Educational Software

Abstract

This article discusses K–12 educational software in the United States. Educational software began in the 1940s as a military tool, but soon it was adopted by colleges and universities before finding its way into the K–12 market. Beginning in the 1980s, educational software such as typing tutors and reading programs was introduced into K–12 schools along with inexpensive Apple or IBM computer hardware. Most school districts believed that educational software would give teachers and students new pedagogical tools that, when used in conjunction with traditional classroom instruction, would improve student test scores and better equip them for what was becoming an increasingly computer-dominated workplace. With the advent of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, educational software began to evolve beyond the floppy disk and the CD-ROM. In the twenty-first century, some experts argue that educational software is evolving yet again as it makes use of the ascendant social software paradigm and concepts used in video games. Meanwhile, debate about the impact of educational software on student achievement continues, with some critics urging schools to move away from what they perceive as "edutainment" products and refocus on more tried-and-tested methods of instruction.

Overview

Mainframes. Educational software has gone through three distinct phases, starting with the mainframe phase. Beginning in the 1940s, the US government used analog computers to power flight simulators to train American pilots during World War II, while the British initially developed digital (vacuum tube-based) computers like Colossus to help break German codes (Copeland, 2006).

These massive computers, or mainframes, were used primarily by governments and higher education through the early 1970s. Programs resided on these massive computers, and users in government and colleges and universities could access them through terminals. Colleges and universities, later the early adopters of computer and Internet technology, were also pioneers in educational software. The first recognizable computer-assisted learning tool was PLATO III, the brainchild of University of Illinois physicist Chalmers Sherwin and his lab assistant, Donald Bitzer. PLATO I was launched as a pilot project in 1960, and by the time PLATO III (the third-generation of the technology) was launched in 1969, the system allowed instructors to program their own lesson modules. PLATO III was accessed by students at the university through custom-built terminals. Similar examples were found across other colleges and universities in the United States in the 1970s.

Personal Computers. The second phase for educational software was the personal computer phase. In January 1975, Popular Electronics magazine advertised a kit that would enable readers to build their own personal computer, the Altair 8800. The response was overwhelming, with thousands of orders flooding in for the new computing machine. In Boston, Harvard students Bill Gates and Paul Allen saw an opportunity to write an operating system for the new machines, and they talked the creators of the Altair 8800 into shipping the computers with something Gates and Allen called Altair BASIC. Soon Gates and Allen formed a new company around their software and called it Micro-soft (later changed to Microsoft). Two years later, in 1977, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak's new company, Apple, introduced the Apple II personal computer, which featured cutting-edge color graphics. It became the symbol of the personal computer revolution.

With the growing user base for the Apple II, as well as the introduction of increasingly powerful PCs running increasingly powerful incarnations of Microsoft's operating system, software developers began to see myriad business opportunities in three different markets: business, home, and education.

As the business world adopted the personal computer on a grand scale, education leaders began to advocate for its use in schools. Their logic was simple: students should learn computer skills in schools so that they won't be left behind when they enter the job market. When the competitive dust had settled, Apple was the most successful in getting its more beginner-friendly computers (complete with a graphical user interface) into elementary schools with other PC manufacturers such as IBM captured the majority of the high school market. As late as 1995, five years after the Apple II was discontinued, it still accounted for nearly 38 percent of all school computers (Flynn, 1995).

Beginning in earnest in the early 1980s, a wide variety of educational software became available for home and school use. Reading and math software was especially prominent in elementary schools, while typing tutors and office applications (such as word processors and spreadsheets) were fixtures in middle and high school computer labs. The accepted wisdom was that educational software was helping both to modernize the American educational system and to make quality education more widely accessible. As a 2007 study by the US Department of Education and reported by ABC News noted, "Almost every school district in the country has bought computer software that's supposed to help kids do better in math or reading" (ABC News, 2007).

Still, despite the advances made by computer technology in the 1980s, there were inherent limitations to the educational software of that time. The content of the computer-based lessons was limited because it was run from floppy disks or, later, CD-ROMs running on one computer or on one server in a school. Even client-server computing, which made it possible for students sitting at terminals in different classrooms to go through the same software lessons, was only able to network students at that particular school.

The World Wide Web. In the early 1990s, the Internet began to transform the educational software industry, making it web-based rather than simply computer-based. This ushered in the third phase of educational software: the World Wide Web phase. Using the Internet, students were able to tap into a global community of teachers and learners to expand their educational horizons. And teachers began to join together across the globe to share resources and advice.

