First, allow me to thank Mrs. Marie Rush for the opportunity to offer some brief thoughts on technology and education. Even as a so-called "digital native," I find myself awestruck every time that the Internet unites me with someone who shares similar passions or ideas.
Many of you, I am sure, are familiar with the quotation from Thomas Edison to the effect that movies would come to replace textbooks (and by implication teachers), as you are with the similar claims made about radios, television, and the Internet.1 Let me say unequivocally that while I believe in technology's promise in education, there is no computer program, no podcast, no book that I would not willingly replace with a great teacher. Technology enables learning, but it does not teach.
Technology in Primary SchoolsI remember in the first and second grade that a woman by the name of Madame Boyd would come to our classes every two weeks or so to teach a brief lesson in French. Of course, by the time she came again two weeks later, very little was retained. I credit her, however, with instilling in me a love for foreign languages - one that I began to pursue in earnest in middle school with Spanish and now, independently, French.
When I set out to teach myself French two years ago as a challenge, I was intimidated to learn by audio podcast because I am not much of an auditory learner. Shortly after I began - and made the mistake of buying an Idiot's Guide to the language - I learned that my local library offered online access to the Rosetta Stone language learning software. And so began an effort to devote fifteen minutes a day to learning French. Alongside this program are two exciting online services - livemocha and babbel - that offer a community of speakers to chat with (although so far I have only done so in Spanish) and vocabulary exercises. And, of course, I have two really good books - a beginner's reader and a grammar workbok. I have made enough progress over the past two years that after talking with the French professor, she is more than willing to allow me to sit for the French I and II finals this year if I would like.
I can't help but juxtapose this experience with that I encountered in elementary school when we made our way in single file lines each day to the computer lab for thirty minutes of practice in reading and math. Today, I can't help but think of that time as wasted - nothing more than doing worksheets on a screen - and imagine what it would have been like if my classmates and I were able to have begun immersing ourselves in a foreign language at 7 or 8 years old.
As we think about technology in education, we must be very honest with ourselves about the potential value added. I question the value-added of a touch-screen Smartboard in every class - but I praise the schools who are offering courses and opportunities unavailable in their own schools to their students through virtual learning programs. Let's not invest in technology that promises marginal improvements - but in the services that fill gaps in what a school is able to provide on its own.
Data-driven LearningThe ability to enhance diagnostic awareness and measure performance trends is one of the top reasons why teachers embrace technology in the classroom. I argue that a respect for data-driven learning should be no different for students as well. My school has invested in a digital library of AP tests for students to practice with. What my peers and I have often valued most is the program's ability to break your results into categories, allowing us to determine our individual strengths and weaknesses. This is incredibly valuable as we now approach our last, feverish month of review before the AP test. Given an awareness of our areas of weakness, we're able to make judgments
Don't be Afraid to ThinkIn February, the Washington Post ran an article on the impact that text messaging is having in the office, the schoolhouse, and at home.2 What struck me most was a recommendation by a professor at George Mason University to his colleagues to limit their sentences to no more than eight words. An earlier, highly-recommended piece by Caleb Crain in the New Yorker on the end of long-form reading quotes a professor who laments over the incoherent snippets of thought that her students are content to call essays.
I encourage you to stand firm against this devolution and continue to embrace complex thinking in your classrooms. Apologists for video games rightly note that the complexity of objectives, short and long-term planning, relationship management and coalition building rival many real-world experiences. The challenge, however, is how do we translate the skills developed in a virtual environment to the classroom? How do we teach students to harness their intuitive understanding of the complexities in a video game and clearly and logically present a real-world issue with a similar degree of complexity on paper? It starts with understanding that there are some thoughts too profound and too complex to fit into a tweet - and that that is a good thing.
Let's not accept technology as an excuse for lowering standards - or capitulate to the criticism that schools that ask their students to read and to write frequently and with discipline are somehow courting irrelevance. Schools cannot lose the war for high-level thinking.
I close with two thoughts: One, let us remember that technology is only as powerful as the people who harness it. And two, let us never embrace technology solely to make learning "cool" when we have failed to first make learning "work" without it.
1. Future Hype: The Myths of Technology Change. Bob Seidensticker. p103. about what days and for what subjects we should be staying after school. Efficient review "clinics" (arguably the most individualized instruction we experience all year) means that we as students stay engaged and aren't overwhelmed. What's most exciting is that these judgments are being made by the students themselves, not the teachers, giving students an opportunity to be stakeholders in their education.
2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/21/ AR2009022101863_pf.html 3. See Steven Johnson's Everything Bad Is Good for You as one example.
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