Technology integration in schools

Abstract

It is commonly believed that learning is enhanced through the use of technology and that students need to develop technology skills in order to be productive members of society. For this reason, providing a high quality education includes the expectation that teachers use educational technologies effectively in their classroom and that they teach their students to use technology. In this chapter we have organized our review of technology integration research around a framework based on three areas of focus: (1) increasing access to educational technologies, (2) increasing the use of technology for instructional purposes, and (3) improving the effectiveness of technology use to facilitate learning. Within these categories, we describe findings related to one-to-one computing initiatives, integration of open educational resources, various methods of teacher professional development, ethical issues affecting technology use, emerging approaches to technology integration that emphasize pedagogical perspectives and personalized instruction, technology-enabled assessment practices, and the need for systemic educational change to fully realize technology's potential for improving learning. From our analysis of the scholarship in this area, we conclude that the primary benefit of current technology use in education has been to increase information access and communication. Students primarily use technology to gather, organize, analyze, and report information, but this has not dramatically improved student performance on standardized tests. These findings lead to the conclusion that future efforts should focus on providing students and teachers with increased access to technology along with training in pedagogically sound best practices, including more advanced approaches for technology-based assessment and adaptive instruction.