0.2 Newell, p. (march 2010). technology disconnected: teacher

Introduction

Since the advent of the personal computer in 1980, the role of technology in K-12 education has been actively discussed by a number of stakeholders: parents, teachers, students, education bureaucrats at all levels, technologists, business leaders, and community members have seen active roles for computer technology to improve the delivery of education. The quick adoption of the IBM PC as a consumer commodity was hailed as the beginning of the ‘information age’ which grew as computers became easier to afford and more powerful. When the World Wide Web was created by the high-energy physics research community at CERN in 1992, it too was greeted by enthusiasts as a revolutionary technology that would transform the world of education. Unfortunately, the revolution has been occurring slowly and rather differently than had been expected.

In 1982, two years after the creation of the IBM PC, academic planners wanted to include a computer science department in each high school as a way to respond to and prepare students for the “Information Age” that the PC heralded (Sendov&Stanchev, 1986). The same year, the National Science Foundation issued a report on the need to develop “computer literacy” among K-12 students by focusing schools on developing courses and programs to promote computer programming at all levels of schooling (Seidel, Anderson,&Hunter, 1982). Soon after this a landmark report, A Nation At Risk , was published as the product of a bipartisan National Commission on Excellence in Education, appointed by then-Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell. In addition to injecting into discourse about education a number of well-know phrases such as “The rising tide of mediocrity”, A Nation At Risk , citing analyst Paul Copperman, warned that

Each generation of Americans has outstripped its parents in education, in literacy, and in economic attainment. For the first time in the history of our country, the educational skills of one generation will not surpass, will not equal, will not even approach, those of their parents (Sendov&Stanchev, 1986).

A Nation At Risk very effectively linked in the mind of the public the economic attainment of those attending public schools with the education they received. This entire linkage took place amidst a world in which the personal computer and computer technology was seen as becoming integral to being able to prepare students to function in the business world and, in order to prepare people to use this technology, the educational process.