The following Forbes article discusses the advance of technology in education and how it has become a major component of schools. According the to article 11 billion is being spent on technology in schools. Crazy amounts of money! As you would expect out of a Forbes article it makes the all too common connection between school, data, and business. What are the results? How effective are the things we are using? What’s the growth? What’s the bottom line?

It finally brings up Impact Research which is developed a handful of questions to assess the positive impact of technology in education.

• How does this learning solution actually impact student outcomes? At what scale, and by which standards?
• What intervention most increases interest for a subset of students?
• Which characteristics contribute most to an effective learning experience?

Impact Research is focused on finding the return on investment in educational technology by focusing on: ” better grades, higher confidence, increased interest, or stronger engagement.”

I like these questions and the ideas this article brings up but to me it raises many more questions of what is engagement and how do you measure it? Are kids more engaged because they have a computer in front of them allowing them access to a wealth of knowledge and way to best express their thinking? Or are they more engaged because they have a computer in front of them but still aren’t engaging in higher level thinking. When I was in high school and college I became a master of being “engaged” but doing nothing. I recall several visits to the library without actually getting any studying or homework done.

Then there the issues of do these questions work for all schools? Even within the same city, state, country? Are school assessing their educational technology use with these questions? As a technology specialist this is the first time I was exposed to them as an assessment. And the bigger question of how to measure of this? By the time data is collected and analyzed on which technologies work the best those are outdated and were constantly lagging behind. On the other hand it cannot be best practice to just buy the newest thing a hope that it increases student engagement, confidence, and overall learning.

So in following suite with Forbes I’m not going to answer these questions and just bring up more questions. Who knows if technology in education is benefiting students. I like to believe it is but from kindergarten to senior year to first job and post-high the world is a very different place for all kids. It’s tough to say if teaching kids how to save a document or write in cursive will help them in the future. I do think that being familiar with devices, knowing ways to troubleshoot, and conduct research is a must aligning with the popular 21st Century Skills. Decisions on what technology to use and how to use it are heavy questions and it is nice to see there conversations finding their way into public eye.