From a Department of Education, contended that rather than debating the connections between technology-based instruction and test scores, schools should focus on the most obvious and compelling reason form implementing technology-namely, that students need strong technology skills to succeed in the world of work. This section will provide you with the impact technology has on learning.

You can find the following in this section:

• How Does Technology Enhance Student Achievement?
• Effects of Educational Technology
• Multiple Intelligences and Multi-media
• Connecting Students to a Changing World
• Is Technology Making an Impact?

How Does Technology Enhance Student Achievement?

Basic Skills Instruction

• Computer assisted instruction to drill
• Multi-media software - teach to a variety of learning styles
• Videodiscs - strengthen basic skills
• Video and audio technologies - bring material to life
• Distance learning - at least as effective as traditional methods of instruction
• All forms - develop new skills related to use of technology itself, necessary in workplace

Advanced Skills Instruction

• Interactive educational technologies, including:
• • Computer-generated Cartoon/ Animation
  • Video Editing
  • Internet/ Research
  • Enterprenuership
• Students learn to: organize complex information, recognize patterns, draw with the elements of art and design, communicate findings
• Learn better organizational and problem-solving skills

Assessment of Student Progress

• More comprehensive with multimedia
• Assessments which require student’s active participation
• Electronic portfolios

Student Motivation

• They like it better
• Increased family involvement
• Improved teachers’ skills
• Improved School technology approaches

"We know that successful technology-rich schools generate impressive results for students, including improved achievement; higher test scores; improved student attitude, enthusiasm, and engagement; richer classroom content; and improved student retention and job placement rates.

Success Seen in ED Study:

• Rising scores on state tests
• Improved student attendance
• Increased student comprehension
• Motivation
• Attitude
• Strong study
• Parent and teacher support
• Improved student retention
• Improved placement in jobs.

Impact On Students:

• Explored and represented information dynamically and in many forms.
• Became socially aware and more confident.
• Communicated effectively about complex processes.
• Used technology routinely and appropriately.
• Became independent learners and self-starters.
• Knew their areas of expertise and shared that expertise spontaneously.
• Worked well collaboratively.
• Developed a positive orientation to the future.

HISTORY

• Technology acts as a catalyst for fundamental change in the way students learn.
• Technology revolutionizes the traditional methods.
• Students become re-energized and much more excited about learning - resulting in significantly improved grades - while dropout and absentee rates decrease dramatically.
• For high school students in the program, drop-out rates fell from 30 percent to near zero, while absenteeism was reduced from 8 percent to 4 percent.
• Students can and will embrace technology, if they are given the kind of professional development and support they need.

Effects of Educational Technology

• Educational technology has a significant positive impact on achievement in all subject areas, across all levels of school, and in regular classrooms as well as those for special-needs students.
• Educational technology has positive effects on student attitudes.
• The degree of effectiveness is influenced by the student population, the instructional design, the teacher’s role, how students are grouped, and the levels of student access to technology.
• Technology makes instruction more student-centered, encourages cooperative learning, and stimulated increased teacher/student interaction.
• Positive changes in the learning environment evolve over time and do not occur quickly.

Multiple Intelligences and Multi-media

Howard Gardner, Professor of Harvard University and author of Frames of Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1983) from Multimedia Book, ITTE wrote that:

• Seven or more "multiple intelligences" that are of equal importance in human beings and develop at different times and in different ways in different individuals.
• Multi-media can go along way to addressing these intelligences, much more than traditional teaching methods.
• Below is a list of the intelligences and the technology tools that can be used to teach to them

Verbal/Linguistic intelligence: The ability to think, communicate, and create through words both in speech and in writing.

• Computer software which allows young children to write and illustrate their own stories before their fine motor skills are developed enough to allow them to do so by hand.
• Word processing software stimulates learners to interact more closely with their work.
• Audio and video recording can give students instant feedback on their story-telling skills and can help them develop them further.
• Multimedia software helps students produce multimedia reports.
• Telecommunications programs link students who correspond in writing.

