A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Using Technology to Support Education Reform -- September 1993

The Role of Business

An important player in the introduction of technology into school reform is corporate America. In 1989, the U.S. Department of Education estimated that there were over 140,000 business-school partnerships in the United States. Given the importance of technology in the workplace and business' concern with having a technically literate future workforce, many of the corporations have sought to foster the introduction of technology into the schools they support. Not surprisingly, computer equipment manufacturers are in the forefront. Both Apple and IBM are estimated to have provided over $50 million in computers and related equipment to schools during the 1980s (Perry 1990). AT&T's involvement has included the donation of a $250,000 fiberoptics-based wideband switching system to a Los Angeles high school. Scores of other companies have donated equipment or provided support for technology use by making technically qualified company staff available to school students or personnel.

Although donations of equipment and technical support can be vital in a time of tight school budgets, we have argued that technology per se does not make school reform happen. An increasing number of corporations have come to share this view and are becoming involved in longer-term partnerships, attempting to implement one or more pieces of the reform agenda. For example, the Panasonic Foundation has funded school districts for major school-restructuring experiments. These partnerships last from 5 to 10 years, during which Panasonic provides technical assistance and consultants to help the school redesign itself (Rigden 1991). In an ongoing project funded by Panasonic, the Center for Children and Technology at Bank Street College was invited to work with schools to study how laptop computers could be used to support student and teacher learning. In one eighth-grade class that is part of a restructured "school within a school," all students have laptops plus software to enable them to compose, analyze data, and prepare graphs. These tools are being used within a research-based curriculum that calls on students to both analyze data and write about a variety of science topics. An Apple Computer project, the Christopher Columbus Consortium, pairs school districts and universities to explore ways in which technology can be used to improve instruction. IBM gives grants to schools of education for the purpose of developing programs to prepare new teachers for the technology-laden classroom of the future. Another Apple program, the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT), includes not only the infusion of large amounts of technology but also technical support in using technology in ways that support student- centered classrooms.


-###-
[Lessons from Implementation Studies] [Table of Contents] [Models for the Growth of Education Reform]

This page was last updated December 27, 2001 (jca)