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The growth of online communication, media, and gaming is driving dramatic changes in how we learn. Responding to these shifts, new forms of technology-enhanced learning and instruction, such as personalized learning, open online courses, educational games and apps, and tools for learning analytics, are garnering significant public attention and private investment. These technologies hold tremendous promise for improving learning experiences and outcomes. Despite this promise, however, evidence is mounting that these new technologies tend to be used and accessed in unequal ways, and they may even exacerbate inequity.

In February and May 2017, leading researchers, educators, and technologists convened for in-depth working sessions to share challenges and solutions for how learning technologies can provide the greatest benefits for our most vulnerable learners.The aim was to develop guiding principles and a shared agenda for how educational platforms and funders can best serve diverse and disadvantaged learners. These principles include inclusive design processes, ways of addressing barriers, and meth- ods to effectively measure impact.

This report synthesizes the research, learnings, and recommendations that participants offered at the two workshops. After framing the nature of the challenge, the report then describes promising strategies and examples, and it ends with recommendations for next steps in research and coalition building.

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From Good Intentions to Real Outcomes: Equity by Design in Learning Technologies - DML Hub

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The growth of online communication, media, and gaming is driving dramatic changes in how we learn. Responding to these shifts, new forms of technology-enhanced learning and instruction, such as personalized learning, open online courses, educational games and apps, and tools for learning analytics, are garnering significant public attention and private

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Do the computer-based exams that are increasingly prevalent in K-12 education measure skills and knowledge as accurately as traditional paper-based tests?

With news that millions of students who took PARCC exams by computer tended to score worse than those who took the same exams with paper and pencil, it's a technical question that is again getting heavy scrutiny.

Earlier this month, officials from the multistate Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers acknowledged to Education Week that there were discrepancies in scores across different formats of its exams.

Illinois, Rhode Island, and the Baltimore County, Md., schools are among the states and districts that have found such a pattern, with the advantage for paper-based test-takers appearing to be most pronounced in English/language arts and upper-grades math.

In Rhode Island, for example, officials found that 42.5 percent of the students who took the PARCC English/language arts exam on paper scored proficient, compared with 34 percent of those who took the test by computer. A spokesman for the state education department said the variability in scores there appears to be due in large measure to varying degrees of "student and system readiness for technology."

Researchers and psychometricians have been wrestling with the dilemma of comparing paper- and computer-based test results for more than 20 years, said Derek Briggs, a professor of research and evaluation methodology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He serves on the technical-advisory committees for both PARCC and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, the two main groups that have created tests aligned with the Common Core State Standards.

Briggs said computer- and paper-based versions of an exam shouldn't necessarily be expected to measure the same abilities, or have comparable results. Part of the motivation for pouring hundreds of millions of federal dollars into the new consortia exams, after all, was to use technology to create better tests that elicit, for instance, more evidence of students' critical-thinking skills and ability to model and solve problems.

But the reality is that in some states and districts, the technology infrastructure doesn't exist to support administration of the computer-based exams. All children don't have the same access to technology at home and in school, nor do their teachers use technology in the classroom in the same ways, even when it is present.

And some students are much more familiar than others with basic elements of a typical computer-based exam's digital interface-how to scroll through a window, use word-processing features such as copying and pasting, and how to drag and drop items on a screen, for example. A mounting body of evidence suggests that some students tend to do worse on computer-based versions of an exam, for reasons that have more to do with their familiarity with technology than with their academic knowledge and skills.

To give a deeper look at the issues behind this "mode effect," Education Week examined seven key research studies on the topic:

1. "Online Assessment and the Comparability of Score Meaning"

Educational Testing Service, 2003

"It should be a matter of indifference to the examinee whether the test is administered on computer or paper, or whether it is taken on a large-screen display or a small one," wrote Randy Elliot Bennett more than a decade ago. Bennet was one of the leaders in the field of psychometrics and mode-comparability, and this overview explores a range of mode-comparability issues. "Although the promise of online assessment is substantial, states are encountering significant issues, including ones of measurement and fairness," the paper reads. "Particularly distressing is the potential for such variation [in testing conditions] to unfairly affect population groups, such as females, minority-group members, or students attending schools in poor neighborhoods."

2. "Maintaining Score Equivalence as Tests Transition Online: Issues, Approaches, and Trends"

Pearson, 2008

The authors of this paper, originally presented at the National Council of Measurement in Education, highlight the "mixed findings" from studies about the impact of test-administration mode on student reading and mathematic scores, saying they "promote ambiguity" and make life difficult for policymakers. The answer, they say, is quasi-experimental designs carried out by testing entities such as state departments of education. The preferred technique, the paper suggests, is a matched-samples comparability analysis, through which researchers are able to create comparable groups of test-takers in each mode of administration, then compare how they performed.