Logical/mathematical intelligences: Memorize and perform mathematical operations, ability to think mathematically, logically, and analytically and to apply that understanding to problem solving.

• Multimedia products that graphically illustrate physics concepts.
  • Providing challenging visual/spatial tasks which develop mathematical and logical thinking .
  • Develop higher-order mathematical thinking by making abstract ideas concrete.

Visual/spatial intelligence: The ability to understand the world through what we see and imagine and to express ideas through the graphic arts.

• "Paint" programs that allow students who are unskilled with paper and brush create art on computer screens.
• Databases of art work.
• Desktop publishing.
• Camcorders to create documentaries Movies.
• Internet links to museums and virtual tours.

Bodily/kinesthetic intelligence: The ability to learn through physical coordination and dexterity and the ability to express oneself through physical activities.

• Educational games which challenge fine motor coordination while developing logical thinking skills and mastery over abstractions.
• Construction of lego robots and program their movement through the computer.
• Electronic fieldtrips - programs that allow students to interact electronically with a scientist who is exploring the depths of the Mediterranean or the inside of a volcano.

Musical intelligence: The ability to understand, appreciate, perform, and create music by voice or instruments or dance.

• Students can hum into a synthesizer and make it sound like any instrument they want.
• Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) makes it possible to make music on an electronic keyboard, which can be made to sound like any instrument and then can be orchestrated electronically.
• Interactive presentations of renowned classical music let students understand music on many different levels; listening to it, seeing the score as it is played, hearing individual instruments played alone, reviewing biographical material about the composer and learning about the music’s historical and cultural backgrounds.

Interpersonal intelligence: The ability to work cooperatively with other people and to apply a variety of skills to communicate with and understand others.

• Clusters of students working together on computers learn more than individual students working alone.
• Electronic networks linking students with their peers within the community and around the world.
• Lumaphones allow students to see a picture of the person with whom they are speaking.

Intrapersonal intelligence: The ability to understand, bring to consciousness, and express one’s own inner world of thoughts and emotions.

• Multimedia gives teachers the tools to turn the classroom into centers of student-directed inquiry.
• Technology offers tools for thinking more deeply, pursuing curiosity, and exploring and expanding intelligence as students build "mental models" with which they can visualize connections between ideas on any topic.
• Individual growth plans, developed jointly by the student, parents and teacher can encourage the development of intrapersonal intelligence. Technology supports such plans with electronic records, videotaped interviews, and multimedia portfolios of student work.

Is technology making an impact on education?

"Technology is making a significant, positive impact on education. Important findings in these studies include:

• Educational technology as demonstrated a significant positive effect on achievement. Positive effects have been found for all major subject areas, in preschool through higher education, and for both regular education and special needs students. Evidence suggests that interactive video is especially effective when the skills and concepts to be learned have a visual component and when the software incorporates a research-based instructional design. Use of online telecommunications for collaboration across classrooms in different geographic locations has also been show to improve academic skills.
• Education technology has been found to have positive effects on student attitudes toward learning and on student self-concept. Students felt more successful in school, were more motivated to learn and have increased self-confidence and self-esteem when using computer-based instruction. This was particularly true when the technology allowed learners to control their own learning.
• The level of effectiveness of educational technology is influenced by the specific student population, the software design, the teacher’s role, how the students are grouped, and the level of student access to the technology.
• Students trained in collaborative learning, had higher self esteem and student achievement.
• Introducing technology into the learning environment has been shown to make learning more student-centered, to encourage cooperative learning, and to stimulate increased teacher/student interaction.
• Positive changes in the learning environment brought about by technology are more evolutionary than revolutionary. These changes occur over a period of years, as teachers become more experienced with technology.
• Courses for which computer-based networks were use increased student-student and student-teacher interaction, increased student-teacher interaction with lower-performing students, and did not decrease the traditional forms of communication used. Many student who seldom participate in face-to-face class discussion become more active participants online.
• Greater student cooperation and sharing and helping behaviors occurred when students used computer-based learning that had students compete against the computer rather than against each other.
• Small group collaboration on computer is especially effective when student have received training in the collaborative process.