The expansion of information and communicative technologies has facilitated a shift from teacher-directed to student-centered learning. The shift has caused educators and administrators to redesign not only what content is taught, but how the classroom is designed to function. The underlying concepts behind this change are beliefs that students should be active participants in what they learn, curriculum should be specific to each student’s needs rather than the group at large, and curriculum should not be restricted by time or space but enhanced by cultural diversity.

Perhaps the most dramatic climate change in our classrooms is resulting from the shift to student-centered classrooms. The motivation behind this shift is complex: “…a shift in our understanding of curriculum design to accommodate learner-centeredness will provide the framework for preparing graduates for a lifetime of learning. Learner-centered curriculum proposes to create highly developed individuals, providing them the skills to continue creating learning experiences, digest current knowledge, and create new knowledge within the curriculum itself” [ECI]. At its essence is the desire to teach students how to learn, how to problem-solve, how to create expectations for their own learning and evaluate the progress toward those goals. Additionally, proponents of student-centered, or constructivist, learning agree that knowledge exists only in relationship to the learner, and multiple perspectives create more than one “universal truth”. Therefore, student-centered learning often results in the study of multiple perspectives of traditional issues for a broader understanding of the human experience [ECI].

The effect on a traditional classroom is multi-faceted, impacting the physical climate, student motivation, and degree of student involvement. Whereas the knowledge was previously passed from the teacher to the student, passively, today’s classroom focuses on multi-directional knowledge flow: from teacher to student, student to student, and student to teacher. All participants are responsible for assembling and transferring information to the other participants. Therefore, instead of visualizing a classroom of orderly students quietly taking notes from the teacher, you must visualize an active classroom where students are seeking information from various sources, both in traditional print and through information and communicative technologies. As students are creating their own learning experiences within the guidelines set by the teacher in regards to standards of assessment, they should be more motivated to accomplish the curriculum goals. Finally, with the active pursuit of knowledge by the students rather than the passive acceptance of truths decreed by the teacher, students must be involved in the classroom for any learning to occur.

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Project Based Learning

One model of student-centered learning is project or project-based learning. Within this model, “pupils formulate a problem statement to be investigated, and find and compile information that can be used to elaborate and answer the principle questions raised by the topic of concern. Learning facts and relations between concepts takes place as the pupils pose questions, confirm or reject each other’s suggestions and explain their position” [FM]. The teacher’s role is a facilitator, to focus the students’ principle questions, guide in the acquisition of knowledge, and provide feedback in regards to progress and accuracy.

Schools that have espoused project learning cite its ability to help students see the connection between what they learn at school and the “real world” as one of its greatest assets [CMBA]. Consider the Minnesota Business Academy, where students work in teams on cross-curricular projects with real-world applications. Students may be working on would-be monuments, including design, cost, materials, labor, and scale models [CMBA]. At Mountlake Terrace High School in Washington, students are challenged to create the ideal high school for the year 2050. After creating a site plan, making architectural drawings and a physical model, planning a budget, and writing a report, the students present their projects to be judged by local architects[CSP]. In Newport News, Virginia, elementary students with a classmate who has cystic fibrosis explore the causes of the disease, invite in experts as guest speakers, write up their research, create multimedia presentations to present their findings, and sell pledges to and participate in a walkathon to benefit cystic fibrosis research [CSP].

In a typical project-based learning environment, the students’ learning combines printed materials with online material, necessary because of the diversity of student-chosen topics. In a traditional classroom, the limited materials available would dictate what topics the students could choose as an avenue of study. With readily available content on the Internet, the possibilities are not restricted by budget concerns or storage space. Additionally, students can find materials at levels appropriate for all learners in the classroom, essentially differentiating the curriculum to each learner’s appropriate zone of proximal development.

This approach to differentiating curriculum is not isolated to project-based learning. Indeed, it is a growing trend in regular and special education classroom around the globe. The core belief in differentiated curriculum is that course instruction should be modified in accordance with student differences. This does not pertain solely to students who are working below grade level, but also in offering enrichment to students working above grade level.

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Classrooms Without Walls

Information and communicative technologies play two key roles in differentiating curriculum. First, “by using a technology-based management system for screening and diagnostic assessment, educators can aggregate and disaggregate data so as to make data-driven decisions about entire groups of students, as well as for each student’s education. This can help divide and conquer areas of difficulty for the majority of students” [Har]. Essentially, the technology available identifies students’ weaknesses much more quickly than a teacher can, allowing extra time to be spent on remediating those weaknesses. Some of this remediation can also be presented through technology, using computer software to drill students in areas where they need extra practice. Secondly, these technologies make it more feasible for teachers to deliver content at an appropriate level for all learners in a diverse classroom. Through the Internet, teachers can find materials at various reading levels, a necessity as most teachers do not have time to rewrite course materials at various levels.

For the gifted student, information and communicative technologies also function to fulfill needs many school districts can not. Online content can be delivered for enrichment or acceleration in school districts that do not have the staff, materials, or enough student demand to justify a complete gifted track. One such example is Stanford University’s Education Program for Gifted Youth, which provides acceleration in math and physics through the Internet [DZ].

