Techno-peril, Part 1

It seems that every time I turn around, someone else is talking about technology in education. Is it beneficial? Will kids get more out of their education if much of it comes through technology? Or do they get enough outside of school, and should we stick to traditional ways of teaching and learning?

The more I see on this topic, the more I lean toward embracing technology in the classroom. (Yes, Mike, if you are reading this, I voted yea for technology). If for no other reason, I am dedicated to making education relevant to the kids I teach, and most kids are “in their zone” in front of a computer, or using their hand-held devices. So logically, to engage students, to really have them take an interest – we should be incorporating technology into our everyday school work. I think that’s what we are seeing, for instance, when we are given the example of the school division in North Carolina whose tech-equipped student body saw a huge increase in graduation rates, and in academic proficiency. If we can assume that the changes were attributable to the technology, I would toss in another assumption: that the technology was able to provide an environment that presented students with authentic and relevant materials, and that is why their performance was boosted.

I suppose I’m not on the extreme in this matter of technology in education … although I’ve heard some say that handwriting has become irrelevant other than signing your name, I’m really not there. I think it’s still important to know some old-school skills, like writing with a pen, and reading printed words on a paper page. In fact, as with other areas of focus, I would like to offer my kids choices … write it out or word process it. Hand-draw a graph or create one on Excel. It’d be great to use technology to your kids’ advantage in terms of knowing the applications well enough that they can take a look at the project, and know roughly what the advantages and disadvantages are doing it old-style or doing it on the computer. Flexibility from project to project, and student to student, should yield the best results because it allows each child to do what works best for him.

There are social justice issues inherent in the move toward technology. As school boards embrace the idea of using student-owned devices for in-class work, they are also providing school-supplied technology for those who do not have what is needed. Isn’t this just destined to become a have/have-not situation, in which the socio-economically struggling child will be using the outdated, broken-down school equipment? And isn’t this just a stepping stone to requiring students to own that equipment? I think it is. And I think that technology absolutely will highlight differences in wealth. When you combine those issues with the more practical issues such as security of personal devices, and responsibility for lost, stolen, and broken devices – I really think that it is best if we move ahead with changes in how we approach technology only as swiftly as we can afford to outfit ourselves (as school divisions). And incidentally, if done division by division, the same issues will arise, only on a school division scale rather than a student scale. The have/have-not divisions will result in significant variation in education from place to place within the same province.

There are so many issues tied to technology in education – I’m sure I could blog about an issue every day, for years, without running out of things to talk about. So clearly, I’m not going to address much here – just a few, hand-picked aspects...