President Obama and the nation’s governors met recently to discuss the preparation of students for college and careers. This isn’t the first administration to address this and it’s not a new topic, but as test scores of American children continue to lag behind their counterparts in other countries an increased emphasis is being place on finding a solution (i.e. billions of dollars). Not surprisingly it’s not just the government who is involved in this effort. Industry and media are playing a big role as organizations such as Intel, Sony, Discovery and Time Warner are trying to reform education through technology. Technology needs to fit with the student and teacher experiences and the content they are expected to learn. Technology alone is not the answer to improving education.

Technology is already finding its way into classrooms to various degrees. Wireless, projection, and virtual technologies have uses as teaching tools while the internet offers access to vast amounts of information (and content). Technology has reached a point that it’s easy to see its value in schools by providing obvious and confirmed benefits to students. I have experience with this first hand as our company recently worked on a wireless tablet classroom system for eInstruction that brings a number of technologies to the classroom with the goal of keeping students engaged while allowing teachers to focus on teaching. As technologies evolve and become cheaper to provide, they will undoubtedly continue to flow into the class environment.

While there are successes, we’ve been surprised by how many stories we’ve heard about technologies that failed once brought into the classroom. They didn’t live up to their potential either because learning didn’t happen, the students were not engaged, or worse yet they were a hindrance rather than a benefit to teachers. It’s clear, as in most areas, that technology for technology’s sake doesn’t necessary lead to success, yet we continue to see people trying to force technology into the classroom without understanding the complex balance between students and their interests and experiences and the content that needs to be taught.

Two factors must be understood that directly impact the success of a technology in the classroom:

1. The students

2. The education goals

Students have changed dramatically in the last 10 years. The explosion of the internet, mobile technologies, social networking (Twitter, Facebook) has changed how children access and share information, their expectations for feedback and their ability to focus on a variety of activities at the same time. Additionally, responsibility for student success has shifted from the student and parents to the school and specifically the teacher. Programs such as “No Child Left Behind” have benefits, but they also have been found to reduce the responsibility that the students feel for their own grades and transferred it to someone else. What is clear is that the student of today is more different from students in the past than ever before. The same teaching techniques and tools used in the past are not going to keep kids engaged and learning.

An important aspect that gets overlooked in the use of technology in the classroom is how well it helps to keep kids engaged and providing information to them in a way that they are comfortable learning. Education professionals have started pushing for this awareness and awakening within the education system. In a recent article by Stephen Heppell, he talked about the role of technology in students’ lives as fundamental to who they are when he said that “turned off devices equals turned off children.” Read more here. It’s a strong point to consider related to how technology could be applied in a manner that students are comfortable using.

Educational goals have changed and are expanding to include a number of additional skills that students will need to achieve in the world we will be living in. Teaching skills such as “innovation,” “communication,” “information/media literacy,” and “global awareness” are being emphasized along with learning the core curriculum. Educators are finding that these skills cannot be taught using the same approaches that other skills have been taught using in the past.

This is not a knock on teachers and their knowledge of the subjects. It’s a call to product developers and technologists that they must consider both the students and teachers of today. Tech futurists need to better understand the additional skills necessary to be taught when considering how a technology can and should be introduced to the classroom. Otherwise, the majority of technologies in the classroom are destined to get a failing grade.