3. "Does It Matter If I Take My Mathematics Test on Computer? A Second Empirical Study of Mode Effects in NAEP"

Journal of Technology, Learning, and Assessment, 2008

"Results showed that the computer-based mathematics test was significantly harder statistically than the paper-based test," according to Randy Elliot Bennett, who is also the lead author of this paper, which looked at results from a 2001 National Center for Education Statistics investigation of new technology for administering the National Assessment of Educational Progress in math. "In addition, computer facility predicted online mathematics test performance after controlling for performance on a paper-based mathematics test, suggesting that degree of familiarity with computers may matter when taking a computer-based mathematics test in NAEP."

4. "The Nation's Report Card: Writing 2011"

National Center for Education Statistics, 2014

As the NCES moved to administer its first computer-based NAEP writing assessment, it also tracked the impact in this study of how 24,100 8th graders and 28,1000 12th graders performed. Doug Levin, then the director of the State Educational Technology Directors Association, summed up the findings in a 2014 blog post: "Students who had greater access to technology in and out of school, and had teachers that required its use for school assignments, used technology in more powerful ways" and "scored significantly higher on the NAEP writing achievement test," Levin wrote. "Such clear and direct relationships are few and far between in education-and these findings raise many implications for states and districts as they shift to online assessment."

5. "Performance of 4th-Grade Students in the 2012 NAEP Computer-Based Writing Pilot"

This working paper found that high-performing 4th graders who took NAEP's computer-based pilot writing exam in 2012 scored "substantively higher on the computer" than similar students who had taken the exam on paper in 2010. Low- and middle-performing students did not similarly benefit from taking the exam on computers, raising concerns that computer-based exams might widen achievement gaps. Likely key to the score differences, said Sheida White, one of the report's authors, in an interview, is the role of "facilitative" computer skills such as keyboarding ability and word-processing skills. "When a student [who has those skills] is generating an essay, their cognitive resources are focused on their word choices, their sentence structure, and how to make their sentences more interesting and varied-not trying to find letters on a keyboard, or the technical aspects of the computer," White said.

6. "Mathematics Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment-Series III (MCA-III) Mode Comparability Study Report"

Minnesota Department of Education and Pearson, 2012

This state-level study of mode effects on exams administered in spring and summer of 2011 used the matched-samples comparability-analysis technique described in the Pearson study. "Although the results indicated the presence of relatively small overall mode effects that favored the paper administration, these effects were observed for a minority of items common to the paper and online forms," the study found.

7. "Comparability of Student Scores Obtained From Paper and Computer Administrations"

Oregon Department of Education, 2007

This state-level mode-comparability study looked across math, reading, and science tests administered by both computer and paper. "Results suggest that average scores and standard errors are quite similar across [computer] and paper tests. Although the difference were still quite small (less than a half a scale score point), 3rd graders tended to show slightly larger differences," the paper reads. "This study provides evidence that scores are comparable across [Oregon's computer] and paper delivery modes."

Published in Print: February 23, 2016, as Seven Studies Comparing Paper and Computer Test Scores

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Comparing Paper and Computer Testing: 7 Key Research Studies

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Do the computer-based exams that are increasingly prevalent in K-12 education measure skills and knowledge as accurately as traditional paper-based tests? With news that millions of students who took PARCC exams by computer tended to score worse than those who took the same exams with paper and pencil, it's a technical question that is again getting heavy scrutiny.

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More than 7.1 million students are currently taking at least one online course. Despite the apparent popularity, however, educators have given the trend low marks.

But a new study from MIT suggests naysayers should think otherwise. Massive open online courses are not only effective, researchers have discovered, they are as effective as what's being traditionally taught in the classroom - regardless of how prepared or in the know students are.

Researchers' findings have been published in the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, and co-author David Pritchard, MIT's Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics, knows they will be controversial.

"A number of well-known educators have said there isn't going to be much learning in MOOCs," said Pritchard to MIT News, "or if there is, it will be for people who are already well-educated."

The group, comprised of researchers from MIT, Harvard and Tsinghua University, completed a before-and-after test on students taking " Mechanics ReView," an introductory mechanics course offered on massive open online learning platform edX. Researchers then conducted a similar test on students taking the class residentially, discovering:

The amount learned is somewhat greater than in the traditional lecture-based course.

