Educational technology has the following benefits:

• Brings the world to the classroom. No matter what their socioeconomic or ethnic background, and no matter where they live, the learning field for all students can be leveled. Students are introduced to people, places, and ideas they might otherwise not be exposed to;

• Enables students to learn by doing. Studies have confirmed what many instinctively knew -- that children who are actively engaged in learning, learn more. The effects are particularly noticeable among students who were not high achievers under more traditional methods. Networked projects, where students work with others and conduct their own research and analysis, can transform students into committed and exhilarated learners;

• Encourages students and parents with limited or no English skills to learn English, by engaging them in interactive learning;

• Makes parents partners in their children's education by connecting the school with homes, libraries, or other access ports;

• Makes it possible for educators to teach at more than one location simultaneously. Vastly expands opportunities for students in small, remote areas, linking them to students in more diversely populated, urban and suburban areas;

• Enables educators to accommodate the varied learning styles and paces of learning within the classroom. This makes available individualised instruction techniques that are a proven factor in student achievement;

• Encourages students to become lifelong learners, who can access, analyse, and synthesize information from a variety of sources;

• Enables administrators and educators to reduce time spent on administration and recordkeeping, increasing efficiency so they can spend more time with students;

• Makes students proficient in the basic technological skills needed to take their place in society, whether they enter the working world directly after high school or pursue further formal education.

EMERGING CONSENSUS ON NEED FOR TECHNOLOGY LITERACY

Educators, business people, parents and students all agree that integrating technology into classrooms curricula will increase the educational achievement of the nations K-12 students. Recent reports have confirmed this fact:

• Improved Outcomes. Technology supporting instruction improved student outcomes in language arts, math, social studies and science;

• More Effective Teaching. Multimedia instruction, compared to more conventional approaches, produced time savings of 30 percent, improved achievement and cost savings of 30 to 40 percent, and a direct positive link between the amount of interactivity provided and instructional effectiveness;

• Higher Scores. Gains of 80 percent for reading and 90 percent for math when computers were used to assist in the learning process for remedial and low-achieving students, and;

• Less Expensive. Computer-based instruction was a less expensive approach to raise math scores than peer tutoring, adult tutoring, reducing class size, and increasing the length of the school day.

There Is No Formula For Using Technology In The Classroom:

There is no one fixed prescription for integratinginformation technologies into daily learning in classrooms. Local innovation and private sector ingenuity may continue to lead to even more powerful new applications of information technologies in the years ahead.

Coordination Is Necessary:

The full potential of the technological transformation in schools will be realized only if teachers, parents and administrators, and the learning resources available throughout each community and the world actually work together to make the new information technologies a real "kickstart" for improved learning by students.

Education Leaders Agree:

Numerous other reports agree that we can bring the same spirit of innovation and technological advance that has already made our workplaces the most advanced in the world in the new information age to every classroom in schools and colleges.

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