DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
Computers have been present in most schools for nearly 20 years. Until recently, their use has been limited by the relatively small number of computers compared to the number of students present. However, as shown in
Report 2 in this series, [17] by
1998 the typical school had one computer for every 6 students enrolled, or about four computers per classroom if they were actually divided equally among all instructional rooms. School computers have also had a limited
impact on students because until recently, a plethora of limitations—technical ones, limitations in the variety of software and content, in notions about what should be done with computers, and in knowledge of how to integrate
computer activities into teaching—all conspired to trivialize the kinds of tasks that students were asked to do with computers. In particular, students in elementary schools, and into middle school grades, primarily used
computers to do skill-related drills and to play "edutainment" games. Teachers used computers to provide a welcome break from the routine of more difficult and "more important" learning. In students' secondary school
experience, computers became a subject in itself, either a pull-out program of "computer literacy" provided by a specialist teacher or a whole semester or year-long course in computers, keyboard skills, computer programming, or
word-processing. Computers became another set of skills that parents, students, and teachers believed to be important for students' future lives, but computer skills were seen as a ticket to the future much more than as a
tool for improving current understandings and academic competence. Our analysis of the Teaching, Learning, and Computing 1998 survey data suggests that the computer experiences that teachers provide to students are beginning
to change, in some ways fairly dramatically, from the experiences that earlier cohorts of students had. It is still true
that, at the high school level, a majority of intensive experiences with computers that students have are in courses outside of the academic core—most often in computer classes and business education classes. It is also still true that a majority of teachers across grades 4 to 12 either do not use computers at all with their students or do so only occasionally; the "typical" teacher provides students with fewer than ten opportunities to use computers during a school year. Nevertheless, we have found that those academic subject-matter teachers who do have their students use computers frequently, do so in ways that are different from the "traditional" focus on computer-based drills and learning games and computer "literacy."
Across the academic subjects at both elementary and secondary levels, the most common objectives that teachers have for their students' use of computers no longer are "practicing skills just taught" or "learning computer
skills." Instead, the objectives most often named have to do with students gaining access to information and improving their writing. Moreover, the kinds of software that teachers report using most often
with their students—word processing programs, CD-ROM reference materials, and World Wide Web browser software—confirm that what students do most often on school computers involves searching for information and ideas through
electronic media and expressing themselves in writing; not practicing math and grammar drills, playing games, or learning computer skills as isolated skills. Nevertheless, the activity of students gathering
information and writing about it is not the whole story of how teachers direct student use of computers in schools today. Apart from Web browsers and word processing programs, most of the other specific software titles that
teachers report to be most valuable for their students—Hyperstudio, among elementary teachers and secondary social studies and science teachers; Geometer's Sketchpad in mathematics, AutoCAD
in vocational arts subjects, and PhotoShop and PageMaker in fine arts classes—are evidence that at least some
teachers are having students use computers as productivity tools in complex projects that may involve higher-order thinking, designing a product, and explaining their ideas and constructions to an external audience. In
fact, we found that the teachers who are most technically knowledgeable about computers are the ones who are most likely to have their students use presentation software and multimedia authoring software and to have as principal
objectives goals like having students use computers to help them present their ideas before an audience and to communicate with other people. Although even among the most computer-skilled teachers, objectives such as
acquiring information or writing are more common than the objective of helping students to communicate information to an audience, the most computer-skilled teachers are much more likely than other computer-assigning teachers to
include audience presentation among their objectives. Many of those who support increased incorporation of computer-related activities into academic coursework argue that student engagement in doing schoolwork is improved and
even carries over to times of the day when direct teacher supervision is absent. Our research has found that teachers whose objectives for student computer use include having them learn to develop presentations for audiences,
communicate with other people, acquire information, and express themselves in writing are much more likely than other teachers to say that their students do work for the class using computers outside of class time (for example, at
home, or before or after school). Similarly, the teachers who report the most out-of-class involvement by students in doing work for their class are those who frequently have students use during class
one of four types of programs: presentation software, electronic mail, multimedia authoring software, and word processing programs. Finally, it is certainly true that what makes a good computer-using teacher is more than any one
thing: technical knowledge about computers helps, so does experience in using computers professionally, and it also seems reasonable to expect that an exemplary teacher has the kinds of objectives for student computer use and
employs the types of software that most likely result in student engagement and thoughtful effort, outside of class time as well as during class. At the elementary level, we identified two clusters of teachers who were strong in
all of those respects. Together, those clusters of teachers represent only 5% of all teachers of the upper-elementary grades, but by having students integrate a range of academic and technical competencies into the production
of multimedia products, they are helping to demonstrate what nine- and ten-year old children can accomplish using technology. At the middle grades, we also identified two strong clusters in terms of expertise, professional
use, and the nature of their objectives (4% of all middle school teachers). In this case, the teachers emphasized both word processing and use of the World Wide Web, along with some use of electronic mail (in one cluster) and
presentation and multimedia software. The teachers in these clusters demonstrate the integration of information acquisition with communication of that information, making learning consequential for their students and their
students' audiences. At the high school level, we identified five clusters (13% of all high school teachers) where relatively high levels of computer expertise were present, but in only one of those clusters did the teachers seem
outstanding in terms of having objectives for student computer use that translated into high levels of out-of-class involvement in computer work for the class. Those classes—a mixture of primarily English, social studies, and
computer classes—used an array of software going beyond word processing, Web browsing, and CD-ROM use, to include presentation software (PowerPoint was second-only to Netscape as those teachers' most valued software) and other
graphically-oriented programs. Here again, these teachers demonstrated the integration of information acquisition, thoughtful writing and presentation, and concern with communicating findings to an audience. The teachers in
these highlighted clusters, although clearly a minority of teachers and even a minority of computer-assigning teachers, constitute a pioneering group of technology-knowledgeable instructional innovators. They constitute the
standard for exemplary instructional computer use, and their numbers are likely to increase in the near future.
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APPENDIX A: TABLES 1 - 2