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by The Milken Exchange on Education Technology and Peter D. Hart Research Associates

8/6/99 | With investments in learning technology reaching $5.4 billion this year comes an important question: Does education technology work? In other words, are we spending money wisely to achieve higher academic outcomes for students?

This 75-page publication, titled "Transforming Learning Through Technology" outlines a vision for states that is educationally sound and technologically advanced, and aims to lead to a better system of learning. It features a series of writers, from educational psychologist Barbara Means of the Center for Technology in Learning (SRI International) to mathematician and MIT professor Seymour Papert, who envisions school as "a place where students learn, in large part, by working on projects that come out of their own interests -- their own visions of a place where they want to be, a thing they want to make, or a subject they want to explore. Adding technology to the equation makes possible projects that are both very difficult and very engaging."

This publication develops a course of action for states to take so that technology -- properly managed and applied -- will have the potential to restore rigor to children's learning.