I learned how to use DOS at the same time I learned how to read. In fact, some of my earliest memories include a luggage-sized computer with a three-inch monochrome monitor. Today, I spend the vast majority of my free time at my computer desk. I can program in several computer languages. My desktop dual-boots 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.4, and I am even typing this essay on an ergonomic keyboard that I brought from home. I am, to use a term coined a decade ago, a digital native. So, when I look at the state instructional technology today, I am both impressed at the technological progress over the course of my lifetime and utterly disgusted by the shortcomings of its implementation in our society.
Foremost among my concerns is the mind-boggling disparity in access to technology, particularly across socio-economic status. I can point to you on a map two schools within mere miles of each other where one has SMART boards in every classroom and the other did not even have a classroom set of calculators available to me as a math teacher. That is only just digital technology. On a far more fundamental level, I can point to a different set of two nearby schools where one has automatic-flush toilets and the other had such frequent plumbing problems to a point that drinking from the water fountain was risky business. I simply do not feel that I can ethically spend time researching Facebook or the iPad as instructional technologies when not every student in the public education system has access to comfortable and healthy analog technologies like air conditioning.
Another issue that gives me significant pause is Mooreâ(TM)s Law. Technology is advancing at a prodigiously exponential rate, to the point that futurists predict an upcoming event dubbed the Singularity at which technology will progress faster than society can cope with its evolution. I am particularly fond of a TED talk given by Ray Kurzweil on the topic of the integration of technology with the body, particularly the part on an already-possible synthetic red blood cell which would, to paraphrase Kurzweil, allow the average teenager to regularly outperform todayâ(TM)s Olympic athletes. Even the advent of internet-enabled phones has caused notable distress among teachers. I can not even imagine the discord when the technology is implantable and can not be turned off or confiscated. On the other hand, the standardized management paradigm behind the OGT and the SAT would finally collapse, so it would not be all bad. I digress.
Looking only at today, I question why the research on technology on Second Life as an educational venue is only in its infancy when that particular medium has begun to be replaced by other, newer alternatives like Free Realms. Similarly, Facebook is being replaced by Twitter and Diaspora just as Facebook replaced MySpace replaced Livejournal replaced Xanga replaced Geocities. Honestly, Facebook is so passé that even governmental agencies have investigated its use. I forget which one, but just a few months ago around ten red balloons were placed at random locations across the continental United States. All of them were found within about eight hours. My point is that research that focuses on a specific technology in response to a cultural fad is doomed to failure from the start. By the time anything practical made its way to teachers, students would already be offended by the outdatedness of it.
The third problem that I have with instructional technology is that there is far to much emphasis on innovation and far too little on revision. Take the TI-nspire. Look, it now includes a computer algebra system but has a terrible user interface, and just as math teachers were starting to get comfortable with the idea of allowing graphing calculators in the classroom, we have made the technology even more powerful â" re-emphasizing the original concerns about the calculators doing all the work. Similarly, take all these new educational iPad apps on top of the virtual manipulatives that you already do not know how to properly utilize in the classroom. I am vexed by the reckless abandonment of old technology for the new, and I find it hard to believe, with a culture of such technological impulsivity, that anybody was surprised when the first teacher lost a job for a social networking post. Even I do good research with good technology, the educational culture is simply not ready for mature discussion of the matter, much as Behaviorist-era America was not ready for Piaget. The whole thing just needs to sit for a decade or two.
Fragmentation is a fourth issue that makes me unwilling to enter the instructional technology field. I refer to both cultural and technological cliques. Part of what makes the Internet such an attractive place is that you can always find like minds. If you are a Buddhist, you can talk to other Buddhists even if another is not physically present within a fifty mile radius. On the other hand, if you are a bigot or an awkward geek with bad social habits, those can be reinforced just as easily. In fact, if you really wanted to, you could spend your entire time online with only people who generally agree with you. As someone who believes that there is much beauty to be found in diverse cultures as well as much benefit in their intermingling, the idea of everyone going to online schools that are homogenous is a nightmarish dystopia.
On the technological side, while there is a reasonable amount of similarity in feature sets between competing technologies, the intellectual property culture in which companies operate encourages significant differences in availability and implementation. The research on one piece of software or hardware may not apply to others. It would be easy for a practitioner to see an article praising the Sketchpad, and try a cheaper alternative only to find that it is not as good as the article made Sketchpad. However, many teachers in that position might simply abandon all geometry packages as equally useless in their ignorance of the technical difference between the various pieces of software.
Even if every teacher had access to an equal amount of technology, my concern is that, as a teacher educator, I feel that I would be unable to adequately prepare them to cope with all the variation available without giving them an extensive amount of technology training that simply is not feasible in the one or two courses they might take on the subject for their certification. I will concede that the mathematics-specific technology base is much smaller, but I am not sure how I can teach someone how to differentiate, for example, between ALEKS and The Academy of Math or how to decide whether or not to use a calculator in a given lesson other than on terms of general pedagogy that could easily be applied to various manipulatives in similar situations. Even the course I took here just a short time ago seemed to rely heavily on the judgment and experience of the individual teacher. Certainly, the literature was useful in convincing people that technology was not necessarily harmful, but there was an explicit assumption that I, as a student, already had a good understanding of point-and-click, etc. I guess, what I am saying is that research on instructional technology is a lot like research on a textbook. There are just too many options for it to be useful to the practitioner, and the important part is how it is used more than what it has.
The last concern that I will talk about is the conception of technology as teacher-proofing the curriculum. At a superficial level, this can be seen in the appeal of online schools. As an administrator, it is cheaper and more efficient because all my teachers will teach the exact same thing and I can probably even get by with fewer teachers. As a student, I do not have to really interact with my teacher or my peers, and nobody can stop me from taking my test with the textbook open. The teacher in this scenario can become little more than a glorified computer lab supervisor. On a more insidious level, technology gives administrators the ability to say, âoeIâ(TM)ll spend my money on more gadgets and gewgaws and that will make the teachers betterâ instead of âoeIâ(TM)ll spend my money to help my teachers collaborate and improve themselves professionally.â Technology is a concrete âoeimprovementâ that is easy to justify to parents and school boards. Unless the administrator already believes in the teachers as professionals, technology is just one more reason that he or she can believe otherwise.
To summarize, I see the technology as too rapidly evolving, the American populace as too enamored with the bleeding edge and access as too inequitable across populations.
