Uh oh, Tharon: From now on technology fees and gorillas will be inextricably intertwined in my mind. I admit that my first response to questions about the cost of technology in education is simplistic: "Our students need it; our schools must buy it." If our students do not learn to communicate effectively with new media, they will be unsuited for the workplace. They will be isolated in a world increasingly interactive online. They will not know how to locate information, to evaluate what they read, to express themselves in various traditional and new discourses, including hypermedia and chat. So WAC must form partnerships with IT (information technology) and CTE (centers for teaching excellence) and any other entity that can be tapped to ensure that our students have access to the technology they need and to teachers who can teach well with it.
At the National Council of English Global Literacy conference in Utrecht, the Netherlands, August 2-5, 2000, teachers of English in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East praised the the Internet for bringing the equivalent of libraries to developing nations, for bringing current news to remote communities, and for giving students of English real correspondents in English and American schools so that their practice with the language involves personal interaction with native speakers and not just tapes and textbook exercises. Even if there was only one computer in a classroom, or in some cases only one computer in the school, and rarely, only one or very few in town, these teachers recognized the importance of working to close the technology gap to benefit their students' learning, not just to serve their economic interests.
I do not mean to underplay the importance of Charlie's questions about the costs nor his concerns that administrations choosing between technology and teachers go for the machines instead of the minds. In his follow-up, Charlie recognizes that "Yes, the costs of tech are huge, and yes, we have to pay those costs." Despite the expense and difficulty of supporting instructional technology, Tharon shows that institutions can "find a way to change the funding equation" in order to compete for the best faculty and students. For open admissions community colleges like mine, our classes might be their only access to learning with and about information technology and new media, so we must advocate for funding.
I do share Christine's concern that quality is often overlooked in teaching-with-technology initiatives. Underfunded institutions need to do what hers did: "What we have co-opted is our state's mania for all things technological." WAC leaders and all our best teachers must be active participants in decisions about which technologies really will serve student learning best. Administrative decisions to purchase commercial packages, for example, might not serve students as well as active participation in an inexpensive e-mail list or a threaded discussion on the Web. For students comfortable with chat rooms and gaming, synchronous communication with MOOs or with the free chat features available through the Web is reasonably inexpensive. WAC can help teachers learn to use these media in meaningful ways, just as WAC has helped teachers, students, and administrations learn the importance of investing in active and interactive learning and communication as a skill as well as a teaching-learning process.
– Donna Reiss
dreiss@wordsworth2.net