And that goes for even the least prepared, as reflected by their scores on pretests. Pritchard said improvement levels increased across the board, explaining that, even if a student with a lower initial score ends the online course with what would be equivalent to a failing grade, "that person would nevertheless have made substantial gains in understanding."

Translation: Online learning outcomes are equal, or even better than, those produced in a traditional classroom.

If professors want to improve outcomes in either setting, researchers suggest an approach called "interactive engagement pedagogy," where students regularly interact in small groups and participate in peer-to-peer learning.

Pritchard told MIT News the study is "just the start of a process of mining the data that can be gained from these online classes." How long students spend watching lectures, or how often they pause or repeat sections, can all be recorded and used to discover what method of online learning works best.

MIT recently released its final report on what the school's future will look like, education-wise. At the time, President L. Rafael Reif said the Institute will be engaging in bold experiments - exactly what this new research suggests. Faculty might even begin blending traditional, residential learning with online education to keep tuition costs low.

So, for the remaining naysayers out there, consider this statement by Reif:

As with any disruptive technology, MOOCs have been viewed with enthusiasm in many quarters and skepticism in some. However, the underlying facts are inarguable: that the rising cost of education, combined with the transformative potential of online teaching and learning technologies, presents a long-term challenge that no university can afford to ignore.

It's been determined: Online learning works.
Image via Shutterstock

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MIT Study: How Do Online Courses Compare to Traditional Learning?

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More than 7.1 million students are currently taking at least one online course. Despite the apparent popularity, however, educators have given the trend low marks. But a new study from MIT suggests naysayers should think otherwise.

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Online vs. Traditional College

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"This is such a dynamic class," Ms. Furman says of her 21st-century classroom. "I really hope it works."

Hope and enthusiasm are soaring here. But not test scores.

Since 2005, scores in reading and math have stagnated in Kyrene, even as statewide scores have risen.

To be sure, test scores can go up or down for many reasons. But to many education experts, something is not adding up - here and across the country. In a nutshell: schools are spending billions on technology, even as they cut budgets and lay off teachers, with little proof that this approach is improving basic learning.

This conundrum calls into question one of the most significant contemporary educational movements. Advocates for giving schools a major technological upgrade - which include powerful educators, Silicon Valley titans and White House appointees - say digital devices let students learn at their own pace, teach skills needed in a modern economy and hold the attention of a generation weaned on gadgets.

Some backers of this idea say standardized tests, the most widely used measure of student performance, don't capture the breadth of skills that computers can help develop. But they also concede that for now there is no better way to gauge the educational value of expensive technology investments.

"The data is pretty weak. It's very difficult when we're pressed to come up with convincing data," said Tom Vander Ark, the former executive director for education at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and an investor in educational technology companies. When it comes to showing results, he said, "We better put up or shut up."

And yet, in virtually the same breath, he said change of a historic magnitude is inevitably coming to classrooms this decade: "It's one of the three or four biggest things happening in the world today."

Critics counter that, absent clear proof, schools are being motivated by a blind faith in technology and an overemphasis on digital skills - like using PowerPoint and multimedia tools - at the expense of math, reading and writing fundamentals. They say the technology advocates have it backward when they press to upgrade first and ask questions later.

The spending push comes as schools face tough financial choices. In Kyrene, for example, even as technology spending has grown, the rest of the district's budget has shrunk, leading to bigger classes and fewer periods of music, art and physical education.

At the same time, the district's use of technology has earned it widespread praise. It is upheld as a model of success by the National School Boards Association, which in 2008 organized a visit by 100 educators from 17 states who came to see how the district was innovating.

And the district has banked its future and reputation on technology. Kyrene, which serves 18,000 kindergarten to eighth-grade students, mostly from the cities of Tempe, Phoenix and Chandler, uses its computer-centric classes as a way to attract children from around the region, shoring up enrollment as its local student population shrinks. More students mean more state dollars.

The issue of tech investment will reach a critical point in November. The district plans to go back to local voters for approval of $46.3 million more in taxes over seven years to allow it to keep investing in technology. That represents around 3.5 percent of the district's annual spending, five times what it spends on textbooks.

The district leaders' position is that technology has inspired students and helped them grow, but that there is no good way to quantify those achievements - putting them in a tough spot with voters deciding whether to bankroll this approach again.

"My gut is telling me we've had growth," said David K. Schauer, the superintendent here. "But we have to have some measure that is valid, and we don't have that."

It gives him pause.