While educational software in CD-ROM form didn't disappear, it was supplemented by a bounty of free, quality educational content available to anyone with an Internet connection. As a result, the market for traditional, media-based educational software softened. The New York Times reported the situation as of 2005:

Educational software makers in the consumer market are not alone in their struggles. Those making software for schools have suffered too, executives and analysts said, from cutbacks in school budgets. Overall spending on software by K–12 schools was $2.3 billion in 2004, up 2 percent from a year earlier but down from $3.4 billion in 2001, according to ThinkEquity Partners (Richtel, 2005).

The reach of the World Wide Web quickly expanded—some would say exploded—across the educational landscape: while only 35 percent of public schools were wired in 1994, the number climbed to nearly 100 percent by 2009 (Wells & Lewis, 2006, p. 4) with 97 percent of teachers reporting having one or more computers in their classroom every day, and Internet access available for 93 percent of those computers (US Department of Education, 2010, p. 3). Wireless connections to the Internet are becoming the norm due to faster speeds, more flexibility in network configurations, ease of expansion, and lower costs (Walery, 2004). In addition, a NCES 2009 survey found that the ratio of students to instructional computers with Internet access has increased from 3.8 students per computer in 2005 (Wells & Lewis, 2006) to 5.3 students per computer (US Department of Education 2010). The first time NCES measured this ratio was in 1998, and at that time there were 12.1 students per computer. Fast broadband connections provided quicker access to web-based information. A 2012 report by the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA), however, reported that nearly 80 percent of schools surveyed reported that their current broadband connection was unable to meet their needs, and the same percentage of teachers who used online videos in their classrooms reported problems with and disruptions with streaming (Scott, 2012).

In 2016, Education Week reported that US public schools were providing one computer for every five students, and spending $3 billion annually on digital content. During the 2015–16 school year, more state standardized tests for K–8 were administered by technology than by paper and pencil—a first.

Private schools and home schooling families were also taking advantage of the Internet beginning in the 1990s. By 1998, 67 percent of all private schools had Internet access, and among Catholic schools, the number rose to 83 percent (National Center for Education Statistics, 2000, p. 2).

According to overall numbers published by the US Census Bureau, the percentage of American homes with Internet access also kept pace. Access increased from 26.2 percent of homes in 1998 to 54.6 percent in 2003 (the latest year when statistics were available), but in homes with children aged 6–17, the 2003 number was 67 percent (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007). By 2013, According to the Child Trends Data Bank (2013), about 80 percent of all children ages three through seventeen lived in a home with at least one computer, and about 70 percent had access to the Internet. A number of major US cities, including Boston and San Francisco, are bringing free or low-cost wireless Internet access to all their residents.

These trends form a backdrop for the advent of Web-enhanced educational software in the later 1990s. As fast, reasonably priced, and accessible Internet access became available to more and more K–12 students both inside and outside of school, many in the education community began to conceive of ways to use it to improve the state of education in America. Web-based education was one of the ideas discussed during the national conversation about education reform and outcome-based education culminating in the passage of the historic No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Today's new teachers are not considered "fully qualified" unless their teacher training includes at least one course in computer-assisted learning (Herring, Notar & Wilson, 2005).

In the twenty-first century, some experts argue that educational software is evolving yet again as it makes use of the ascendant social software paradigm. Social software comprises Internet tools that facilitate the collaboration between many different users on a given task. Social software itself is the child of the World Wide Web, but as Owen, Grant, Sayers, & Facer (2006) note, it takes the inherent social nature of the Web to a new level:

In the educational arena, we are increasingly witnessing a change in the view of what education is for, with a growing emphasis on the need to support young people not only to acquire knowledge and information, but to develop the resources and skills necessary to engage with social and technical change, and to continue learning throughout the rest of their lives.

In the technological arena, we are witnessing the rapid proliferation of technologies, which are less about 'narrowcasting' to individuals, than the creation of communities and resources in which individuals come together to learn, collaborate and build knowledge (social software).

It is the intersection of these two trends which, we believe, offers significant potential for the development of new approaches to education (Owen et al., 2006, 3).

If past history is any guide, there's little doubt that the educational software community will embrace and profit from this new social software movement. From its early use to break codes and train fighter pilots, through its assimilation of emerging Web technologies and open source philosophies, the creators of educational software have shown an uncanny ability to evolve along with advances in technology.

