Cuban - Chapter 2 Discussion

Cuban reports an interesting pattern in teacher use. Regardless of the technology involved (radio, film, tv), teacher adoption and use remains remarkably consistent. Why do you think that might be?

Although the type of technology involved, Cuban brings about an interesting finding in the studies that he cites, and that is the level of education that technology is used in. For every study discussed, Cuban found that elementary instructors incorporated technology in their classrooms far more often than junior high school or high school teachers, who show decreased use as the grade level of students increases. Although the level of use varies significantly between grade levels, however as pointed out, the overall use of technology is low, and the study findings paint a far different picture than that of the political and popular media culture who would have the public believe that technology is and was an integral classroom component.

There are several reasons that this could be the case, and they are not what many outside of the educational field might tend to believe, which is that teachers are too “stubborn” to learn the new technology or embrace new trends in education, including the use of technology in the classroom. I actually have already outlined and discussed two of these reasons in my discussion of Cuban’s first chapter. In short, I feel that two major reasons for the lack of technology use in the classroom are; bureaucratic processes and paperwork that must be completed and submitted through appropriate channels and pipelines before a piece of technology may be introduced in to the classroom and used to instruct a lesson, and secondly, many times the technology is so complicated to use, set up, troubleshoot, take down and return, that many instructors feel their time is better spent utilizing alternative methods of instruction.

Of course, budget constraints are an obvious barrier to technology use in classrooms that plagues an overwhelming majority of schools today, and spreads to the university level as we experience a tremendous economic crunch. “New” technologies tend to be rather expensive, and without grants to fund multiple technology purchases, teachers often struggle with finding the time and logistics necessary to provide every student exposure to new technology while providing quality instruction to the other 24 students, while everyone is asking for help or instruction during their work. Even with a classroom full of technology for each student, I can attest that as a technology instructor, there are often such learning curves with particular technology or software that instruction becomes a cumbersome task that requires re-writing of the curriculum or course objectives.

As we have been discussing since the beginning of the course, technology use overwhelmingly depends on the user and their techniques for instructing utilizing technology.

Media comparison studies done between televised and non-televised lessons showed no significant difference in outcomes as measured by achievement tests. With what you know about this kind of research, is this a useful finding? Why/why not?

Cuban discusses this study in the opening chapters of the book, as well as the media comparison studies and the no significant difference phenomenon. When one considers the principle, no significant difference has no significant meaning. Basically, the entire principle deals with comparing two entirely different uses of technology (none vs. completely) as well as (difference good vs. difference bad). This literally addresses and gives life to the saying, “comparing apples to oranges,” which we all know is almost impossible, and completely meaningless in the grand scheme of things. No significant difference can mean that things are terrible and all students performed terribly in the technology classroom as well as the non-technology classroom, or that all students performed wonderfully in both classrooms. If there is no significant difference found, what does that mean, and why does it have any impact on anything? It’s like when you’re at the eye doctor and they ask you to compare 200 lenses that have no significant difference, but in their case, they still manage to find a prescription that works….maybe they should be in charge of these studies. Hmmm….

One would think that instead of comparing these apples to oranges, one would seek to compare things that are closely related. So, instead of comparing classrooms with and without technology, try to compare the “level” of technology use in a classroom, or the “method” of technology use to see which is producing a higher level of achievement. We can agree that by providing students with familiar objects and learning messages, students will retain and relate more information to the course objectives, which one could argue that technology can bring. It could be said then, that this study where the use and method of technology use would be more relevant given that technology is going to be utilized in the classroom in many forms, and this is usually a positive experience for students and instructors.

Cuban does an exception job at bringing the numbers and essential facts to the forefront for the reader to learn the concepts of educational technology’s history and significant benchmarks in development.