"We've jumped on bandwagons for different eras without knowing fully what we're doing. This might just be the new bandwagon," he said. "I hope not."
A Dearth of Proof
The pressure to push technology into the classroom without proof of its value has deep roots.

In 1997, a science and technology committee assembled by President Clinton issued an urgent call about the need to equip schools with technology.

If such spending was not increased by billions of dollars, American competitiveness could suffer, according to the committee, whose members included educators like Charles M. Vest, then president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and business executives like John A. Young, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard.

To support its conclusion, the committee's report cited the successes of individual schools that embraced computers and saw test scores rise or dropout rates fall. But while acknowledging that the research on technology's impact was inadequate, the committee urged schools to adopt it anyhow.

The report's final sentence read: "The panel does not, however, recommend that the deployment of technology within America's schools be deferred pending the completion of such research."

Since then, the ambitions of those who champion educational technology have grown - from merely equipping schools with computers and instructional software, to putting technology at the center of the classroom and building the teaching around it.

Kyrene had the same sense of urgency as President Clinton's committee when, in November 2005, it asked voters for an initial $46.3 million for laptops, classroom projectors, networking gear and other technology for teachers and administrators.

Before that, the district had given 300 elementary school teachers five laptops each. Students and teachers used them with great enthusiasm, said Mark Share, the district's 64-year-old director of technology, a white-bearded former teacher from the Bronx with an iPhone clipped to his belt.

"If we know something works, why wait?" Mr. Share told The Arizona Republic the month before the vote. The district's pitch was based not on the idea that test scores would rise, but that technology represented the future.

The measure, which faced no organized opposition, passed overwhelmingly. It means that property owners in the dry, sprawling flatlands here, who live in apartment complexes, cookie-cutter suburban homes and salmon-hued mini-mansions, pay on average $75 more a year in taxes, depending on the assessed value of their homes, according to the district.

But the proof sought by President Clinton's committee remains elusive even today, though researchers have been seeking answers.

Many studies have found that technology has helped individual classrooms, schools or districts. For instance, researchers found that writing scores improved for eighth-graders in Maine after they were all issued laptops in 2002. The same researchers, from the University of Southern Maine, found that math performance picked up among seventh- and eighth-graders after teachers in the state were trained in using the laptops to teach.

A question plaguing many education researchers is how to draw broader inferences from such case studies, which can have serious limitations. For instance, in the Maine math study, it is hard to separate the effect of the laptops from the effect of the teacher training.

Educators would like to see major trials years in length that clearly demonstrate technology's effect. But such trials are extraordinarily difficult to conduct when classes and schools can be so different, and technology is changing so quickly.

And often the smaller studies produce conflicting results. Some classroom studies show that math scores rise among students using instructional software, while others show that scores actually fall. The high-level analyses that sum up these various studies, not surprisingly, give researchers pause about whether big investments in technology make sense.

One broad analysis of laptop programs like the one in Maine, for example, found that such programs are not a major factor in student performance.

"Rather than being a cure-all or silver bullet, one-to-one laptop programs may simply amplify what's already occurring - for better or worse," wrote Bryan Goodwin, spokesman for Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning, a nonpartisan group that did the study, in an essay. Good teachers, he said, can make good use of computers, while bad teachers won't, and they and their students could wind up becoming distracted by the technology.

A review by the Education Department in 2009 of research on online courses - which more than one million K-12 students are taking - found that few rigorous studies had been done and that policy makers "lack scientific evidence" of their effectiveness.. A division of the Education Department that rates classroom curriculums has found that much educational software is not an improvement over textbooks.

Larry Cuban, an education professor emeritus at Stanford University, said the research did not justify big investments by districts.

"There is insufficient evidence to spend that kind of money. Period, period, period," he said. "There is no body of evidence that shows a trend line."

Some advocates for technology disagree.

Karen Cator, director of the office of educational technology in the United States Department of Education, said standardized test scores were an inadequate measure of the value of technology in schools. Ms. Cator, a former executive at Apple Computer, said that better measurement tools were needed but, in the meantime, schools knew what students needed.

"In places where we've had a large implementing of technology and scores are flat, I see that as great," she said. "Test scores are the same, but look at all the other things students are doing: learning to use the Internet to research, learning to organize their work, learning to use professional writing tools, learning to collaborate with others."

For its part, Kyrene has become a model to many by training teachers to use technology and getting their ideas on what inspires them. As Mr. Share says in the signature file at the bottom of every e-mail he sends: "It's not the stuff that counts - it's what you do with it that matters."