Indeed some researchers now believe PC-based computer games should be classified as educational software (Wu, Cohoon & Neesen, 2006). One indicator of the blurring of distinctions between games and educational software is that before the September 2007 rollout of the computers that are part of the One Laptop Per Child project, organizers held a three-day "game jam," a software coding session designed to make sure the computers shipped with enough educational games, or "edutainment" (Ames, 2007).

Applications

Free & Open Source Software in Education. Historically, educational software has been proprietary, meaning that its underlying code cannot be modified or improved by teachers or students. Producers of this proprietary (or closed-source) educational software require school districts who want to use their software to purchase it, and then they charge for support, upgrades, and enhancements.

With roots stretching back to the colleges and universities in the 1960s, a radically different vision for educational software emerged in the 1990s. Leaders of the free and open source software (FOSS) movement argued that software—including educational software—should be free to use and free to modify according to local needs. This argument has had immediate resonance in the developing world where countries are at pains merely to feed their populations.

Where schools are concerned, a significant advantage to FOSS educational software is that it typically runs on less-powerful computer hardware than proprietary software, which reduces or even eliminates the need for cash-strapped school districts to upgrade their existing equipment. Instead, those resources can be spent elsewhere. "FOSS is finding greater acceptance in education for many reasons," writes Justin Riddiough of the news site SchoolForge, "the primary being the intersection of dwindling budgets and the need to provide the best software and educational resources available" (cited in Hoover, 2007). In 2012, the United Nations stated that governments worldwide should “seize open source opportunities” in order to become less dependent on software manufacturers (Fox, 2013). Britain’s prime minister David Cameron announced in early 2013 that more universities in the United Kingdom would be joining Futurelearn, which is the United Kingdom’s first provider of free online courses offered through the British Library (Fox, 2013).

There is a growing list of free educational software available for the free operating system known as Linux, and groups such as the Organization for Free Software in Education and Teaching and the Free Software Foundation's Free Software in Education project are helping to raise awareness of alternatives to proprietary educational software programs. Websites such as SchoolForge provide news and other resources to educators using (or considering the use of) FOSS in educational contexts.

Mobile Technology. In addition to desktop or laptop computers with Internet access, tablets are another technology on the rise in schools. Tablets are comparable to computers in that students are able to access the Internet, create documents, watch and make videos, or research online material. In the early 2000s, handheld computers, or personal digital assistants (PDAs), were popular and were small enough to be held in one hand. In 2005, for instance, 19 percent of schools gave handheld computers to students or teachers, nearly double the number of schools who provided them just two years earlier. In 2013, schools provided students with Apple iPads that were loaded with electronic textbooks and other educational material. Apple claimed that just one year after the launch of the iPad in 2010, over six hundred school districts across the country implemented one-to-one programs in which at least one classroom in a school provided iPads for each student in the class to use throughout the day (USA Today, 2013). Research has shown that increasing the use of mobile computing in a student’s education can result in higher level thinking, more collaborative work, and greater involvement in the learning process (Bick, 2005).

Choosing Educational Software. One of the most pressing needs for K–12 teachers today is the ability to distinguish between the multitudes of educational software titles on the market, which, as Herring, Notar, and Wilson (2005) note, is not always simple. There are a number of factors—financial, technological, and pedagogical—that must be taken into account. Working with several K–12 classroom teachers, Herring and Notar created a downloadable evaluation form that teachers and administrators could use to sort through a bewildering array of titles. While the form is a helpful starting point, teachers will want to supplement it by considering whether any free and open-source equivalent exists for a piece of proprietary software that is under consideration.

Stages of Student Development. There is a large and growing body of literature in the field of educational psychology that seeks to apply the work of developmental psychologists to the interactions between teachers and students. In order to achieve a high level of professional success and satisfaction, experts generally agree that it is imperative for teachers to understand that the moral, intellectual, and emotional development of their students occurs in discrete stages. This is no less important when using technology as something of an intermediary between teacher and student.

Though they differ on important details, psychologists such as Erik Erickson, Jean Piaget, and Lev Vygotsky have stressed that students go through stages of cognitive, emotional, and moral development. As applied to the use of educational software, these stages should determine the nature of the lessons, the extent of computer time used, and the methods of student evaluation. Piaget suggested, for example, that high school students should be encouraged to work in small groups and use alternative methods of learning because they have reached the third level of cognitive development he called Formal Operational Thinking. Students in elementary school, by contrast, are more literal thinkers who are less likely to think in abstract terms. Guiding students to developmentally relevant software and websites is critical.

