• Going Online: The Status of America's Schools [1]
• Investments in Teacher Training [2]
• Teaching Style and Technology Use [3]
• Innovating Professional Development [4]
• Future Steps [5]

But as the Benton Foundation underscored in its 1997 Learning Connection [6] report, access to hardware is only one component of providing quality educational technology to schools. Now that Internet-based instruction is beginning to percolate into classrooms, attention must turn towards preparing America's teachers for using Internet technology successfully. Going Online: The Status of America's Schools
According to the National Center for Education Statistics' most recent report (February 1999), 89 percent of U.S. schools had at least one Internet connection within their campus. This connection is not necessarily accessible to students, though. For example, a modem-connected PC in the librarian's office counted as a connected school. Still, 51 percent of all classrooms contained at least one Internet access point for either the teacher alone or for both teacher and students.

Thanks to the $2.25 billion federal E-Rate program, which provides subsidies for wiring schools to the Internet, online connectivity is growing at a fast clip. By the end of the current school year, NCES estimates that 99 percent of all schools and 88 percent of all classrooms will have at least one connection to the Internet. In 1994, only 35 percent of schools and 3 percent of classrooms were connected.

Still, the NCES data warn of the digital divide between low- and high-poverty schools. In 1998, only 39 percent of schools with high levels of poverty were online, compared to 62 percent of low-poverty schools. One goal of the E-Rate program is to allow those schools lagging behind in connectivity to soon catch up.

Investments in Teacher Training
Despite all the effort that has been placed on wiring America's schools, we are only beginning to see the attention of policy-makers turn towards a greater question: what should we expect of schools, teachers and students once they all gain access to the Internet?

A February 1999 report from the U.S. Department of Education noted that only 20 percent of America's teachers feel comfortable in integrating technology into their lessons. This should come as no surprise since very few teachers have had adequate hands-on professional development to learn technology integration.

Teachers on average receive less than 13 hours of technology training per year, and 40 percent of all teachers have never received any kind of technology training, reports the Milken Exchange on Education Technology's 1998 Progress of Technology in the Schools study. Assuming it is offered at all, this amount of training is far less than what many experts believe is necessary for a teacher to develop tangible technology integration skills.

As the Department of Education noted in its 1994 Prisoners of Time report, "New teaching strategies can require as much as 50 hours of instruction, practice and coaching before teachers become comfortable with them."

That instruction requires funding. While many technology integration experts recommend that anywhere from 25 to 35 percent of a school's overall technology budget be dedicated to professional development, the average school spends no more than three percent. In most cases, it seems professional development is budgeted as an afterthought when compared to the costs of equipping schools with the technology itself.

Teaching Style and Technology Use
Along with the obvious need to equip teachers with broad technology skills, professional development programs must also consider teachers' varying attitudes towards pedagogy and their interaction with their colleagues. Recent work conducted by Professor Hank Becker at the University of California/Irvine may help shed light on some of these issues.

Becker's landmark Teaching, Learning and Computing 1999 study, developed in conjunction with Professor Ronald Anderson of the University of Minnesota, is one of the first national studies to examine the complexities of how teachers use computers and the Internet in their instruction. Several of Becker's findings are worth exploring.

In schools where Internet access is readily available, there is a significant range in how teachers have their students utilize the technology. When the Internet was available directly in the classroom, nearly 50 percent of teachers reported having their students use it to conduct research; in other words, tracking down information and looking up sources of material was fairly common. Yet only 7 percent of teachers had their students use e-mail at least three times during the school year; 6 percent of teachers had their students participate in an online project with other schools; and 4 percent of teachers had their students publish on the Web.

The Becker study also noted educators' modest interest in publishing their own materials on the Web, with only 18 percent of connected teachers publishing online. This would suggest that while teachers are beginning to embrace the Internet as a source for supplying information, the majority of educators have yet to explore its interactive potential.

One potential reason for this lack of interactivity, Becker discovered, may be related to a teacher's general attitudes towards student learning.

Becker analyzed computer use in terms of teachers' personal association with constructivist learning techniques. Put simply, the educational theory of constructivism suggests that students learn best when they are engaged in the learning process, actively constructing their own knowledge through collaboration, critical thinking and inquiry. Constructivism can be contrasted with more traditional teaching approaches in which students are expected to learn through rote memorization and repetition.

According to Becker, the majority of those teachers whose students used the Internet regularly considered themselves constructivist, and heavily focused on student-centered learning. Teachers who are more comfortable with face-to-face connection and collaboration among their students are therefore more likely to translate these interactive teaching styles into a technology-based setting.

On the other hand, the majority of those teachers who had Internet access but did not use it in their teaching considered themselves traditional and not constructivist, preferring their students to learn through more conservative teaching techniques. This result suggests that teachers' attitudes towards constructivist pedagogy strongly affect whether or not they will encourage their students to use the Internet, even if access is ubiquitous.