So people here are not sure what to make of the stagnant test scores. Many of the district's schools, particularly those in more affluent areas, already had relatively high scores, making it a challenge to push them significantly higher. A jump in students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunches was largely a result of the recession, not a shift in the population the district serves, said Nancy Dundenhoefer, its community relations manager.

Mr. Share, whose heavy influence on more than $7 million a year in technology spending has made him a power broker, said he did not think demographic changes were a good explanation.

"You could argue that test scores would be lower without the technology, but that's a copout," he said, adding that the district should be able to deliver some measure of what he considers its obvious success with technology. "It's a conundrum."

Results aside, it's easy to see why technology is such an easy sell here, given the enthusiasm surrounding it in some classrooms.
Engaging With Paper
"I start with pens and pencils," says Ms. Furman, 41, who is short and bubbly and devours young-adult novels to stay in touch with students. Her husband teaches eighth grade in the district, and their son and daughter are both students.

At the beginning of the school year, Ms. Furman tries to inspire her students at Aprende Middle School to write, a task she says becomes increasingly difficult when students reach the patently insecure middle-school years.

In one class in 2009 she had them draw a heart on a piece of paper. Inside the heart, she asked them to write the names of things and people dear to them. One girl started to cry, then another, as the class shared their stories.

It was something Ms. Furman doubted would have happened if the students had been using computers. "There is a connection between the physical hand on the paper and the words on the page," she said. "It's intimate."

But, she said, computers play an important role in helping students get their ideas down more easily, edit their work so they can see instant improvement, and share it with the class. She uses a document camera to display a student's paper at the front of the room for others to dissect.

Ms. Furman said the creative and editing tools, by inspiring students to make quick improvements to their writing, pay dividends in the form of higher-quality work. Last year, 14 of her students were chosen as finalists in a statewide essay contest that asked them how literature had affected their lives. "I was running down the hall, weeping, saying, 'Get these students together. We need to tell them they've won!' "

Other teachers say the technology is the only way to make this generation learn.

"They're inundated with 24/7 media, so they expect it," said Sharon Smith, 44, a gregarious seventh-grade social studies teacher whose classroom is down the hall from Ms. Furman's.

Minutes earlier, Ms. Smith had taught a Civil War lesson in a way unimaginable even 10 years ago. With the lights off, a screen at the front of the room posed a question: "Jefferson Davis was Commander of the Union Army: True or False?"

The 30 students in the classroom held wireless clickers into which they punched their answers. Seconds later, a pie chart appeared on the screen: 23 percent answered "True," 70 percent "False," and 6 percent didn't know.

The students hooted and hollered, reacting to the instant poll. Ms. Smith then drew the students into a conversation about the answers.

The enthusiasm underscores a key argument for investing in classroom technology: student engagement.

That idea is central to the National Education Technology Plan released by the White House last year, which calls for the "revolutionary transformation" of schools. The plan endorses bringing "state-of-the art technology into learning to enable, motivate and inspire all students."

But the research, what little there is of it, does not establish a clear link between computer-inspired engagement and learning, said Randy Yerrick, associate dean of educational technology at the University of Buffalo.

For him, the best educational uses of computers are those that have no good digital equivalent. As examples, he suggests using digital sensors in a science class to help students observe chemical or physical changes, or using multimedia tools to reach disabled children.

But he says engagement is a "fluffy term" that can slide past critical analysis. And Professor Cuban at Stanford argues that keeping children engaged requires an environment of constant novelty, which cannot be sustained.

"There is very little valid and reliable research that shows the engagement causes or leads to higher academic achievement," he said.
Instruct or Distract?
There are times in Kyrene when the technology seems to allow students to disengage from learning: They are left at computers to perform a task but wind up playing around, suggesting, as some researchers have found, that computers can distract and not instruct.

The 23 kindergartners in Christy Asta's class at Kyrene de las Brisas are broken into small groups, a common approach in Kyrene. A handful stand at desks, others sit at computers, typing up reports.

Xavier Diaz, 6, sits quietly, chair pulled close to his Dell laptop, playing "Alien Addition." In this math arcade game, Xavier controls a pod at the bottom of the screen that shoots at spaceships falling from the sky. Inside each ship is a pair of numbers. Xavier's goal is to shoot only the spaceship with numbers that are the sum of the number inside his pod.

But Xavier is just shooting every target in sight. Over and over. Periodically, the game gives him a message: "Try again." He tries again.

