It Just Isn't Going to Happen

Meaningful Use of Technology in the Public School Classroom

This isn’t a rant about how unprepared teachers are to use technology in the classroom or that our digital native students really don’t have clue how to use any type of technology to help them learn or about all the “tech gurus” who tell stories about their kids or small groups of kids and their exceptional use of technology and then extrapolate these findings into general truths and have no basis in the regular public school classroom.

No, this is more about what I see in the trenches. And it ain’t pretty.

First a few of observations

1. I have never met an educator that doesn’t want to do more for their kids and there is an implicit understanding that technology has something to do with this. The problem resides in not knowing exactly what that something is. So for the lack of a better term or description, we'll call that technology solution "something".

2. No one really has a clue what that "something" is.

3.  Even if that "something" was discovered today, the technology infrastructure is pretty well non-existent at worst and rapidly becoming outdated at the best. Or put another way, if I had a killer iPad program, there's an iPad2 now and that makes my hardware outdated with no funds to upgrade in a timely manner.

4. Given current day fiscal pressures on funding bodies (mostly the government), a sustainable model to fund educational technology will also be trumped by the needs of the Health Care system. After all, if you were a politician, where would you put your money? Into another MRI machine or computers for kids.

5. Kids have more current technology in their pockets than schools have after 10 years of building a technology infrastructure.

6. #5 is a fact. And will be for a long time

7. School Boards that do not accept #6 will see their students not be ready when we figure out what that "something" in #2 really is.

8. The new educational buzz words "21st Century Learner", allows decision makers to say all the right things, but put no financial resources forward to making it actually happen. No one disagrees with what is being said, but it's time to walk to the talk.

Does any of this matter?

My gut tells me that all the above really doesn’t matter that much and in the end, I’m not exactly sure how much of the whole focus in on using and integrating technology in a lesson really matters in the long run. We really haven’t been that successful with any other technology. While I wasn’t around during the birthing of radio, I suspect from the time radio was in metaphorical diapers, educators felt this new medium would level the playing field and bring education to the masses. Television certainly had similar visions. TV did work for some people in certain situations, but today, most educational television is geared at kids in way that tries to entertain and be funny with the hope some learning will occur before and after the show. But, I don’t think any of us would say TV replaced any part of the education system.

Now the Internet seems to be promising the same gains as television first did. A new technology poised to change education and how we go about the business of learning. But, I remain unconvinced access to information per se will somehow change how students learn. 

Access to unlimited amounts of information on any topic certainly has developed an understanding of the copy and paste functions on our laptop. But, learning is an intimate action and challenging process that each of us engage in at our own rate. The teacher in the room facilitates and supports us through the tough spots and in the end we achieve some level of understanding and cognitive coherence about the world around us. Not as sexy as checking out your friends latest antics on Facebook. But down in the trenches, a long way from the snappy one-liners about the benefits of educational technologies, that's our education system hard a work. 

And thankfully so ...

Future Thoughts .....


Will this "something" be an evolution or a revolution?