Karl Fisch’s blog, The Fischbowl provides a great history of tech-phobia in schools in the US. Here is a review of the most dreaded going to ruin the kids advances that leading leaders in education have complained about from the last four hundred years: slate, paper, ink, store bought ink, fountain pens, ballpoint pens, calculators, calculators in middle school, graphing calculators, internet, web page, email, network drops for all teachers, LCD projectors, lap tops in high school, grades on the web, wireless networks, cell phones, iPods. Fisch ends with a rhetorical question: what if we listened? If we listen to the technological change nay-sayers, we wouldn’t have made it out of the caves of Lascaux how ever many thousands of years ago.
If we in American public education continue to drag our heels and cover our ears like children we’d better start learning to speak Hindi and Chinese. The wheels on the bus go round and round and the world is flat. Kids still need to hand write and turn pages, yet to deprive our students of the tools of connectivity and choice that a web 2.0 paradigm offers, we might as well start handing out eighteenth century slate for students to address global climate change, the digital divide, HIV/AIDS, homelessness, poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia and commercialism. We must be able to join them on line if we hope to invite them to unplug and hike in the woods or solve world problems in a way that will be a magical hybrid of Plato’s logic and the ease of jotts and blogs.
3 responses so far ↓
1
Wendy Drexler
// Jul 23, 2008 at 5:58 pm
I like the way you refer to the new technologies as the means rather than the end. I completely agree. Somehow, we have to facilitate the paradigm shift in our colleagues who are not quite there yet. I feel like the wheels turn so slowly. I’m always impressed with the teachers I meet from Maine. It seems like things are moving along there at breakneck speed compared to most of the country. Keep up the great thinking!
2
cyreneslegona
// Jul 24, 2008 at 7:52 pm
“If we in American public education continue to drag our heels and cover our ears like children we’d better start learning to speak Hindi and Chinese. The wheels on the bus go round and round and the world is flat.”
Who are the “we” that are doing the heel dragging, in your opinion? I agree that students are being given a disadvantage if they are not given access to essential 21st century learning tools. Sometimes I think it is the political structure, the education system, the local wallets, those who think “if it was good enough for me, it is good enough for them,” – I just know that too often the students loose and they are criticized for a situation that is not their doing.
???
3
satnamkev
// Jul 24, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Great read of my post! The students and teachers should not be blamed for sure. We as I wrote refers to the corporate structure in DC that shapes educational. The machine I suppose.
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