PART II. EXTENT AND VARIETY OF SOFTWARE USED AND TEACHERS' OBJECTIVES FOR USE
TYPES OF SOFTWARE USED Studies of instructional uses of school computers conducted in the 1980's and early in the
1990's found that the primary uses of computer technology in schools involved students practicing basic math and language arts skills and becoming "computer literate" (e.g., learning how to use different types of software). Today,
although a large fraction of students' use of computers still occurs in special computer classes and pull-out programs, we are seeing larger numbers of teachers going beyond simple skills practice or basic computer literacy and
having their students use computers to do productive work—for example, searching for information and producing written and visual products that reflect their cognitive and creative effort. Of all of the various types of software
available on school computers, word processing software is by far the most commonly used. Not only are English teachers, business education teachers and computer teachers more likely to have their students do word processing
than any other computer activity, but so are science, social studies, vocational education, and elementary teachers. (See Table 7, where percentages of teachers who use "word proc." are shown in the first data column.)
Altogether, 50% of all 4th through 12th grade teachers have students use word processing software at least occasionally during class time. Among elementary classes, games for practicing basic math and language arts skills are
still common (second only to word processing). However in secondary schools, games are used much less frequently. In middle schools, drills and games are used by fewer teachers' students than are CD-ROM reference
software or Web browsers. In high schools, drill and game software is used by fewer teachers' students than graphics software, spreadsheets, simulation and exploratory software, computer-aided presentations software (e.g.,
PowerPoint), CD-ROMs or web browsers. Mathematics teachers, however, appear to be an exception to this trend of using "tool-oriented" computer applications in secondary schools (except perhaps for their use of graphing
calculators, which was not part of this survey of computer use). More math teachers use skills-practice games than any other type of computer software.
FIGURE 7: MOST WIDELY USED SOFTWARE BY SCHOOL LEVEL
(percent of teachers reporting at least occasional use by students
during class time)
TABLE 7: PERCENT OF TEACHERS REPORTING STUDENT USE* OF SOFTWARE DURING CLASS, BY TYPE OF SOFTWARE ANd SUBJECT & LEVEL TAUGHT
 |
As Table 7 shows, besides word processing software for composing and editing text, two other types of software are in widespread use—CD-ROM reference software and World Wide Web browsing software. Both of these enable students to gather information for research or simply to explore. In elementary school teachers' practices, the more controlled information bases on CD-ROMs are used much more often than the more wide-open information repositories on the Internet. However, in high schools the World Wide Web is used at least as often as CD-ROMs, and the Web is the information resource of choice particularly in computer-assigning foreign language classes, fine arts classes, computer classes, and business education classes.
Use of analytic software —such as spreadsheets, simulations and exploratory environments—and product-oriented software—such as presentation software, graphics programs, and multimedia authoring environments—are used by fewer academic subject-matter teachers than use word processing or information retrieval software. However, computer and business education teachers are more likely to use most types of analytic and product-oriented software than they are to use information retrieval technologies like CD-ROMs and the World Wide Web. For example, two-thirds of computer teachers and business education teachers have students use spreadsheets while only about one-fourth to one-third have students use CD-ROMs. In contrast, only 19% of science teachers' students use spreadsheets, but nearly twice that number have students use CD-ROMs. More than one-third of computer and business education teachers have their students use presentation software, but that is done by only about 10% of teachers in the academic subjects.