Becker's research also suggests that those educators who are comfortable in actively engaging with their teaching peers are more likely to engage their students in similar ways. As Becker and Margaret Riel write in one of their reports from the TLC study:

"Teachers' instructional styles mirror their own interaction patterns.... Teachers who learn from their peers, lead their peers and present their ideas and opinions to their peers are more likely to have their students do the same in the classroom. They conduct their classes in a manner similar to the way they conduct their professional activities." (TLC '98, Snapshot #3 [7])

This point may be help to dispel the myth that older teachers are simply less likely to use technology than younger teachers. According to the TLC study, older teachers were more likely to engage their colleagues via e-mail than younger teachers. (Education Week's recent Technology Counts '99 study found a related result in which older teachers were no less likely to use computers than younger teachers.) One possible reason for this is that older teachers have had more opportunities to develop networks of colleagues inside and outside their school, thus giving them more reason to use the Internet to interact with these colleagues.

Younger teachers, on the other hand, may lack such networks, especially if such networking opportunities were not available to them during their pre-service studies. This raises some intriguing issues as to what kinds of networking and interaction experiences must be given to young teachers before coming out of their colleges of education, as well as during their early in-service teaching years. What do we do to get them more involved with their colleagues? What do we do to make them a part of a bigger educational community?

Innovating Professional Development
Hank Becker's ongoing research demonstrates the complexity of the many issues surrounding professional development and technology integration. Even when teachers are provided with ample access to technology it may not be enough to simply train them how to use it. Teaching an educator how to use Netscape or conduct an Internet search only scratches the surface of what he or she needs to know in order to successfully utilize the Internet in the classroom.

In many respects there is a pedagogical digital divide at play: numerous teachers have not been exposed to constructivist teaching styles or community-building professional development opportunities among their peers. In order for teachers to embrace the Internet effectively, they must be given opportunities to experiment and explore, to interact with each other, to learn the benefits of collaboration. Professional development must be an ongoing activity among a community of educators rather than a sporadic attempt to introduce educators to new software tools or the latest Web site.

The education world is not devoid of such attempts to approach professional development as a community-building activity. One pioneering model can be found in the Online Innovation Institute (OII), founded in early 1995 by Internet educators Ferdi Serim and Bonnie Bracey. OII has developed a train-the-trainers model for professional development in which they cultivate local technology leaders to guide reform efforts and mentor others. Participants in OII workshops learn technology integration through a method that might be termed professional development by passion: OII participants are encouraged to explore the teaching subjects that matter most to them and to form community groups based on similar interests.

For example, biology teachers with a passion for genetics and the work of Gregor Mendel may join together to form such a group. They are then introduced to technology using a constructivist approach in which participants create online lesson plans and other relevant content based on the subjects they have chosen. Instead of learning Web browsing or search engine skills as ends in themselves, they learn them in the context of the very subjects they care so much about. Not only does this give them a tangible example of how the Internet can work within their personal teaching styles, it forges a lasting community of learners that can continue to collaborate and help scaffold each others' progress as they gain more technology skills.

Though one of the first innovative professional development models, the OII approach is now joined by countless other programs to explore new ways to foster successful technology integration in the classroom. In August 1999 the U.S. Department of Education awarded its first round of Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology Grants (PTTT). The PTTT program supports innovative approaches to professional development, funding teams of higher education institutions, school districts, state agencies and other educational organizations, with a special emphasis on preparing pre-service teachers. The program funded three levels of grants. Capacity Building Grants, averaging $135,000 and lasting one year, were awarded to 139 consortia to lay the groundwork for technology-focused professional development programs. Implementation Grants, averaging $390,000 and lasting three years, were given to 64 consortia to improve existing technology training programs. Finally, Catalyst Grants, averaging $640,000 over three years, were provided to 22 national, regional, or statewide consortia with the expertise to implement large-scale professional development programs.

The U.S. Department of Education hopes that over two million educators will receive the benefits of these 224 projects over the course of the next ten years.

Future Steps
As more of America's schools enter the digital age, policy-makers, politicians and parents will undoubtedly expect an accounting of education technology and its impact in schools. While much progress has been made to date, it is imperative that more attention be paid to successful professional development strategies and their implementation at the local, state and national levels. The Department of Education's PTTT program is an excellent first step for investing in innovative professional development activities. Pre-service as well as in-service teachers will both need to learn how to apply new technologies and adapt them into their teaching styles. Through a project called Future Learning, the Benton Foundation has begun to convene creative thinkers from the fields of teacher education and education reform in order to explore these issues.

Commercial providers of professional development also have an opportunity to implement cutting-edge training techniques. As companies invest in the education technology market, they will need to demonstrate that their professional development offerings lead to measurable results. Benton's Future Learning is also bringing in corporate innovators already at work in identifying the issues with which teacher colleges will need to contend in the digital age. Through this and other initiatives, professional development will hopefully begin to occupy a more privileged position as policy leaders set education priorities. The discussion over professional development must also occur at the community level: parents, teachers, administrators and local leaders must understand the complexity of education technology integration and the need to craft broad strategies for its success.

When it comes to education technology, no school can afford to ignore professional development. Not every teacher will adapt easily to a technology-rich educational environment. The current lack of national focus on professional development inhibits the advancement of the Internet as a powerful ally in the quest for education reform.