* Highpoints of my talk at the ITEC conference
Some readers asked about my comments on technology in education at the ITEC show in Houston where I was one of the keynotes. We’ve had some pretty lively discussions about this topic in the past, so let me hit the highpoints for you.
I presented four main ideas about technology in education: Do IT Less Expensively, Dealing with Resistance, Reach Out to the Community and Do Less Technology.
Why less technology in the classroom? I have this heretical idea students should learn to read critically, analyze information and think for themselves. Unfortunately, when students, especially in the lower grades, turn on a screen they turn off their imaginations. Besides, students stare at screens constantly: TV, movies, video games, and the Web. All present passive entertainment designed to turn brains off, not on. Reading books is active entertainment because students must use vocabulary, inference and imagination to visualize the story unfolding inside their heads. Videos bypass critical thinking and hit the visual centers of the brain, making them passive entertainment.
Reader Tim used a great term last year when he said, “Using proprietary software in school teaches students to become ‘click monkeys’ without inviting them to dig into what they are using and perhaps figure out how to make it better.” Wouldn’t Click Monkeys be a great name for a rock band? Sure, but we don’t want our kids ending up that way.
Anti-technology forces point out situations where schools spend money on computers when they don’t have enough books and teachers. Real world studies show the best way to improve learning is to lower the number of students in core curriculum classes. It’s a shame such old-fashioned ideas get overwhelmed by the glitter of new technology toys.
The bottom line for me? Every technology introduced into the classroom must provide a measurably better result than achieved with pen, paper, books and a good teacher.
Once areas where technology can help students have been identified, the less money spent the better for our students and our tax bills. Many readers enthusiastically endorse the K12 Linux Terminal Server Project, as well as K12OpenSource, EDU-Nix Open Source Schoolware, and Software for Starving Students. You can reuse older computers and inexpensive or even free software and still provide a quality technology environment in the classroom.
Unfortunately, resistance abounds. Every comment on this topic mentioned resistance not by students but by teachers and school administrators. That’s sad.
I’m quite familiar with the administration biases on a school and district level in my suburb since my wife teaches at one high school, my daughter just graduated from a different high school, and I spent years on the PTA council with district administrators. Those of you who believe your bosses define obtuse might be surprised at the density of many in the education field. I maintain the quality of American public schools is inversely proportional to the number of educational doctorates involved. The educational doctorates I’ve told my theory to all agree.
Several readers mentioned administrators in their districts have nowhere near the expertise required to make an intelligent decision on large technology purposes. Based on what I’ve seen in my own district, I concur. Yet technology sales to educational customers is a big and growing business. A friend of mine, a retired CIO from a huge defense contractor, offered his services to help our local district make some technology purchase decisions. No thanks, said the district, we can handle it. I wonder if that purchase was the gradebook software that didn’t work correctly for the entire first semester last year?
This brings us to my last point: reaching out to the community. Why do states impose draconian “pass to graduate” tests? Because people no longer trust their school districts to educate children properly. The only cure for such mistrust? Transparency in the educational process heartily endorsed and implemented by administrators.
Parents should receive regular e-mails with information about their students. Course work should be online for easy access (my wife puts her assignments on one of our personal Web sites). Parents, after authentication, should be able to see every grade earned by their children.
If daycare centers can provide Web cam access to let parents see into classrooms, why can’t public schools? Parents who don’t care about their children, a distressingly large number, won’t take advantage, but good parents will. Even a silent Web cam mounted high in the corner of a room will show parents if their student is sitting and working, causing trouble, or even skipping that particular class.
Why aren’t visiting speakers in schools recorded for Webcasts? Why aren’t school programs recorded automatically? Why aren’t school board meetings recorded and placed on the district Web site? If privacy laws cause a problem, require district parents to log in with a new username and password each year to verify they have a student in the district. Identity management vendors claim they can handle such numbers, and the concurrent load will be far less than any corporate application.
Can technology help the educational process? Yes, if done carefully and intelligently. Unfortunately, careful and intelligent procedures seem as foreign to most school districts as the dark side of the moon.
It’s election time in the U.S., and we’ll hear all the normal platitudes about our children being our future and the need to educate them properly for the modern world. Too bad none of us believe that promise anymore.
