industrial revolution. The same technology that is transforming work offers new learning systems to solve the problems it creates. In the wake of the HL revolution, the technology called“ school” and the social institution commonly thought of as“ education” will be as obsolete and ultimately extinct as the dinosaurs.( p. 50)
However, despite such rhetoric and other, more conservative, optimism expressed in the popular press and government documents, there are also many skeptics and a few outspoken critics of media and technology in education. A recent cover story of The Atlantic Monthly entitled“ The Computer Delusion” illustrates a critical view of technology in education, beginning with this opening sentence:
There is no good evidence that most uses of computers significantly improve teaching and learning, yet school districts are cutting programs – music, art, physical education – that enrich children’ s lives to make room for this dubious nostrum, and the Clinton Administration has embraced the goal of“ computers in every classroom” with credulous and costly enthusiasm.( Oppenheimer, 1997, p. 45).
The controversy in the popular press is echoed in the educational research literature. Research examining the effectiveness of media and technology in schools can be traced back almost eighty years( Cuban, 1986), and yet many questions about the value and impact of these approaches remain unanswered. Indeed, the seemingly contradictory findings often reported in the educational research literature fan the flames of the ongoing controversy about media and technology in education. Consider the following two quotes:
Bringing the electronic media into the schools could capitalize on the strong motivation qualities that these media have for children. Many children who are turned off by school are not turned off by one or another of the electronic media; quite the opposite. An educational system that capitalized on this motivation would have a chance of much greater success...... Each medium has its own profile of cognitive advantages and disadvantages, and each medium can be used to enhance the impact of others.( Greenfield, 1984, p. 178)
All in all, media’ s symbolic forms and computers’ afforded activities often have skill-cultivating effects. However, to claim that these effects are specific to any one medium or media attribute is difficult...... There is growing consensus that past media comparison, media attribute, and motivation studies indicate that media do not influence whether someone learns from instruction. Learning seems to result from factors such as task differences, instructional methods, and learner traits( including attitudes) but not the choice of media for instruction.( Clark, 1992, p. 812)
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