Not By Gadgets Alone

Between my first and second year of teaching fifth grade, my school decided to adopt some of the latest technology (at the time) called Accelerated Reader (AR for short).  Innovative in its approach to leveling books according to students’ reading level and using real-time data to provide feedback to both students and teachers, my school thought that AR was “the best thing since sliced bread” to increase students’ reading comprehension scores school-wide. 

The school’s most valuable resource, its teachers, were not properly trained to use the software.  We did not know the extent of its capabilities or that it would provide us with data we could use to immediately adjust course for our neediest students.  While the school was a big proponent of finding the next best thing to supplement the work of its teachers, it did not take the time to train the teachers to use it.  Their mistake is one that Sanjay Dhande points out in this week’s Scientific American Article “Frugal Innovation: India Plans to Distribute Low-Cost Handheld Computers to Students”.  He says, “Education is not gadget-driven but is more in terms of using the technology for effective teaching and learning”.  I think it’s fairly obvious that this is true but when it comes to innovations in the education world, some schools and districts (like mine) seem to cling to the latest trend alone rather than coupling it with proper training for its implementers.

What Dhande identifies is an issue of human capital, specifically in training teachers to use the technology that will make their work more effective.  Uncommon Schools (www.uncommonschools.org) is a highly successful charter school management organization that surmounts this issue.  Their approach to teaching language arts through the highly interactive and technology-driven Reading Mastery program has resulted in student test scores that exceed statewide numbers (http://www.uncommonschools.org/results).  They devote extensive time to train their teachers to use this curriculum and adjust it to meet the needs of each student.  Their results speak for themselves while their approach to human capital and technology is something for us innovators to learn from.