Online content is not the only technology-based method of enriching curriculum for gifted students. Using telementors, providing access to professionals and experts in the subject being taught, collaborating with university professors, and communicating with people from cultures around the globe are all benefits arising from the technology available to today’s learners. In essence, technology has opened the doors of the classroom to the world, creating a space where diverse learners can connect and cooperate on a common goal or interest. Before the access to these technologies, it wasn’t feasible to always bring in a guest speaker, if an expert in the field of study were available nearby. It wasn’t possible to find an appropriate mentor for each student in a small community. And working together with other students could only happen if two groups of students in close proximity to each other were pursing similar projects at the same time. However, because of the increasing effectiveness of communicative technologies, these concerns of time and space become less of a hindrance.

Online networks of educators and their classrooms have become instrumental in achieving these types of enrichment. One such example, the International Education and Resource Network [iEARN], acts as a resource for educators who want to participate in global projects. By going to the organization’s website, www.iearn.org, teachers can find projects in various disciplines or participate in learning circles with classes from several countries. Students can participate in projects that help them learn about values, superstitions, customs, heroes, art, and personal experiences of students in other cultures, promoting an understanding of and respect for diverse populations. Teachers who are looking for mentors for their students, whether long-term or for a particular project, can visit http://telementor.org and match their students with global experts in the field being studied. Utilizing these resources helps students see their learning as less restrictive, not contained within a classroom and important only to them and the teacher.

Even though many schools are embracing widespread changes facilitated by the increase in information and communicative technologies, the change in other schools is more subtle. Schools that have not made the jump to project-based learning or classrooms without borders are still adapting curriculum as a result of those technologies. English, math, social studies, and science curricula have all been affected because students now have tools to help them with lower-order skills that previously had to be mastered before higher-order skills could be taught. As a result, some educators and scientists are advocating that schools now start teaching the higher-order concepts first, taking a top-down rather than a bottom-up approach.

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Content Specific Changes

English teachers can attest to the fact that today’s students spend more time on the revision process of writing because word processing has made the process quick and convenient. Instead of recopying entire documents by hand or retyping them to add or delete information or reorganize, students can simply reopen the document, make the changes, and reprint the paper. For students who have trouble holding a pencil, a keyboard can be an easier way to complete the writing task itself. Students with disabilities that prevent them from typing or spelling correctly can use voice-recognition software. As a result, today’s English curricula might focus more on higher-level processes of revising because the physical process of writing is more convenient.

The changes in technology have also shifted the types of literacies we now expect students to master. Whereas in the past, traditional texts were emphasized in the classroom, multiple types of “texts” are now highlighted, and students must know how to read and write these types of texts to communicate in today’s world. This theory of “multiliteracies”, highly advocated by The New London Group, proposes that students must be literate in web pages, videos, mp3 files, animation, and gestures to contend with our current society. Multimedia projects are embedded in the English curricula so that all types of literacy have equal focus [Kis].

And as the English curricula have been affected, so have others. The world of science has been opened up to students in new and exciting ways. The main impacts of information and communicative technologies have been in three areas: in inquiry-based curricula, in electronic field trips using telecommunications, and in network science. Although science curricula began to shift to hands-on learning in the 1960’s, widespread changes did not occur as easily until technology became more accessible to schools around the globe. From the United States to the Netherlands to Japan, educators have realized the need to allow students to explore integrated sciences through experimentation rather than by simply studying theories and facts [Kne]. Students can participate in actual experiments online, in projects ranging from tracking the migratory path of butterflies to tracking seismic movement at Mount St. Helens via web cam. Through these projects, they are learning not only science, but social studies and math as well. Students who are studying insects can send their specimens to the University of Illinois Beckman Institute and view them under the electron microscope, manipulating the microscope through their own computers [BIL]. Computer software can now simulate dissections and experiments for students who choose not to use real specimens or who do not have access to labs. While these examples are brief, the true benefit of the expansion of ICT is that it allows students to collaborate with real scientists on a variety of projects that encourage students to see the real-world applications of what they study in the classroom.

The effects on the math classroom are diverse, relating to both skills and how students view concepts. Most observable to any outsider, technology has changed math instruction by removing the restraints of computation. Students can now solve complex computations by computer rather than by hand. The shift, therefore, emphasizes the problem-solving and real-world applications of mathematics. Students can now go beyond what they would have been able to do if they were still computing by hand, so the curriculum can be enriched because of the time-saving technology devices. Technology-enriched activities “can facilitate mathematical connections in a variety of ways as: (a) linking multiple representations, (b) interconnecting and integrating mathematical topics and ideas, and (c) connecting mathematics to real-world phenomena. Therefore a collection of representations for a certain concept is richer, providing more access points for diverse learners at different levels of their understandings” [Ala].

Software today can help students create and manipulate constructions and see how the mathematical properties change through those manipulations. Graphs, translations, reflections, rotations, dilations, calculations, differentiations, all are more tangible and manageable with the aid of today’s software. Web sites, such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, [NCTM] provide educators with math and technology related resources to use in the classroom, ranging from games to lesson plans to online projects.

Many of these same changes have occurred in the social studies classrooms. The internet is a powerful tool for communicating with diverse cultures to experience, firsthand, the peoples and places of our world. Because children learn best through personal experiences, opening up the doors of the world and letting them talk to children from around the world, collaborating on projects, collecting data for science experiments, sharing their artwork and stories – these make the social studies curriculum not distinct but a part of other curricula.

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