Educational Technology as a Key to Educational Innovation - State of the Art Report from Germany

In this article we present an overview of educational technology initiatives in Germany on the school and university level. After a general introduction to the German education system exemplary projects are outlined to show how Germany seeks to integrate computers and the Internet into its educational system. In 1995, more computers than cars have been sold in Germany for the first time in history. Meanwhile in the year 2000, about 50% of all German households are equipped with a computer. Among families with children the percentage of households with computers is even higher: approximately 70% own one or more computers. Access to the Internet is increasing rapidly as well and currently amounts to approximately 20% of all households. Nevertheless Germany, known as a technologically advanced country, still lags behind in the use of IT in comparison to some Northern European countries like Finland, Sweden or Great Britain. For too long, computers have been regarded as a threat to culture and education in Germany. Today, the public opinion is in favor of IT but the former refusal caused a great shortage of computer experts who are desperately needed to advance IT industries and ecommerce. To compensate for the lack of experts, the German government even decided to set up a Green Card program for IT specialists. In addition, initiatives have been started at all levels to foster the integration of IT into the German educational system so that young people can be provided with the IT expertise needed. Computer science and instructional technology currently gets more public attention than ever before. K-12 schools, colleges and universities are being furnished with computers and connected to the Internet. The present time is seen as a turning point for the educational system by many, who hope that the discussion about education in Germany in general and about the benefits of IT in particular will spark educational innovations at all levels. The German educational system is decentralized into 16 federal states (Bundesländer) with the Federal Ministry of Education, Sciences and Research responsible only for vocational training as well as for general initiatives and projects. Thus, most initiatives are realized at a state level only. However, a special educational commission called BLK (Bund-LänderKommission für Bildungsfragen und Forschungsförderung) is in charge of planning and coordinating co-operative projects of all 16 states. The federal government financially supports these projects. In this paper, we will report current governmental initiatives and projects on the school and university level to provide a brief overview on the state of educational technology in Germany. Vocational training was excluded from this article. For those who are interested in vocational training, information can be found on the web site of the Federal Institute for Vocational Training (Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung, BIBB): http://www.bibb.de/aktuell/fram_engl.htm. Educational technology in K-12 schools There is no central institution in Germany, which records data on the computer equipment in schools, thus there are only estimates regarding the actual number of computers in German schools. Based on a representative survey in 1200 schools in 1998 and 1999, Schulz-Zander (2000) reports that the student to computer ratio in Germany was 36:1 in 1998 and that approximately 25% of all German schools had access to the Internet by the beginning of 2000. However, this number is rapidly increasing thanks to a variety of national and regional initiatives, which equip schools with computers and provide support at different levels to bring information technology to Germany's classrooms. Of these initiatives, the most influential has been the public-private partnership initiative "Schools on the Net" (Schulen ans Netz) of the Ministry of Education and Research and the German Telekom that was founded in 1996. Over the course of three years it was planned to provide 10.000 schools with computer equipment and Internet access. Meanwhile, more than 12.000 schools have been equipped and the program has been extended to the year 2001. Of the current initiatives, the BLK program "Systematic Integration of Media, Information and Communication Technologies in Teaching and Learning" (SEMIK) is one of the most ambitious national programs to advance the integration of IT into German schools. It integrates a variety of different approaches to strengthen the use of information technology in German schools. Therefore SEMIK will be described in more detail to provide an overview of typical educational technology activities in the domain of K-12 schools. Started in 1998, the five-year long program seeks to foster educational innovations in schools through the use of new media and information technologies. Unlike the initiative "Schools on the Net", which primarily provided schools with computer equipment and Internet access, this program focuses on the pedagogical concepts and use of new media in school. The program consists of individual projects of schools in the 16 federal states. These projects are integrated in a joint concept and only those projects are funded which promise to yield results and practices transferable to other schools. Thus, the program hopes to create synergies among schools and to initiate a co-operation between schools that will have a long-lasting effect. Currently, 24 projects are funded within the SEMIK program. There are three general principles that constitute the framework of the SEMIK program: 1) Schools need to prepare their students for an increasingly knowledge based society. Therefore, students need to acquire a sound foundation of basic knowledge as a basis for life-long learning and they need to acquire skills and competencies to access information from various sources and use it in a responsible way. 2) The didactic concept for the integration of new media into the classroom is problem-based learning. The projects of the SEMIK program intend to create realistic learning environments that allow for active, self-guided and collaborative learning. An emphasis is put on a balanced use of constructive learning and instructional support. 3) The integration of new media also brings about a systemic change to the instructional culture of the school. Therefore, personnel development and teacher training, co-operation among teachers and organizational development within schools are additional important goals of the project. Concrete projects within the SEMIK program pertain to one of five areas that will be described in the subsequent sections. Development and provision of technological tools A barrier to the use of new media in schools is the confusing variety of instructional software and Internet-based tools. Teachers often do not have the time to evaluate existing software regarding their educational use and didactic quality. Therefore, several projects aim at providing technical tools that teachers can integrate into their everyday lessons without much effort. More specifically, projects attempt to make existing tools available in a structured way and provide evaluation results following didactic criteria. actualize and supplement existing materials (e. g. on education servers). link and co-ordinate similar developments in different states and institutions so that synergies can be created and costly duplications can be avoided. Projects in this area include for example the project Mokk@ (Modules for Online Communication in Classroom Instruction) in North Rhine-Westphalia or the Online Forum Media Pedagogy (Baden-Württemberg). Development of concepts for teaching and learning Projects in this area strive to develop and implement instructional concepts for the use of new media based on the problem-based learning paradigm. The instructional models and the experiences made are disseminated among the project partners. In the long run it is planned to make them publicly available via an education server. Actual projects aim at developing and testing media supported forms of problem-based and self-guided learning for various age levels and schools. developing instructional concepts for cross-curricular learning. developing and implementing didactic models to foster media literacy. Projects include the development of a didactic model for the problem-based use of notebook computers (Hamburg), the cross-curricular use of computers in open instruction for regular and mentally handicapped students (Bremen), the development of a program to foster methodological competence in knowledge acquisition with new media (Mecklenburg-West Pomerania) and many others.