Technology and Theatre Pedagogy: A Call from the Trenches

In a white paper on assessment and technology in the new millennium, Michael Russell (2000) asks us to imagine a world in which eraser-capped pencils were new and expensive. The pencils were linked to dramatic improvements in writing, penmanship, and learning. On standardized testing day, however, all students returned to quill and ink pens, and those students who had benefited from the new technologies performed poorly when compared to their non-pencil trained counterparts. In the new millennium, pencils are now common but are rapidly being replaced by computers. Many studies (e.g. Daiute 1985; Littleton and Light 1999; Bolter 2000; diSessa 2000) have found that new informational technologies bring similar benefits to student learning as did pencils. On test days, however, computers are usually forbidden, and the students accustomed to new technologies perform poorly

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