SRI International Issues Report on Transforming Teaching and Learning with Multimedia Technology

Report Assesses the Success of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network's Multimedia Project for Education
 
Menlo Park, Calif. (January 26, 1999) -- SRI International, a leading research institute based in Silicon Valley, today issued its official mid-term report on the Challenge 2000 Multimedia Project (MMP), part of a $20 million project funded by Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network and intended to "spark an educational renaissance" in Silicon Valley's classrooms. Beginning in October of 1995, nine school districts - comprising 35 public schools, one private school, 1,200 teachers and 23,000 students - received nearly 200 computers, over $100,000 in mini-grants and on-going training and support from the MMP to support multimedia projects within the classroom. The SRI report suggests that the introduction of technology into the classroom leads to more student-centered learning, engages students in more challenging work, and results in increased collaboration with classmates, and higher expectations regarding student performance
 
The SRI International report looks at a broad array of school performance indicators to assess the MMP's impact and provide information to help achieve and refine its goals. This report highlights the positive impact that technology can have on student learning at all levels, clearly indicating that the MMP's goals closely mirror the school reform goals set by the U.S. Department of Education, which provides major funding to the MMP.
 
As part of the MMP, teachers and students developed multimedia projects such as animated presentations, graphics, videos and Web pages to convey information. Most of these projects, such as animated presentations about local California history or videos about Medieval Europe, involved off-line research as well as on-line activities. Students were required to plan their projects from storyboarding to final production, and acquired the ability to use new research and production tools such as CD-ROMs, hypermedia authoring programs and Internet search engines
 
"The driving force behind the MMP was the realization that children living in Silicon Valley - arguably the world's cradle of high technology and innovation - had extremely limited access to computers, the World Wide Web, educational software and on-line research tools," said Barbara Means, Ph.D., vice president of SRI International's Policy Division. "What we found in analyzing the MMP is that the introduction of technology into the classroom does not supplant off-line learning activities, such as reading, but rather augments them."
 
The SRI International report found that on the whole, the use of technology in the classroom raised the level of student performance. For example, students spent more time reading because they were conducting research for the projects over the Internet. The use of technology was particularly beneficial to students with limited English proficiency and special education needs. The following are among the other benefits of bringing technology into the classroom: