TECHNOLOGY AND THE CULTURE OF

LEARNING

Peter Gow

Independent Schools Forum

November 10, 2004

In a survey of technology innovators, “Nobody cites technology as a tool for

thinking better”

-- Robert Buderi, editor of M.I.T. Technology Review

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

History’s scrap heap

“Cool tools” of yesteryear Radio--”School of the Air” The educational film-strip The 16mm film ThermoFax™ The spirit master and its vaporous

spawn

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

The Promise of Technology

S’posed to meanLess drudgery, more thinkingLess looking for ideas, more

using themMore authentic work

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

Jeremiahs of today

Jane M. Healy, Endangered Minds (1999): “Why Our Children Don’t Think”

Todd Oppenheimer, The Flickering Mind (2003): “The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom and How Learning Can Be Saved”

William Pflaum, The Technology Fix (2004), and Larry Cuban, Oversold and Underused (2001): Enough and good enough, but students spend too little time using it

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

30 years of “high tech”

Vast quantities of capital poured into technological infrastructure

Massive amounts of staff time and professional development money spent on technology training

“Technology” (quantity) a measure of the quality of educational programs

The road to hell in some schools has been paved with interesting technology ideas

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

And remember this picture from your viewbook of 1992?

Schools that dragged their feet or hoped to

wait out the “fad” did so at their peril

Although they may have dodged the fatal attraction of an early commitment to a dead-end

technology

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

Areas of Impact

Products

Practices

Policies

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

Products

Platforms (and “platform wars”) Infrastructure Software/hardware Input and output devices False leads and false alarms

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

Practices

Tech plans The “Tech Committee” Staffing Budgeting Distribution and access Professional development Curriculum development Curriculum mandates

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

Policies

“Acceptable use”--active (what I create or transmit) and passive (what I use or receive)

Mandated use and proficiency standards

Addressing the “Digital Divide” Rules and language to keep up with

changes in technology

Three Premises

How can we begin to analyze the total impact of technology on the landscape

of education and the culture of schools?

And possibly a fourth:

Educators tend to invest their thinking about change with moral value--a

good/bad, as opposed to an effective/ineffective, frame of reference

PREMISE #1. In spite of our best efforts, technology has succeeded in breaching

all barriers between schools and The World.

Our little utopias want to control all the inputs, but technology has made this impossible

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

Responsibility at risk

School just more dimension of a problematic external environment

Exploration of dark corners can expose students to risk and harm--but filtering can be seen as a free-speech infringement

The electronic curtain of chatrooms, blogs, IM, listservs, anonymous webpages, images

Technology makes cheating easier Anonymity enables the denial of responsibility

and the abrogation of empathy

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

Partnership stresses

24/7 contact between children and families penetrates home-school barrier

Instant communication based on immediate reaction can stress school-family relationship

Assignments, gradebooks on line risk child’s independence as learner

Technology gives insecure parents means for playing out or fueling anxieties

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

Institutional downsides

Users morally responsibility not just for self but also for responses of others

Even the best filters have loopholes Risk management: continual updating of

preventive stratagems or give up Schools more vigilant, more nervous

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

Educational Defense Industry

To provide the illusion of being able to exclude moral threats or to track down and punish incursions

Firewalls Air-tight acceptable use policies (AUPs) Plagiarism tracking services Content filters Tracking and monitoring systems

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

But obvious benefits…

As a tool for inquiry, research, and the processing of information

As a tool for communication and for improving the quality of communication and presentation

As a means to widen the audience for student work

As a powerful tool for record-keeping

PREMISE #2. By making many tasks much easier, technology has moved us

toward taking on more of them

We can generate, process, and disseminate ideas swiftly and

efficiently, freeing us to think up more work to do

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

Wonders of the ed-tech world

The calculator Word processing Google PowerPoint The spreadsheet The database E-mail Digital video The PDA Interactive white boards (“Smartboards”)

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

Things to wonder about

Have “labor-saving devices” given us the freedom to do more valuable work?

Are we doing better work with technology, or are we simply doing it, or doing more of it, because technology makes it possible?

Have we set higher standards of productivity and quality for our students’ work and for our own?

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

The Bartleby Syndrome

The automation of familiar tasks is the most ubiquitous form of change experienced by educators and schools in recent years

Technology-based changes can drive teachers toward burn-out (Elizabeth Sky-McIlvain, “The Flickering Teacher” [2004])

Too little purpose, too little time, too little support, and too little follow-through

Bartleby: the teacher who “would prefer not to”

PREMISE #3. Technology inevitably carries us along unseen pathways, and its protean nature

makes it difficult to predict or control

But we are obliged to attend to technology and its development in order to avoid expensive, or even fatal, errors

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

Who knew?

That “atomic energy” would be a dead-end--and that fall-out shelters would be a national joke (sort of)

That the SAT would permit calculators That your school’s computer purchases would

move from being a capital to an operating expense

That programming would become only a byway in computer-related education

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

Who knows?

What direction the evolution of the PC or personal communication devices will take

What evolving technologies far-removed from education will have to be in our classrooms within a decade

What the impact of genetic engineering will be on the very nature of our students

What nanotechnology, the looming energy crisis, and and the continuing war on terrorism will mean for education

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

So we’d better

Not ignore the sidebars in Popular Science

Keep checking the “Japanese Schoolgirl Watch” in Wired magazine

Follow the serious science press In other words, be the smartest techno

bird dogs we can be

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

The Next Big Thing?

Wireless everything--truly anytime, anyplace Will require infrastructure, new hardware

Distance learning, as producers and consumers Will require vision, purpose, training

The tablet, fully realized Will require buy-in from hardware and textbook

producers

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

More “next big things”?

Datacasting Ever larger chunks of data moved quickly through

classroom networks Universal Design

“Disability/difference”-proof interfaces RFIDs

Track your stuff, your students Intelligent graders and analysis tools

Reduce teacher time (and inventory?)

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

Planning

Build technology plans around GOALS and the CRITERIA for making decisions, not on the today’s known products, practices, and policies

See technology in the broadest terms, even beyond computers and communication

Keep the discussions broad and smart

Technology and the Culture of Learning/Peter Gow ©200411/10/04

Questions

1. What’s the latest at your place?2. What do you see around the corner?3. What’s the hardest lesson you’ve

learned--and have you paid attention to the lesson?

4. Planning and implementation--how are you proceeding?