Book Review

Bringing the Internet to School
Author(s): Janet Schofield and Ann Davidson
Book Review
EDUC 602: Technology across the Curriculum
Curtis Walker
October 29, 2007
Author(s):
Janet Ward Schofield is a professor of psychology and a senior scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh. She is a social psychologist whose research during the last twenty-five years has explored the impact of social and technological change in educational settings. Her work has led to the publication of over fifty papers and three previous books, including Computers and Classroom Culture.
Ann Locke Davidson currently operates Educational Connections, an education consulting firm in Portland, Oregon. She has held research positions at both the University of Washington-Bothell and the Learning and Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses generally on the relationships among school and classroom features, students’ construction of identity in relationship to schooling, and academic engagement.
Overview
The overall goal of this book is to increase understanding of two main issues. One, how does increased classroom internet usage impact education. And two, how does the social organization of schools and the long-standing patterns of behavior within them shape use of the internet. This is done by reporting the results of an intensive study of a major five-year effort, running from 1993 to 1998, to bring the Internet to the Waterford Public Schools (WPS), a large urban school district. This five year effort is called the Networking for Education Testbed (NET). NET’s primary goals were to stimulate teachers in the Waterford school district to use the Internet in their work and to institutionalize Internet use in the district so that it could continue once external funds were no longer available. They hoped to encourage teachers at all grade levels and in all subjects to develop varied uses of the Internet in their curricula, with hopes that NET would function as a model for Internet activities within the nation’s schools by developing approaches that other schools could successfully replicate.
Summary
The study suggests that Internet use has the potential to empower students in new and useful ways, especially high school and middle school students. However, the Internet’s potential to enhance students’ independence and their active involvement in their own education will be fully realized only if schools adopt such empowerment as a goal and carefully plan to make it happen. The Internet connects schools and those in them to the world outside, perhaps the Internet’s biggest advantage. Yet this also poses one of the Internet’s biggest problems. The digital divide was apparent when comparing Black and White students, so measures of equality of access to technological resources need to be expanded. On the one hand, Internet use in the schools has the potential to change education in highly valuable ways. Conversely, Internet use is far from a surefire cure for low student achievement.
Critique
I am relieved after finally reading this book, not because this book focuses on an internet study about 15 years old, or because it was over 300 pages long, but because it spoke to past experiences that I have had with technology and it gives me clearer understanding why technology usage with the proper planning and implementation will work wonders. Nevertheless, technology usage without the proper planning and implementation will be ineffective in impacting education. WPS had both high performing schools and low performing schools relative to their internet usage. This was caused by some factors like teacher moral, technology reliability and collaboration. Teachers at high morale schools for example utilized the computers more often with greater impact for their students, and teachers at schools with low morale used computers less often with little impact. Several other factors were visible from school to school. For example, this program fully funded any teacher willing to volunteer for the NET with a few computers for their class, lesson planning and technology support for the duration of the five year program. Some teachers used this experience to gain computers for their classroom and their school for other professional usage. This study was very detailed and involved a lot applicable information to consider whenever implementing a technology program within a classroom or throughout the entire school body. This book is outdated so I am sure there is more current studies available that provide more relevant information, nevertheless it will provide an excellent point of reference for additional research on this topic.