"Even if he doesn't get it right, it's getting him to think quicker," says the teacher, Ms. Asta. She leans down next to him: "Six plus one is seven. Click here." She helps him shoot the right target. "See, you shot him."

Perhaps surprisingly given the way young people tend to gravitate toward gadgets, students here seem divided about whether they prefer learning on computers or through more traditional methods.

In a different class, Konray Yuan and Marisa Guisto, both 7, take turns touching letters on the interactive board on the wall. They are playing a spelling game, working together to spell the word "cool." Each finds one of the letters in a jumbled grid, touching them in the proper order.

Marisa says there isn't a difference between learning this way and learning on paper. Konray prefers paper, he says, because you get extra credit for good penmanship.

But others, particularly older students, say they enjoy using the technology tools. One of Ms. Furman's students, Julia Schroder, loved building a blog to write about Shakespeare's "As You Like It."

In another class, she and several classmates used a video camera to film a skit about Woodrow Wilson's 14-point speech during World War I - an approach she preferred to speaking directly to the class.

"I'd be pretty bummed if I had to do a live thing," she said. "It's nerve-racking."
Teachers vs. Tech
Even as students are getting more access to computers here, they are getting less access to teachers.

Reflecting budget cuts, class sizes have crept up in Kyrene, as they have in many places. For example, seventh-grade classes like Ms. Furman's that had 29 to 31 students grew to more like 31 to 33.

"You can't continue to be effective if you keep adding one student, then one student, then one student," Ms. Furman said. "I'm surprised parents aren't going into the classrooms saying 'Whoa.' "

Advocates of high-tech classrooms say computers are not intended to replace teachers. But they do see a fundamental change in the teacher's role. Their often-cited mantra is that teachers should go from being "a sage on the stage to a guide on the side."

And they say that, technology issues aside, class sizes can in fact afford to grow without hurting student performance.

Professor Cuban at Stanford said research showed that student performance did not improve significantly until classes fell under roughly 15 students, and did not get much worse unless they rose above 30.

At the same time, he says bigger classes can frustrate teachers, making it hard to attract and retain talented ones.

In Kyrene, growing class sizes reflect spending cuts; the district's maintenance and operation budget fell to $95 million this year from $106 million in 2008. The district cannot use the money designated for technology to pay for other things. And the teachers, who make roughly $33,000 to $57,000 a year, have not had a raise since 2008.

Many teachers have second jobs, some in restaurants and retail, said Erin Kirchoff, president of the Kyrene Education Association, the teacher's association. Teachers talk of being exhausted from teaching all day, then selling shoes at the mall.

Ms. Furman works during the summer at the Kyrene district offices. But that job is being eliminated in 2014, and she is worried about the income loss.

"Without it, we don't go on vacation," she said.

Money for other things in the district is short as well. Many teachers say they regularly bring in their own supplies, like construction paper.

"We have Smart Boards in every classroom but not enough money to buy copy paper, pencils and hand sanitizer," said Nicole Cates, a co-president of the Parent Teacher Organization at Kyrene de la Colina, an elementary school. "You don't go buy a new outfit when you don't have enough dinner to eat."

But she loves the fact that her two children, a fourth-grader and first-grader, are learning technology, including PowerPoint and educational games.

To some who favor high-tech classrooms, the resource squeeze presents an opportunity. Their thinking is that struggling schools will look for more efficient ways to get the job done, creating an impetus to rethink education entirely.

"Let's hope the fiscal crisis doesn't get better too soon. It'll slow down reform," said Tom Watkins, the former superintendent for the Michigan schools, and now a consultant to businesses in the education sector.

Clearly, the push for technology is to the benefit of one group: technology companies.
The Sellers
It is 4:30 a.m. on a Tuesday. Mr. Share, the director of technology at Kyrene and often an early riser, awakens to the hard sell. Awaiting him at his home computer are six pitches from technology companies.

It's just another day for the man with the checkbook.

"I get one pitch an hour," he said. He finds most of them useless and sometimes galling: "They're mostly car salesmen. I think they believe in the product they're selling, but they don't have a leg to stand on as to why the product is good or bad."

Mr. Share bases his buying decisions on two main factors: what his teachers tell him they need, and his experience. For instance, he said he resisted getting the interactive whiteboards sold as Smart Boards until, one day in 2008, he saw a teacher trying to mimic the product with a jury-rigged projector setup.

"It was an 'Aha!' moment," he said, leading him to buy Smart Boards, made by a company called Smart Technologies.

He can make that kind of decision because he has money - and the vendors know it. Technology companies track which districts get federal funding and which have passed tax assessments for technology, like Kyrene.