Learning Styles & Multiple Intelligences. The influential work of Howard Gardner and others shows that just as students come into the classroom with different learning styles or ways of learning. The theory of multiple intelligences holds that in any given classroom, students approach learning in different, but complementary ways.

There are several types of intelligence that teachers must take into account when preparing and teaching lessons using educational software:

• Interpersonal Intelligence: Student works well in groups
• Intrapersonal Intelligence: Student is self-directed, focused on achieving the goal
• Linguistic Intelligence: Student learns primarily through words
• Mathematical & Logical Intelligence: Student detects patterns; uses logic to solve problems
• Visual and Spatial Intelligence: Student learns through observation and visualization
• Kinesthetic Intelligence: Student learns best by doing
• Musical Intelligence: Student is adept at detecting tones, rhythms, and music
• Naturalist Intelligence: Student is at home in nature

Skilled teachers will seek to recognize students with these intelligences, thereby making the subject matter—whether delivered in whole or in part electronically—more appealing to all students. Research by Carson-Pickering (1999) and others provides helpful suggestions in this regard.

Viewpoints: Does Educational Software Work? In the push to introduce educational software into schools and school systems, it was taken on faith that such software would improve the quality of education that children would receive. Few in the early days of the 1980s and 1990s, when educational software was institutionalized in the schools, considered that a cause-and-effect relationship between technology and student achievement would be difficult to demonstrate. Now, in the face of shrinking education budgets, school administrators are taking a second look at the return educational software delivers for the significant investment that has been made in it. The nation's second-largest school district has already made up its mind when it comes to some reading software: "Los Angeles schools spent $50 million on software for a reading program that's no longer in every classroom after students' test scores showed no improvements" (ABC News, 2007).

As mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act, the US Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES) conducted a nationwide study to determine how effective computer software was in improving student scores on standardized tests in reading and mathematics. "Sixteen products were selected by ED based on public submissions and ratings by the study team and expert review panels. Products were grouped into four areas: first grade reading, fourth grade reading, sixth grade math, and algebra" (IES, 2007, p. xiii).

The published results, presented to the US Congress in April 2007, were surprising to many supporters of educational software. The study's main finding was unequivocal:

Test Scores Were Not Significantly Higher in Classrooms Using Selected.Reading and Mathematics Software Products . Test scores in treatment classrooms that were randomly assigned to use products did not differ from test scores in control classrooms by statistically significant margins (IES, 2007, p. xiii).

Supporters of educational software both inside and outside the industry were quick to criticize the study. Many of them were quoted in a recent ABC news report:

The software industry says this national study has flaws; it looked at results over just one year and only at certain schools.

"To extrapolate from one study and say that tech has no place in our schools in terms of achievement is a misinterpretation of the facts," said Mark Schneiderman, a software industry representative.

And there are examples of success. At Delano High School in Minnesota, for example, they'll tell you the software has worked wonders. The number of kids failing has dropped 19 percent.

"I worry less and less about the research and more and more about what's happening in my school," said Delano principal Bruce Locklear (ABC News, 2007).

Even if further studies were to confirm that educational software had no positive impact on test scores, those who support educational software might make an argument similar to that raised by critics of standardized testing—namely that it is not an accurate indicator of a student's true intelligence or his or her potential for success in the job market.

Terms & Concepts

Computer-Based Learning: The use of computers, in or out of the classroom, to replace or supplement traditional instructional methods.

Educational Psychology: An increasingly influential field of study that seeks to apply the findings of developmental psychology to the classroom setting.

Educational Software: Originally an educational program contained on a physical medium, now any combination of software and Web resources designed to facilitate the learning process.

Edutainment: Software and electronic products designed to blend entertainment with the process of learning.

Internet: A shorthand way to refer to a global network of computers, originally designed by the US government, which is used to share data.

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001: Legislation signed into law by President George W. Bush that aimed to improve public education in the United States. It was aimed especially at poor and minority children.

Online Learning: A method of instruction that utilizes a computer and the Internet to deliver some or all of a student's coursework.

Social Software: Internet tools that facilitate the collaboration between a number of different users on a given task.

World Wide Web: A collection of linked documents in hypertext form that are utilized on the Internet using a piece of software called a Web browser.

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Suggested Reading

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