In a typical K-12 U.S. classroom, one teacher instructs about 15 to 25 students per class, but cannot possibly divide his or her time evenly among all learners. Some excel, some pass, some are left behind.

Students engaged in their work (Photo credit: Extra Ketchup)

Enter education technology (or “ed tech”), the much-touted panacea for all that befalls the American teacher. Hailed as the “great equalizer” for its ability to provide universal access to information via the Internet, ed tech has been, in practice, more hype than reality. The problem is that, historically, education technology added more maintenance, upgrade, and teaching burdens to an already overburdened — and often technologically under-prepared and un-enthused — teaching cohort, while failing to meet the specific needs of highly particular, and easily distracted students.

That’s about to change in a big way, say ed tech proponents. Educationtechnology is now gaining traction as the great personalizer too.

Peter Cohen, CEO of Pearson School, explained to Education Week, “Having printed instruction programs fixed in time doesn’t allow us to modify them so students get the most up-to-date work. It doesn’t allow us to capture student data so you can personalize the program for each student. Technology allows you to do both of those things.”

Which is why, Cohen notes, digital learning has evolved beyond static e-books that are simply PDFs of a printed textbook (though those still exist) to include fully interactive content designed specifically for mobile devices. For example, in January, 2012 Pearson, McGraw-Hill Education and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced partnerships with Apple to produce exclusive content through the new iBooks 2 platform, as well as premium programs that are fully adaptive and data-driven, such as Pearson’s SuccessMaker  for K-8 reading and math.

Ed tech proponents see this sea change as akin to the e-commerce revolution. Most of us are accustomed to how e-commerce sites personalize our experience. Amazon actively “learns” about our preferences based on our buying and browsing behavior, and then makes corresponding recommendations. Ditto for Netflix, which personalizes recommendations based on our genre preferences and rental histories.

In a similar way, education technology now personalizes learning by enabling students to learn at their own pace, in their own way. Most important, say ed tech proponents, education technology enables students to deploy the medium that works best for them, such as small group instruction at interactive smart boards or one-to-one computer-assisted tutoring.

A few cherry-picked studies and reports have shown that one-to-one computer-assisted learning – known in the ed tech biz as “personalized digital learning” – particularly improves student engagement and performance.  In one study, Pearson’s SuccessMaker was shown to improve reading achievement of third-grade and seventh-grade students by nearly 60 percent relative to their peers using print programs. At Indianapolis’ Southport Middle School, students who participated in Power of U – a digitally rich personalized middle school math program developed by McGraw-Hill Education with partners CTB and Promethean – improved their math grades from Cs and Ds to As and Bs.

According to ed tech proponents, the reason for these anecdotal success stories is that personalized digital learning upends the traditional one-size-fits-all, teach-to-the-middle pedagogy that originated in the 19^th Century. According to the ed tech industry’s most fervent backers — including Netflix‘s Reed Hastings, whom I profiled here and here — the top-down model of instruction isn’t working in 21^st-century classrooms. This view is shared by the Obama administration – which released its National Education Technology Plan in 2010 — as well as a growing number of educational companies and organizations, including the Alliance for Excellent Education and thePartnership for 21^st Century Skills.

Providing more objective ammunition to this expanding POV is a 2011 Forrester report, “Schools Move Beyond the Basics: Competition Will Drive Technology Into the Education Market,” which states that teaching focused on interactivity and engagement sparks creative learning. The report also emphasized the role that student data – obtained through frequent real-time assessment – plays in delivering effective personalized learning experiences.

There are side benefits of one-on-one computer-assisted learning as well.Bryan Goodwin found several such benefits in his summary of studies on “ubiquitous computing initiatives.” For example, Goodwin notes that “a four-year study of 5,000 middle school students in Texas found that those engaged in laptop immersion programs were less likely to have disciplinary problems (but slightly more likely to be absent from school) than students in schools without laptops (Shapley et al., 2009).”

Goodwin added, “the Texas study also found that the technology skills of students in the laptop programs improved significantly— so much so that after three years, low-income students in the laptop schools displayed the same levels of technology proficiency as wealthier students in the control schools (Shapley et al., 2009).”

Moreover, notes Goodwin, “proponents of one-to-one programs also assert that such programs create savings in other areas, including reduced costs for textbooks, paper, assessments, and paperwork, as well as a reduction in disciplinary actions (Greaves, Hayes, Wilson, Gielniak, & Peterson, 2010).”

Nevertheless, a key question remains: does today’s tech-driven classroom, with its computer-wielding students fashioning Facebook pages, creating PowerPoint presentations, and undertaking one-to-one tests and lessons — as teachers roam as coaches — consistently improve student performance across regions and demographics? Especially in the fundamentals of reading, writing and math?

In his review of studies, Goodwin writes that “most large-scale evaluations have found mixed or no results for one-to-one initiatives. After five years of implementation of the largest one-to-one initiative in the United States, Maine’s statewide program, evaluations found little effect on student achievement—with one exception, writing, where scores edged up 3.44 points (in a range of 80 points) in five years (Silvernail & Gritter, 2007) … An evaluation of Michigan’s one-to-one laptop program found similarly mixed results (Lowther, Strahl, Inan, & Bates, 2007).”  Moreover, Goodwin notes, the previously referenced study of Texas middle school students “found slightly higher student growth in mathematics, but no higher growth in reading for students in laptop programs (Shapley et al., 2009). And unlike in Maine, writing scores were actually lower (although not significantly so) for students in the laptop group.”

Goodwin ends his seminal article for Educational Leadership Magazine with this much-publicized caveat: ”Rather than being a cure-all or silver bullet, one-to-one laptop programs may simply amplify what’s already occurring — for better or worse –in classrooms, schools, and districts.”

Faced with such mixed evidence, ed tech evangelists argue that, at minimum, personalized digital learning programs still help teachers customize learning paths for each student. And, at their best, evangelists argue, these paths adjust in real time based on student progress, much like how a GPS re-calibrates directions when a driver deviates from the original path. Moreover, these automated self-learning systems, proponents argue, significantly reduce the administrative load that teachers ordinarily encounter, such as grading homework assignments by hand or manually organizing students in work groups according to skill levels. Instead, ed tech proponents argue, digital learning programs allow teachers to do what they do best: teach and coach students.

According to the New York Times, the problem with even these claims is that no one has been able to accurately determine whether the academic improvements, when they do occur, are specific to technology, or whether they are caused by other variables, including improved teacher training. It may be that the buck stops — as it often does with ed tech reform — with the human interface. If the teacher is enthusiastic about, and skilled at, integrating technology into the classroom, the results are likely to be better.

Although one wonders, how enthusiastic can teachers be with today’s ed tech revolution when it is likely to increase their work load, and, perhaps, put them out of a job?