Some perspective on tech-frenzy

Q:  What is the one thing a good teacher needs?
A:  Students.

One responsibility of a board member is to approve purchases—things like textbooks, or other materials relative to the overall course of study.  An article in today’s Enquirer shows why it is so important for board members to have a clear understanding of sensible educational priorities—based on something other than a mainstream frenzy that so often accompanies the cult of technology when it comes to thinking about education.

Consider this excerpt:

At Goshen Local schools, students this fall will use iPod Touch devices to access the Internet.

They’ll set up Wiki Web pages, much like Wikipedia, to share class projects and research.

They’ll learn from interactive white boards instead of chalk boards.

Goshen, a rural-suburban district of 2,700 students in Clermont County, is like dozens of other Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky districts trying to create tech-savvy classrooms in a recession.

Despite budgets so tight some teaching jobs go unfilled, public and private schools are finding ways to fund technology upgrades.

Educators say it’s mandatory. Teachers and students have to be well-versed in high tech.

“We have to prepare them for ... the tools they’ll use in college and in the workplace,” said Darrell Edwards, a Goshen principal.

Schooling has moved well beyond pencils and paper.

Third-graders do book reports on Power Point software. Middle-schoolers carry homework on tiny flash drives they wear around their necks. High-schoolers learn journalism in modern TV studios and music on computer software programs.

Too often, school districts think technology is the “answer” to a struggling school.  It is not.  We need good teachers grounded on the foundation of a solid pedagogy.  We need a district steered by board members who know how to implement a philosophy that puts students first—ahead of technology upgrades that are more about public relations than learning.

Certainly it is useful to know how to use technology.  But how long does one really need to learn to make a Power Point presentation?  This may be a useful (though simple) skill, but how much money is it worth to teach it, and at what cost? 

Finally, what use is knowing how to make a Power Point, if one does not possess the necessary critical and creative thinking skills to make it any good?  Should we be impressed with a school’s technological muscle because teachers spend several days having kids work on Power Point presentations—when too often that just means finding generic pictures from the Google image library, and dropping them along side copy-and-pasted quotes the kids will just read out loud right off their screens?

The same thinking goes for any technological “solution” we can find.  Editing a movie can be a great learning experience, when done in the classroom of a motivated teacher who knows what he or she is doing.  It can also be a mostly pointless project where kids just put some photos over a song to meet the tech requirement.  The difference is not whether technology was involved, but whether the students engaged a course of study with real meat, led by motivated and capable teachers with the support of their administration in actualizing an educational vision.

If ever we had to choose, then, between capable teachers and technology, the choice should be clear.  But apparently it is not.  We have districts motivated to fill classrooms with whiteboards without ever thinking how they will become more knowledgeable by having notes on a big computer screen instead of a chalkboard.

What if the frenzy over technology focused on learning instead?  What if districts were frantic to find funding that would help raise student achievement?  What if, instead of training teachers on whiteboards and movie editing programs, we trained them on curricular reform?

Technology is a tool, but not an end.  Certainly technology can, and should be used to support learning.  But technological interfaces are not the ultimate solution to the challenges of helping kids achieve. 

Suggested readings

*Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, by Neil Postman

*”Why I am not going to buy a computer,” by Wendell Berry