School of the Future = School of the Past. Adopting Microcomputers in Ways that Will and Won't Work.

One belief that seems to underlie many people's thoughts, either explicitly or implicitly, about the future of schools and the role of technology, is that computer technology will make the school of the future vastly different from schools of the present. Many people have made this statement in many different ways, and not always happily. Some fear that it will mean the loss of important values in student-teacher relationships. Others see computer technology as something that will enhance learning, provide better measures of performance, and allow more flexible kinds of instruction. Consider, however, an antithetical statement: that schools will not change under the impact of computer technology. The school of the past is barely distinguishable from the school of the present. Despite all of the significant advances in information technology, little has changed throughout educational history, and the computer is only the latest advance in a long line of new products. Before computers, for example, there was radio. Radios did not change instruction, yet examining statements by some of the pioneers of radio about how it would affect learning, leads one to believe it should have had a great impact. Also, reading Edison regarding the phonograph shows that its impact turned out very differently from what was first thought. Computer technology, like all the rest, will leave the school untouched. Though both viewpoints presented above are rather extreme, both have a great deal of truth. Consider, first, the view that technology is going to revolutionize the structure of schooling. At the bottom of this argument stands the pro-