This is big business. Sales of computer software to schools for classroom use were $1.89 billion in 2010. Spending on hardware is more difficult to measure, researchers say, but some put the figure at five times that amount.

The vendors relish their relationship with Kyrene.

"I joke I should have an office here, I'm here so often," said Will Dunham, a salesman for CCS Presentation Systems, a leading reseller of Smart Boards in Arizona.

Last summer, the district paid $500,000 to CCS to replace ceiling-hung projectors in 400 classrooms. The alternative was to spend $100,000 to replace their aging bulbs, which Mr. Share said were growing dimmer, causing teachers to sometimes have to turn down the lights to see a crisp image.

Mr. Dunham said the purchase made sense because new was better. "I could take a used car down to the mechanic and get it all fixed up and still have a used car."

But Ms. Kirchoff, the president of the teachers' association, is furious. "My projector works just fine," she said. "Give me Kleenex, Kleenex, Kleenex!"
The Parents
Last November, Kyrene went back to voters to ask them to pay for another seven years of technology spending in the district. The previous measure from 2005 will not expire for two years. But the district wanted to get ahead of the issue, and leave wiggle room just in case the new measure didn't pass.

It didn't. It lost by 96 votes out of nearly 50,000 cast. Mr. Share and others here said they attributed the failure to poor wording on the ballot that made it look like a new tax increase, rather than the continuation of one.

They say they will not make the same wording mistake this time. And they say the burden on taxpayers is modest.

"It's so much bang for the buck," said Jeremy Calles, Kyrene's interim chief financial officer. For a small investment, he said, "we get state-of-the-art technology."

Regardless, some taxpayers have already decided that they will not vote yes.

"When you look at the big picture, it's hard to say 'yes, spend more on technology' when class sizes increase," said Kameron Bybee, 34, who has two children in district schools. "The district has made up its mind to go forward with the technologically advanced path. Come hell or high water."

Other parents feel conflicted. Eduarda Schroder, 48, whose daughter Julia was in Ms. Furman's English class, worked on the political action committee last November to push through an extension of the technology tax. Computers, she says, can make learning more appealing. But she's also concerned that test scores haven't gone up.

She says she is starting to ask a basic question. "Do we really need technology to learn?" she said. "It's a very valid time to ask the question, right before this goes on the ballot."

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Technology in Schools Faces Questions on Value

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"This is such a dynamic class," Ms. Furman says of her 21st-century classroom. "I really hope it works." Hope and enthusiasm are soaring here. But not test scores. Since 2005, scores in reading and math have stagnated in Kyrene, even as statewide scores have risen.

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Your Professor, Your Computer and You

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If you read nothing else on this padlet, read this from CADRE:

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First Person

I am sitting in an apartment in Tbilisi, Georgia. Out the window is a bright blue sky interrupted by the concrete skeletons of building projects sprouting up around this fascinating city. I'm thousands of miles from home, yet I'm able to help design and facilitate professional learning for my former school district in Louisville, Ky., and for national organizations like the Center for Teaching Quality; support blended learning experiences; and work on education journalism, among other projects. It's often tricky to define what I'm doing, thanks to technology and an ever-expanding web of connected educators, students, and communities. Welcome to my life as a networked educator.

This past summer, I made the decision to resign from my teaching position in Louisville, Ky., and travel globally with my wife Rebecca. We decided to go without an itinerary, with the dual goals of personal exploration and testing out remote work. I was both excited and a bit apprehensive. But what allowed me to make the leap was, in part, knowing I would stay an active participant in the education community I was leaving behind. When I first began teaching a little more than 13 years ago, I never would have thought it was possible to be where I am now.

At a time when teachers now have more opportunities than ever to connect through evolving networks, both digitally and face to face, at home and abroad, it is possible for both us and our students to engage with people and ideas from around the world, no matter where we are. But we also don't have to leave our classrooms to do so: Every teacher has the power to become a networked educator and foster a networked classroom. The power is in knowing where to find opportunities to connect-and being aware that those opportunities continue to change and grow.

Moving Beyond Relative Isolation

Despite having the ability to connect with other teachers via the internet and email, my first few years of teaching were mainly bolstered by in-person collaboration. Professional learning communities were still four to five years away from emerging as common practice in the Kentucky school where I taught, so unstructured strategizing with colleagues was crucial for us to make positive strides.

