Interactive Computers to Go to School : Education: An explosion in instructional technology is expected in the nation’s classrooms, which have generally ignored it to date.

Look up the moon landing in this encyclopedia and watch Neil Armstrong jump from Apollo 11. Flip over to presidential inaugurations and find film footage of Jimmy Carter walking down Pennsylvania Avenue. Interested in Mussolini? He’s speaking from a balcony in Rome.

Now put away history and settle in front of another computer screen. Here an instructor leads you on a tour of Paris and responds to your French.

This is the classroom of the future, where chalk and erasers and slide projectors are replaced by interactive computers, compact discs, television and other technologies changing the way students learn.

“We’re on the edge of an explosion” in instructional technology, said Francie Alexander, a deputy assistant secretary of education, who believes that American classrooms are poised to join the revolution that took automated tellers to banks and telephones to cars.

Unlike every other vital aspect of American life, the nation’s schools have largely ignored technological innovations. The primary tools--pen, paper, book and chalk--have remained basically unchanged since before the turn of the century.

Now, although many people consider computers, televisions, satellites and videodiscs standard classroom tools, the technology is not welcomed by all.

Some educators and parents cling to the belief that good schools are old-fashioned ones. Others say there are more pressing needs--including more discipline among students and better teacher preparation--than high-tech gizmos. Computers do not make articulate speakers or intelligent writers, they argue. In sum, as New York University Prof. Neil Postman says, it is a “billion-dollar delusion” to think that better technology will bring better learning.

But there is mounting evidence that shows the effectiveness of many new technology packages. And many analysts say several factors are now converging to make a technological breakthrough in schools more likely than ever.

Perhaps most important, a decade after the personal computer forever changed American business, more and more teachers are familiar with keyboards and hard drives. In the 1980s, truckloads of Macintoshes and IBMs were dumped on some schools where they were sometimes left in unopened boxes because teachers did not know how to use them.

Also, computer software for teaching mathematics, science, history and other subjects is increasingly available, effective, easy to use and affordable.

The cost of an educational software program for teaching modern art, for example, which includes video, sound and text and features film footage of famous artists discussing their paintings, rivals, at $200 or $300, the cost of a few art textbooks. With the aid of a projector, only one software package is needed for an entire class.

A new visual encyclopedia by CEL Educational Resources, consisting of 11 videodiscs that store film footage and the text of historic 20th-Century events, costs $11,000. The computer and videodisc player cost thousands more, but a thousand schools nationwide have bought it.

John Clement, a director at EDUCOM, a consortium of 600 universities dedicated to integrating information technology into classrooms, said students familiar with Nintendo and other video games, as well as with television and VCRs, should not be expected to learn mainly through oral lectures.

Susan Goldman, a psychologist and the co-director of the Learning Technology Center at Vanderbilt University, said that the potential for technology to enhance learning is clear but that “just dumping technology in a classroom isn’t going to change anything.” Each educational software package has to be evaluated and each teacher trained to use it, she said.

Goldman’s group recently studied the effects of a new math videodisc program called the “Adventures of Jasper Woodbury,” which uses a narrative film to teach fractions, decimals and other math skills. In a study involving 1,300 children in nine states, those who learned with the video scored higher than those who did not use the program.

Besides resulting in a measurably better grasp of math and thinking skills, the new method did a better job of teaching students to recognize irrelevant facts, connect data and plan complex solutions. It also fostered less anxiety about math.

As more people become convinced of technology’s potential, there is increasing criticism about the lack of a national plan to modernize schools.

An influential study by Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment, entitled “Power On,” raised this red flag four years ago. It concluded that if advanced technology was ever “to realize its potential for improving education,” the federal government would have to take an active role.

Chris Pipho, who monitors technology innovations for the Education Commission of the States, said some states are way ahead of others in developing a technology plan. Kentucky, for instance, recently required that all public school classrooms have telephone lines for computer hookups.

In some school districts around the country, principals have begun setting up fax lines for parents and “homework hot lines.” These enable parents to find out what homework their child is supposed to be doing on any given night.

Nancy Hechinger, a member of the design team of the Edison Project, a proposed chain of private schools headed by entrepreneur Christopher Whittle that are to be equipped with the latest technology, said some schools around the country already have dazzling equipment.

But, she added, while magnet and other specialized schools may have changed, the typical classroom has not. The saying is generally true, she said, “that if George Washington came back today, all he would recognize is the church and the school.”

In his new book, “School’s Out,” Lewis Perelman, an education technology expert, talks of the “growing gap between the technology of schooling and technology of living.” He cites statistics that one in four high school youths uses a computer at home and that in schools there is only about one computer for every 20 students. And many of those are obsolete or rarely used.