For two years, the federal government monitored 9,424 students. They were divided into these categories:
The products were chosen from more than 160 products and the companies are well known to those in education.
Teachers volunteered for the study and were either asked to use the products or taught according to their own curriculum guides and tools. 439 teachers participated in 132 schools and 33 districts. Teachers that were selected to use the specified software used them in reading and math. The teachers in the control group taught as they normally would. [Andrew Trotter, Education Week, edweek.org, April 4, 2007]
In the Report to Congress, the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, the following was stated:
This, of course, will "complicate things for the advocates of technology in education who are lobbying the Bush administration and members of Congress to continue providing millions of dollars annually in support for classroom technology" [Education Week, April 10, 2007] The study did not evaluate each software product separately.
There are now many rumblings about the use of federal tax funding for grants that don't produce results. Several officials, including Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, have commented recently that the public has not seen much of a return on the federal government's investments of millions of dollars in grants to states and school districts for educational technology. [Education Week, April 10, 2007]
We learn again that --
However, technology is important in the future of every student. It is the wave of the future. And, whether students significantly improve with technology or without it, technology will be with us at a fast pace. Thomas Frey, of the DaVinci Institute, has a vision of how technology will change education in the future.
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Copyright article 2007 Barbara Pytel. All Rights Reserved.