 shows that the lower the student-to-computer ratio, the greater the improvement in students’ learning. Thus programs that provide access have the potential to drive student achievement.

Five objectives outlined in the National Education Technology Plan 2010 are the foundation of today’s educational ecosystem: learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure, and productivity.

The goals are:

1.    Learning: Engage and Empower
All learners will have engaging and empowering learning experiences both in and out of school that prepare them to be active, creative, knowledgeable, and ethical participants in our globally networked society.

2. Assessment: Measure What Matters
Our educational system at all levels will leverage the power of technology to measure what matters and use assessment data for continuous improvement.

3. Teaching: Prepare and Connect
Professional educators will be supported individually and in teams by technology that connects them to data, content, resources expertise, and learning experiences that enable and inspire more-effective teaching for all learners.

4. Infrastructure: Access and Enable
All students and educators will have access to a comprehensive infrastructure for learning when and where they need it.

5. Productivity: Redesign and Transform
Our educational system at all levels will redesign processes and structures to take advantage of the power of technology to improve learning outcomes while making more efficient use of time, money, and staff.

To reach these objectives, schools can implement the methods below. Technology enables and enhances each. In fact, change and technology are intertwined.

• Become learner-centric.
• Modify curriculum and instruction to seamlessly integrate “universal” (formerly known as“21st century”) skills and knowledge.
• Engage the anytime, anywhere, 24/7 model of lifelong learning.
• Adapt and adjust to personalize learning processes.
• Incorporate state-of-the-art technologies in meaningful, engaging, and relevant ways.
• Use the power of technology to increase efficiencies and productivity.
• Provide pervasive, equal opportunities for learning.
• Aggregate and analyze data on a systems level.
• Ensure consistent, coherent professional learning experiences.
• Use research and development to continually seek and define organizational best practices.

Student Learning and Access to Technology
Teachers can use state-of-the art technologies to help students develop the universal skills of research, critical thought, collaboration, problem solving, communication, creativity, innovation, metacognition, and global connection. A learning environment of personalization, rich media, dynamic resources, and immediate connectivity is the catalyst for helping students acquire these crucial skills.

Today’s “classroom” is located wherever there is the potential for instruction and learning to occur. Virtual classes, online sessions/collaborations, Web-based instruction modules, and access to dynamic digital resources are examples of “classrooms” that can happen anytime and anywhere there is connectivity and a student. Four brick-and-mortar walls are not required.

In traditional schools, certain methods work well with technology to engage learners and make content meaningful. Research shows that techniques such as project-based learning, collaboration, hands-on learning, and constructivism make a difference. Clearly, technology enables teachers to institute such learning practices and students to engage in the activities that will motivate them to achieve to their potential.

Technology is a vehicle, an enabler that is only as effective as those using it. The tools must support, not supersede, educational goals related to content and outcomes. Educators have to drive student achievement by using the power of technology, not by having the technology drive them. Professional learning must be aligned with the objectives, assessments, structures, and processes that demarcate the school or district.
If schools are going to improve, we must learn from best practice and institute sweeping, systemic change.

Purpose of the Guidebook
Simply having the tools in teachers’ and students’ hands doesn’t guarantee achieving educational goals. The complete document provides a guide to creating effective, robust technology initiatives based on real-life practitioners’ successes. It is based on the complex confluence of variables that affect today’s schools.

More than ten years of research, practitioners’ observations, and best practices have affirmed the ingredients that are key to K–12 technology projects’ achieving the overarching goals of:
• Equal access to education for all
• Personalization of learning and teaching
• Increased student engagement and achievement
• Development of “universal” skills and competencies for the global workplace
• Just-in-time student assessment, data gathering, feedback, and adjustments
• Communication between home and school

Next: Technology for Learning – Chapter 1, Part 1

Download the complete eBook:

Technology for Learning: A Guidebook for Change