I was most impressed with the progress of Missouri's eMINTs program. To go from 7% to 80% of third graders reading on grade level in three years is quite impressive.
In looking at the actual assignments, I was a bit disappointed with the level of technology used. One of the assignments in particular described the learners traveling through the body. I was hoping for at least a rudimentary simulation or game where the learner could interact with the inside of a virtual body, but such adventures are left to the student's imagination (or future developers) to conjure. Interactivity is limited to choosing which piece of linear text the student wants to read next. What was present was still useful and interesting; my excessively high expectations are probably a product of having read too much science fiction.
The Wenglinsky book introduces the constructivist as diametrically opposed to the didactic approach, with technology as the ideal tool for pursuing the former (preferred) method. The Missouri example appears to fall somwhere between the two extremes. The students investigate on their own, and create an adventure of traveling through a human body, while at the same time their choices in terms of where to do their research are fairly didactic in nature. I think this shows that we don't necessarily need to choose one or the other, but can pick and choose on the basis of the subject at hand and the needs of the individual learners.
An increase from 7% to 80% in three years is unarguably a huge improvement over existing methods. The strength of this program is most likely the ability of the learner to move at his or her own pace and the concomitant feeling of control over the subject matter that must instill. The open source nature of the project increases its scalability by allowing teachers to share across school, district, and even state boundaries. The ultimate question in technology implementation is probably how much technology to implement; at what point do we move from accelerating returns to diminishing returns? The success of this program leads me to reconsider my ideas about how much technology is appropriate to implement at once.
