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n the past decade, the technology race in education has reached its tipping point and turned into an epidemic. Many schools have jumped on the bandwagon of placing a computer and LCD screen in each classroom.

Instead of course books, board markers and a thick binder of transparency sheets, teachers now bring their flash disks to teach. Lessons are delivered in PowerPoint presentations. Learning processes are shrunk into bullet-point phrases.

The Pandora’s Box has been opened with all its magic and traps. Internet technology has made it easy for teachers to prepare materials with visual and sound effects. Texts, pictures and movies are downloaded in seconds, ready for use in the classrooms. In this tech frenzy, one question remains: How has technology enhanced student learning? Before this epidemic spreads out of control in Indonesia, this question needs to be addressed.

“The root problem of PowerPoint presentations is not the power or the point, but the presentation,” laments Marc Isseks in his recent article “How PowerPoint is Killing Education”, in the February, 2011 edition of Education Leadership. When teachers reduce curriculum content to bullet points, student learning suffers. Three problems are prevailing in this tech race among educators.

First, the euphoria of using technology in classroom practices has been contained and reduced into PowerPoint presentations to deliver the lessons. Teachers are trapped in this self-delusion of being techno-savvy in front of their students. Some teachers are even more preoccupied with garnishing their PowerPoint slides with various distracting multimedia effects rather than with ensuring the quality of the curriculum content.

Second, through their PowerPoint presentations, teachers make themselves models of poor learning. At best, thoughts are reduced into fragments – phrases and clauses. Students seldom get to read correct models of complete sentences slide after slide. At worst, as students engage in surfing the Internet themselves, they will sooner or later find out that many of their teachers copy and paste their materials from the Internet.

Students, too, will eventually model after their teachers’ behavior. Plagiarism then becomes the backbone of technology use in schools. In my experience as a teacher, students are very good at polishing their presentation skills to earn brownie points for their work. If teachers do not have clear focus, they will be easily misled to confuse form for content.

Third, presentation, in its very nature, is one-sided. When teachers operate their presentation, students sit quietly and swallow the materials passively. Teacher-student and student-student interactions are jeopardized when teachers do not use the technology wisely. The LCD screens are no different from the conventional chalkboards or whiteboards.

In spite of the prevailing concerns, it is not wise to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Technology certainly has its merits and should be incorporated into the teaching and learning process. To overcome the misuse of technology in education practices, I suggest the following solutions.

Professional development programs should include sessions on technology use. Teachers should learn not only the technicalities of information technology and the skills of using it but also more importantly the rationale behind its use. Before schools decide to furnish their classrooms with computers and LCD screens, they should assess their teachers’ capacity and engage in continuous professional development.

Part of teacher performance appraisal may then include their mastery of information technology. A highly competent and effective teacher uses the computer and internet skillfully as a tool to improve learning and make impact on students’ lives rather than as a cover-up of an inability to engage students’ minds and hearts.

Consequently, sessions on technology use and its rationale should also be provided to school supervisors. An initial step to developing effective teachers is to set up clear expectations. Included in these expectations should be proper technology-use methods to enhance learning in schools. During classroom observations, school supervisors and principals should not be so easily impressed by colorful slides with cutting-edge sound and visual effects, but should focus more on the essentials of learning such as time-on-task, interaction, communication, critical thinking and problem solving skills and creativity. Furthermore, monitoring teacher performance may also be conducted in part by students at the secondary school levels. Involving students in evaluating their teachers may be a learning process of autonomy and place students as learning subjects.

As the old saying goes, technology is a good servant but a poor master. Keeping the focus rightly on people as opposed to technology will help schools smoothly integrate information technology and make use of technological advances to enhance student learning. As with any other tool, PowerPoint may be obsolete one day and be replaced with some other product.

No matter how advanced and sophisticated that tool is, let us not confuse its use as a tool for the purpose and content it is supposed to deliver.

The writer is professor of education at Widya Mandala Catholic University, Surabaya, and a member of the Indonesian Community for Democracy (KID).