ne minute, Doreen Capriglione is teaching her first-graders at Sapphire Elementary School in Harriman, N.Y., how to clean up strawberry pudding smeared on the carpet. Next, she is teaching them how to operate a computer.
Linda Roberts, director of the Office of Educational Technology for the Department of Education, agrees that there is need for more research. But she defends the administration's push to wire schools. Before studies can be done, she said, the technology must be in place to make comparisons.
"Integrating technology's resources and tools means first of all getting it to the classroom," Ms. Roberts said. "You have to drive the technology down to where the teachers and the kids are."
In his classes, Nellen is convinced that e-mail provides advantages over traditional discussions with a large number of students. Typically, he explained, teachers ask a question and wait for students' hands to shoot into the air. "You have the kids who don't say anything," he said, "and the kids who won't shut up."
Isa Lopez is also confident that the computer is having a positive effect. "This is better," she said, scanning the half-dozen messages that had just appeared on her screen. "We can't talk to everybody in a regular English class. You never talk about what people think; you just don't have time."
That worries David Abram, a cultural ecologist and author of "The Spell of the Sensuous," a 1996 book that delves into the need for learning through physical experience. "We are skipping over a layer of experience that can only be cultivated through face-to-face speaking, conversation, storytelling," Abram said.
Encouraging students to use e-mail in class brings new distractions as well. "I send e-mail, but it's mostly to my friends," admitted Nepheny Garcia. Besides, "I already know the answers," she added, pointing to the dozens of responses to Nellen's questions that her peers had already posted.
Eighty miles away, in South Philadelphia, another inner-city school is experimenting with technology. Thirty-five juniors and seniors in St. Maria Goretti High School are sitting in front of 35 computers in a computer applications course.
The girls, each wearing a uniform of black, red and white, are staring intently at their screens. Their backs are straight. Their hands grip the mice at their keyboards. Sister Rita Lenihan strides past the rows. She wants her students to demonstrate what they have learned in the last week: the art of setting tabs in the popular word-processing program Microsoft Word.
"Shrink the margins," she said loudly. "Space up."
"Be careful of your tabulations," she continued. "Let's try to get this on one sheet of paper."
The girls click obediently. The task is to put three charts, full of tabulated figures, into one document. Among other skills they have learned are how to open documents, how to set margins on the ruler, how to cut and paste new material into neat, evenly spaced rows. Sister Lenihan's goal is for her students to pass a series of tests in the Microsoft Office User Specialist certification program, known as MOUS. Earning the certificates, which are essential for some office jobs, is not required for the course but clearly desired. "They're right on task," Sister Lenihan said. "I taught them from the ground up."
Microsoft did not donate software or equipment to the school, so St. Maria Goretti has raised its own money. The school won a $121,000 grant from the Connelly Foundation, a private organization in Philadelphia, to cover the costs of computers, furniture and Microsoft Windows 2000 software. As required by that grant, the school raised another $21,000 from its alumni, advisory board and annual Valentine's Day dance. Nivo International, the company that administers the certification tests, has donated the cost of 50 tests, but once that supply runs out, the company will charge its usual $50 for each additional student tested.
Nevertheless, St. Maria Goretti High School has decided to integrate MOUS into its entire curriculum. Every teacher, whatever the class, is expected to use Microsoft applications when computer projects are assigned. Students creating presentations for a science or a business class are encouraged to use Microsoft's Power Point program. Students in math and statistics classes use Microsoft's spreadsheet program, Excel.
More than 60 schools teach MOUS in some classes and have become testing sites for the Microsoft certification programs. Across Philadelphia to the north, Jules E. Mastbaum Vocational High School has started to teach its students Microsoft applications that are part of MOUS tests. Each student has a thick, hardcover textbook full of examples of how to use Microsoft Word. The courses are replacing outdated ones, like typing and shorthand.
"We were using old electric typewriters," said Donna Velez, a senior at Mastbaum.
