Computers, the Internet pose changes, challenges for schools
By GREG KLINE
News-Gazette Staff Writer

   One half of the sparkling clean room is filled by a network of computers set up to teach computer-aided drafting and design.
   The other half is full of computer stations for teaching students about lasers, fiber optics, robotics and aerodynamics, among other things.
   Would-be landscapers can plant a virtual tree next to a virtual house and see how it will look after 15 years of growth.
   Not long ago, the room at Champaign Central High School didn't look like this.
   "Three years ago this room was a wood shop; it was a dirty old wood shop," said teacher Myron Ochs, who heads the industrial technology program at the high school.
   At Central, industrial education – shop class – has changed. Now, it can mean working on computers instead of band saws and drill presses and learning skills such as digital video editing, desktop publishing and computer networking.
   Experts see computers becoming pervasive in schools in the new century, which presents certain challenges, from making sure teachers are trained for a new way of doing business to ensuring that all students have the same opportunities. It isn't cheap either.
   Today, you'll find computers in the business lab at Central. And kids in the math lab modeling equations in three dimensions on a computer. And students in social studies using the Internet for research. And young people in the library working on banks of Net-connected machines.
   The degree to which schools are using computers and the Internet varies at this point. But generally, they're in a transitional phase from employing the machines in a few specialized labs to having them in every classroom, said Catherine Thurston, director of the Office of Educational Technology in the University of Illinois College of Education.
   Likewise, teachers are shifting from using the computers in their classrooms as electronic flash cards or extra credit activities to making the machines an integral part of the curriculum, Thurston and other experts said.
   "I think we're in the midst of kind of an evolution," Thurston said. "It's not the kind of thing the individual classroom teacher can ignore."
   Not even if the kids they teach are the youngest in school. Mahomet-Seymour, for example, now starts children learning computer skills in kindergarten, said Ric Rose, the district's educational technology director.
   "They're on computers from day one," Rose said.
   The bottom line, say educators, is that kids need to learn computer skills to function in our increasingly wired world.
   "One thing we know for certain about computers and technology is that they're going to become more and more present in every aspect of our lives," said Nicholas Burbules, a UI educational policy studies professor and co-author of the book "Watch IT: The Risks and Promises of New Information Technologies for Education."
   Federal technology standards for schools say students should be using computers on their own by second grade, including creating "developmentally appropriate multimedia products." By high school, they're supposed to be routinely researching, collaborating on and posting complex projects online.
   Experts and educators see a reorganized kind of schooling already taking shape. It's one with kids making Web pages, working in teams face to face and online and accessing and evaluating up-to-the-minute information. All that comes in the process of learning not only the subject matter at hand, but skills they will need in a world where microwave ovens connect to the Internet and the economy is based, in large part, on knowledge work.
   "You can't turn your back on the technology," said Sharon Roth, a teacher at Leal School in Urbana who's used computers extensively in class. "It's becoming a life skill."
   Moreover, it can be a better way of learning, educators say. They talk about students being more engaged by a process of collecting information and constructing knowledge themselves, with teachers serving less as lecturers – "the sage on the stage" – than facilitators and mentors – "the guide on the side."
   Computers, with their ability to model and simulate all manner of things, also can make learning opportunities available that would be impossible otherwise, allowing kids to, say, stick their heads inside a thunder cloud in studying the weather.
   On the horizon, some experts see every kid with a computer at school, a laptop or maybe a handheld machine, linked wirelessly to class and school networks and to the Internet.
   They will be able to access school resources from a computer at home, too, perhaps to do homework, collaborate with classmates on a project, or attend a virtual class session.
   Generally, educators don't, at this point, see a time when elementary and secondary students go to school entirely online. There are important reasons, such as learning socialization skills, for kids to attend in person, they said.
   Still, some students already take some classes online, notably where their school lacks the enrollment or money to offer a particular course. That trend is likely to increase as the technology becomes ubiquitous.
   All this presents certain challenges for society, schools and teachers.
   Burbules worries about the "digital divide" between well-heeled and less-so school districts and between families who can afford the technology at home and those who can't.
   "I think we're on the verge of possibly creating an information caste society," he said. He described a world, which already exists to some extent, where digital elite have access to information, social and political networks, cultural fare, jobs and other opportunities that those without access, or with inferior access, don't even know they're missing.
   Schools are facing the considerable expense of buying equipment, and for such things as retrofitting pre-computer-age buildings with computer networks. Then they have to pay for technical support and be ready to upgrade in a relatively short period.
   Ochs at Champaign Central said the school moved equipment from its old wood shop that had been manufactured during World War II. It was made well so it still worked and the technology hadn't changed enough to make it irrelevant.
   He said Central will be doing well to get 10 years out of the new computer stations, however. Getting five is more likely.
   "We're still addressing how much budget do we need to support the technology," said Don White, Champaign schools' educational technology director. Butupgrading the district's computer array is obviously an item that needs to be budgeted for annually, he said.
   Rapid technological change also is a challenge for schools because, by their nature, they tend to change slowly, say experts such as Burbules and Lisa Bievenue, an education specialist at the UI's National Center for Supercomputing Applications.
   Meanwhile, teachers, often behind their students on all this computer stuff, have to retrain and re-retrain as the technology advances relentlessly.
   "You have to stay up to date yourself so you're constantly taking courses, workshops, whatever," said Diane Ecker, head of the business department at Champaign Central.

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