Apple calls Teaching, Learning & Technology A Planning Guide an interactive kit. It's a kit designed to help educators and administrators become change agents for technology in their schools. It includes a paper-based planning guide, reproducible masters of planning templates and a CD-ROM.
The CD-ROM program is a multimedia presentation that consists of three major components; a Research Center, a Planning Process Guide and a Presentation Maker.
The Research Center is something akin to a multimedia slide show. This branch of the program hinges on case studies of three schools that are integrating technology into their curriculums with great success. The Research Centers major strength is that the material it presents through short video clips can serve as inspiration to public servants tired of hearing lamentations about the current state of education. However, the Research Centers weakness is in its lack of substance, as this component motivates much more than it informs.
Each of the case studies shows how computers act as the elixir, reforming the schools one by one. Since Apple has set out to prove that technology has a key role to play in all the latest educational trends, each of the case studies ties computer-use to a few catch phrases. For instance, one case study proves that technology is vital in individualized learning while another shows its imperative role in cooperative learning. Interviews with teachers and administrators in these cutting edge environments also serve to make the case for the computers role in active learning and interdisciplinary studies. Finally, the computer is also positioned as a key tool for the instructors desktop; allowing for better planning and cross-district electronic communication. Since support for most of these points is put forth via five to seven minute digital movies, the slick vignettes start to reveal their commercial slant early.
For some instructors the idealism in the case studies may come as a refreshing change and as something as a pep talk for embracing the information age. After all, the instructors in the program really do seem to love their jobs. But for those who are left feeling propagandized by the research center there are, luckily, other components of the program which offer less style and more substance to which these disillusioned can turn.
The Planning Process Guide is less of a slide show and more of a workbook. It takes visionaries from that initial vision through evaluation and back to vision again. The guide, which makes optimum use of multimedias flexibility, is offered both on-line and in a bound manual. Apple has provided templates, both in the form of paper-based reproducible forms that you can copy and hand out to fellow committee members and as on-line notepads in case the committee wants to network electronic contributions or gather round a monitor to wax philisophic. The Planning Process Guide gives tips on everything from choosing a leader at the projects inception to keeping the vision alive when all the original goals have been met.
The third component, known as the Presentation Maker, is designed to help committee members cut and paste elegant presentations so that the committee can apply for (and hopefully get awarded) the funds they will eventually need if they hope to make their vision a reality. This is an effective tool that would aid committee members to create the kind of presentation materials that sway grant boards.
The program will be less useful to individual faculty members or several faculty working in conjunction with students and staff who can work closely and interact regularly. In less formal situations such as this, the planning documents might become unnecessary busy-work. Some of the implementation, planning, identification of funding sources and revisement strategies would also be tedious for projects that have more natural courses of implementation (as in the case of a faculty member who has students use a simple new program as part of their course work).
The guide would be most useful for committees that have poorly defined member roles and relationships. Overall the program is well-produced and would serve as an excellent guide for facilitating interactions among enthusiastic and idealistic committee members while keeping them on track to the common goal of technology integration.
Teaching, Learning & Technology A Planning Guide is available from the MCLI Library.
The Internet Connection at MCLI is
Alan Levine --}
Comments to alan.levine@domail.maricopa.edu
URL: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/labyforum/win96/win96L7.html