Teaching students how to set tabs is not exactly what most educators have in mind when speaking about integrating technology into the curriculum. Instead of teaching children how to turn on computers, how to surf the Web or how to master software, most proponents of educational technology say they see computers as a springboard for learning math, science, literature and history. They want students to use the Internet for creating their own projects instead of learning the mechanics of a particular application. They want children to use software that will reinforce lessons they have been taught by their teachers.
Teachers and students at both Mastbaum and St. Maria Goretti defend their insistence on Microsoft training.
"Any job you go for now, Microsoft programs are what are used," said Dana Cocco, a senior at St. Maria Goretti who works part time in a dental office, where she has already started using Microsoft Excel. She passed the MOUS test for Excel in November. Elissa Calabro, another senior, passed the Word test. "It boosted my confidence a lot," she said.
Roseann Whelan, the chairwoman of the health and physical education department at St. Maria Goretti, said that its focus has propelled the school into a new era. Encircled by a chain-link fence, it stands in the middle of a working-class community. For years, the number of students was dwindling. But now it is teaching skills sought by students and parents, and enrollment has started to go up.
To Ms. Whelan, teaching Microsoft programs is exactly what a high school should be doing -- even if it means teaching students to put tabs in a document. "The computer is about problem-solving," she said. "It's teaching them to find the resources needed to solve problems."
Skeptics counter that computers are much more about companies making profits than about education. Who, they ask, gains the most from MOUS? The students -- who are learning skills that may be outdated in a few years -- or Microsoft and the companies that need people who are trained on its software?
Rukeyser of Learning in the Real World has a hunch. "Sounds like the next generation of linotype operators," he said.
In 1993, a few years before Clinton set his year 2000 deadline for computers in the classroom, a group of governors gathered in Charlottesville, Va., to draw up a list of goals pegged to the dawn of the century. That list, called Goals 2000, outlined eight lofty education objectives, including the eradication of violence in schools, vast improvements in student competency in a wide range of subjects and an increase in graduation rates to 90 percent of high-school students. Today, as efforts to wire classrooms have largely succeeded, the expectations set by Goals 2000 are still far from being realized. The difference in the two initiatives' progress makes many teachers wince, even those who are pioneering computer use. It also fuels arguments that the money used to wire schools could have been better spent elsewhere.
Nellen of Murry Bergtraum High School, for one, votes for much smaller classes. "If I had a class of four or five students," he said, "I wouldn't need computers." He uses them, he said, as a counterattack against an educational system that puts 35 students in his classroom. Ms. Pepe of Sapphire Elementary would rather have a reduction to 18 students a class. "I would choose that over more computers," she said.
Ms. Roberts, of the Clinton administration, balks at even considering this an either/or situation. "We shouldn't have to make those kinds of choices," she said. Instead, she points to success stories.
One is the Advanced Technologies Academy, a new high school in Las Vegas with gleaming hallways, high-speed Internet connections and more computers than students. In 1996, when Vice President Gore was looking for a school to spotlight as an example of how computer technology can enhance education, he visited the academy.
At A-Tech, as it is called, the Internet and computer are incorporated into almost every class. Students in business communications classes use computers to present charts and use the Internet to research collaborative projects that are published on the Web. Students in chemistry classes create animated examples of atomic theories they have learned in class.
Whether computers are responsible for A-Tech's success is an open question. The school is situated in a part of Las Vegas with diverse income levels, and has won its share of attention from school-district budget makers. The school oozes money. The floors are shining and spotless; the ficus trees in the atrium have been freshly trimmed; the computers are top of the line.
"If you put all these computers into the schools, you are at least setting the stage for students to advance themselves," said Carvin, of the Benton Foundation, the communications policy group.
His hope, he said, is that A-Tech's academic success can be replicated at schools across the country. But unless teachers are given the training to use the technology appropriately, his fear is that the 8.2 million computers now sitting in public schools might go to waste.
"It really makes you wonder," Carvin said. "If you are going to spend billions of dollars wiring all these classrooms, is it going to make any difference if teachers are still going to teach the way they did 30 years ago?"
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
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Computers in the Classroom
Many educators, politicians and parents believe that the classroom of the 21st century should be wired, and that lessons be technologically savvy. Here is a look at the state of computer technology in public schools today.