Technology Forces Teachers Outside The Book

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June 01, 1998 (12:29 PM EDT)

By Mo Krochmal,

NEW YORK -- Digital technology is changing how knowledge is created and communicated like no other medium ever has, said a leading educator Saturday.

Technology is more than a tool for educators to use; it is a new framework for education, said Roger McClintock McClintock, co-director at New York's Institute for Learning Technologies at Teachers College of Columbia University.

"Technology in education is not a screwdriver -- it's more like electricity or central heating," he said in a keynote here in New York at the Manhattan High Schools Technology Conference at New York University.

McClintock told the group of teachers representing Manhattan's 38 high schools technology is forcing educators to rethink an educational process that has been in development for hundreds of years.

Education is a product of a system that was created in the 16th century and developed over the centuries, said McClintock. "You can go into a school system in Johannesburg, Basel, or New Delhi and understand what is being done," he said.

The way knowledge is shared in a classroom reflects the technology -- namely print technology -- that has been used up to now, he said.

"We break up subjects because that's what fits into a book," he said. "We have classrooms with 15 to 35 students and one teacher because that makes sense as a focus for recitation."

With the demands of a classroom full of students and an ever-increasing workload, teachers should consider the possibilities the technology can provide, McClintock said.

"All sorts of curriculum possibilities open up when you start meditating on digital technologies," he said. "The challenge before us is creating day-by-day, week-by-week, year-by-year ways to activate these alternatives and asking why things have been done in the past and how might things be done differently."

However, teachers must be continuously creative under conditions of continuous change, McClintock said. At some point, he added, there will have to be an accounting for the billions of dollars being poured into equipping schools with advanced technology.

"In the next five or 10 years, there will an amazing amount of money mobilized," he said. "People are going to ask what has happened, and there will be a difficult accountability process."