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How Students Learn (and What Technology Might


At an educational conference last spring, I attended a session focused on the potential of instructional technology to transform teaching and learning in schools. One of the speakers told a story about his 14-year-old son who, like himself, loved technology toys and always had to have the latest and greatest new thing to come on the market.


One day, this son went to school after downloading to his Palm Pilot™ the program from the TV remote control. Then in one of his classes, the boy used the program to turn on and off the television in the corner of the room. The teacher was understandably annoyed, and when she figured out who the culprit was, she hauled him off to the principal's office demanding that the principal "do something!"


At this point in the story, the speaker paused and asked the audience to consider what an appropriate response by the principal might be. Surely, this was a teachable moment, for teacher and student. Although many of us are regular users of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), we are only beginning to imagine how the technology might be used in the service of teaching and learning. So what did the principal do? He banned it!


I offer this story not to malign the principal, but to argue that technology integration in schools is not easy to achieve, no matter how much evidence we have that it can help learning. It's also important to integrate technology appropriately, as critics are quick to point out that computers, besides being expensive, can harm young children who sit for hours in front of them instead of being engaged in the "real world" (Alliance for Childhood, 2000). So what is known about how people learn and the role technology may play in their learning? How might that knowledge provide guidelines for appropriate uses of technology that can help students and teachers? Four broad principles offer a framework to teachers for thinking about how technology can support their instruction:

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