Technology in Education

Technology has long played a role in education. However, contrary to expectations, the adoption of technology in almost areas of education has been surprisingly slow. Moreover, there is clear anecdotal evidence that technology can be counter-productive in education. Our belief at CITS is that learning is a creative process, and while much is known about various teaching methods, we do not clearly understand the most effective use of technology in very many educational environments.

The Technology in Education (TIE) Initiative, and the projects within it, have grown out of a need to better understand the effectiveness of existing technology while also providing guidance for the development of new technologies. The genesis of this Initiative was the result of a project whose goal was to "deploy as much technology into an experimental classroom as possible". The objective was one-dimensional and sought to determine if there existed any real technical limitations. While there certainly existed some technical roadblocks, the most significant barriers were non-technical.

The TIE Initiative now exists as a broad inter-disciplinary effort combining technologists, sociologists, psychologists, and humanists in an effort to understand technology and education and to affect the development of new technology for education.