Constructivism, Technology, and the Future of Classroom Learning

Abstract

In order to develop our view of the revolution that technology is creating in education, it is helpful to briefly consider how technology has revolutionized American culture, and how it has left our educators rushing to catch up. In barely 20 years, electronic technology has dramatically penetrated into every area of society, and every aspect of our social and cultural lives. Television was the initiator. Broadcast images inaugurated a new, immediate, and powerful way of experiencing ideas and events. Television rediscovered and recast the world as a direct experience, and liberated it from the confines of text and static illustrations. It became possible for events a world away to appear in our homes, with all their intensity and vividness intact. Computers made it possible for vast amounts of information, from airline reservations to the contents of encyclopedias, to be made instantly available and modified with a keystroke. Writing became a matter of screens and printers, and text became permanently flexible, always ready to be instantly changed. The very nature of work changed, with an increasing demand for workers who could master the new technologies and use them to conduct business that formerly did not require computers at all.