Mrs. Daugherty and Mr. Martell were right down the hall, ready to discuss the latest YA novels our students were devouring or how to structure a thematic project focused on heroism. This informal network had its pluses and minuses. On the one hand, it was small, limiting the range of ideas I could learn directly from other people. On the other hand, my colleagues were supportive and available.

But I found myself isolated when it came to classroom experimentation. I devoured human-behavior author Alfie Kohn's books by night, then tested out his notions about student motivation during class. I worked toward minimizing and even eliminating traditional grades, but I couldn't discuss my process comfortably with others-it was far too radical. A colleague even lambasted me in the hallway over the issue. I was ready to interact with some like-minded educators and learned about a summer fellowship opportunity with Middlebury College's Bread Loaf Teacher Network.

I had been told that Bread Loaf was like a summer camp of imaginative graduate work for English teachers focused on culturally sensitive literacy. Little did I know that my six weeks there would launch over a decade of evolving work as a networked educator.

During consecutive summer graduate programs in Asheville, N.C., Santa Fe, N.M., and Vermont, I met teachers from around the country and world. Some of our ideas aligned, and we were encouraged to design projects for our students to work on with each other remotely.

For one project, my high school students collaborated with a colleague's students in Miami. Through Google, Skype, and other tools, we combined writing, audio, and digital photography to tell stories about the power of place. There was little doubt that my new network was deeply impacting my classroom instruction. Student engagement rose; I remember students excitedly logging on to Skype in order to communicate with their Florida partners. The challenge of using multiple digital tools over time to create a finished product required a healthy dose of problem-solving and critical thinking.

An Expanding Virtual World

I soon learned about other networks. There was the Center for Teaching Quality, a nonprofit professional-learning network that allows teachers to share their ideas by participating in trainings to lead virtual-learning communities, blogging about classroom practices, and leading video chats and webinars. There was Twitter, where a huge number of educators now follow each other, share resources, and lead Twitter chats.

And professional learning communities in my own school district grew. JCPSForward has catalyzed numerous projects, including face-to-face "meet ups," Twitter chats, and EdCamp conferences. According to our district's numbers, roughly 30 percent of our 6,000 teachers have engaged in networked learning opportunities. Collaborating with school colleagues-just like when I first began my career-has remained essential, with various virtual networks on "stand by" to provide inspiration or alternative professional learning.

A few months before my departure to travel abroad, I visited Middlebury College in Vermont with a colleague and several students for one of my most powerful collaborative experiences yet. We were there to participate in the Bread Loaf Teacher Network's launch of a special project-the Next Generation Leadership Network. Several days spent working together with students and teachers from across the country to tackle education's challenges-by putting youth voices at the center of discussions-indicated the possibilities ahead.

All of us were connected in one way or another to an international web of educators who were part of both networks. I remember thinking just how extraordinary it was to be able to begin a collaboration that spans distance and difference, with the goal that over time, through a combination of face-to-face and online interaction, this wildly diverse group would be able to learn from another about how to effectively advocate for change in their communities.

It was a peek into what I hoped my travels would continue to provide.

Finding Balance

Admittedly, there have been times during my professional journey when being part of so many networks has led to too many Tweets, emails, and communications to keep up with. But I'd rather have the challenge of balancing the amount of connections versus working in isolation. It takes discipline, and it's OK to say no when new opportunities appear.

While I'm not sure if I'll be back in a traditional classroom in the near future, I keep my head and heart engaged with education-related projects. It's nearly impossible to recreate the best "lightbulb" moments from the classroom. Face-to-face interaction with students spurs new insights, inspiration, and joy in ways the digital world cannot replicate.

But we now have the capacity to be valuable contributors and team members from potentially anywhere in the world. We should continually revise and reimagine what it means to be an educator in the 21st century. There's no roadmap toward meaningful, remote work from a Soviet-era apartment in Tbilisi, but as educators with open minds and adventurous spirits, let's remember that our learning can take us anywhere.

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First Person I am sitting in an apartment in Tbilisi, Georgia. Out the window is a bright blue sky interrupted by the concrete skeletons of building projects sprouting up around this fascinating city.

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CADRE Study

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Emerging Design Principles for Online and Blended Teacher Professional Development in K-12 STEM Education | CADRE

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Between February and September 2017, awardees representing 11 projects participated in a series of activities designed to elicit and form consensus around emerging design principles for online and blended teacher PD programs in K-12 STEM education. The resulting principles are organized and presented around three themes:

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Reading linear texts on paper versus computer screen: Effects on reading comprehension

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To explore effects of the technological interface on reading comprehension in a Norwegian school context.72 tenth graders from two different primary s...