June 2002 — Features
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The Internet's Impact on Teacher Practice and Classroom Culture
The Digital Divide
While we believe shifting the computer-comfort balance in the female direction and extending opportunities for the teacher-student role reversal are positive, the fact that not all students have Internet access at home has negative implications. The Internet projects we studied all lasted from three to four weeks. This gave students with Internet access at home - about half in one school and three quarters in the other - the opportunity to work on their projects outside of the school day. It also made it possible for others to get significant help from their parents.
All the teachers realized this created a situation that favored some students over others beyond what was usually the case. To help balance this, the teachers made sure every student had all the time they needed in school to get information from the Internet. All students had some free time during the day, and we found students with Internet access at home were less likely to spend this time online. The teachers also had to consider how having a computer at home would otherwise provide an advantage. These students were more likely to hand in assignments that had been neatly prepared on a word processor. In the case of the Internet projects, some students used page layout software to arrange pictures they saved from the Internet along with their own text.
To their credit, the teachers did not grade a project higher because it was printed on a home computer. Handwritten projects were just as likely to receive top grades, and the marginal word processing efforts were fairly judged as well. Despite their efforts to level the playing field, however, all of the teachers still felt the students with Internet access at home had an advantage over those who did not; and the students agreed. When the students were asked about this, they all felt everyone should have Internet access at home. The comment "it should come with the house" expressed their general sentiment. The fact that it d'esn't raises an important concern for educators and policy makers at all levels.
The Role of Staff Development
Once we concluded that teaching practices had not shifted in a more constructivist direction, we took a closer look at the staff development process in the district to see what role it played. What we found at the district's teacher center was a list of short courses that focused on how to use a variety of software tools. Courses included introductory, intermediate and advanced versions, and incorporated tools such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Netscape and the district's e-mail product. Classes were heterogeneous, so teachers from any level or discipline could enroll in most classes. This, and the idea that an instructor could not be expected to be an expert in all teaching fields, made it difficult for instructors to deal with the specifics of how to use a tool in every classroom. As a result, they would demonstrate how the tools worked and let each teacher figure out how to use them in their own classroom. This resulted, for the most part, in teachers using computers to improve what they were already doing incrementally, rather than substantially changing their practice in any fundamental manner.
