TECHNOLOGY SMACKDOWN

I do love a good dispute. And nothing is juicier than arguments around '21^st century learning,' designated Fuzzy Buzz Concept of the Decade. The skirmish today started with Sam Freedman’s NY Times column, wherein he suggests that one Professor Ali Nazemi, of Roanoke College, deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom for publicly demolishing a student’s cell phone which inconveniently rang only minutes after the prof shared his no-cell phone rule with the class. Of course, it was all a sham—the student was a shill and the phone worthless—but Freedman spends several paragraphs writing about technology-induced inattention as a “pox on pedagogy.”

Freedman quotes Scott Carlin  of  Michigan State  University, who works with novice teachers:

[Carlin] advises his charges to forbid personal use of tech devices in the classroom. Of course he occasionally has to pause in his own lesson to make one of his graduate students stop scrolling through text messages. “If the students actually found some creative way to use a cell phone or a BlackBerry in a class demonstration, I’d be all for that...but what I found in most cases is that it was just a fancy new way of passing notes.”

Carlin is spouting old-school teacher-talk here, from the perspective of managing classroom practice, not theory or research. His appearance in the NY Times, however, re-energized the MSU Education Graduate Student Organization (EGSO) listserv (known for subject headings like “Tickets for Saturday?” and “Couch for Sale!”), stimulating grad students in education to—sort of—fight back with messages about the “endless cycle of boredom and non-engagement” in classrooms and how assorted technologies will solve these endemic problems.

Whenever we start talking about machines saving education from itself—or, conversely, machines ruining some nonexistent ideal of pure learning (which usually translates, at its lowest level, into paying attention to a teacher), I get queasy. This isn’t an argument about technologies. It’s an argument about human nature. Kids were not paying attention in one-room schoolhouses, and giving them their own slates or pencils didn’t solve the problem. Just as metal detectors haven’t solved the problem of school violence, and computerized attendance hasn’t solved the problem of kids skipping class.

I once witnessed a local school board debate around investing tens of thousands of dollars into an electronic system to prevent book theft, involving a gate-arch with fencing, which necessitated funneling all students in and out of the same library door. After a long (boring) discussion, one of the board members had the presence of mind to ask “how much did book theft cost us last year?”—and the principal was quick to respond that the system would pay for itself in twenty years. Oddly, that seemed to satisfy the board and they approved the expenditure. Nobody seemed to care much about why students might choose to walk out of the library with a concealed book, fail to return properly checked-out materials (something the machine couldn’t control)—or how it would make students feel to walk through a theft-prevention device in a building where the motto painted on the wall was “Reason, Respect, Responsibility.” The discussion, instead, turned on an expensive, cutting-edge…gadget—that was supposed to solve problems.

Freedman concludes the article with an unsavory anecdote about college students surfing for porn in the back rows of lecture halls, the ultimate disgusting behavior made possible by technology. You can’t blame laptops for students’ personal vulgarity, however. You also can’t blame teachers for trying to enforce a level playing field in an increasingly ADD world. And—this kind of boorishness is hardly confined to the academic realm. 

It’s worth remembering that there are classrooms where kids are engaged and part of a community, both with and without a boost from technology. We should be paying attention to them.

Comments

[Ira Socol]

One of the things it might "be about" is yielding control - and how to do that. The real threat Freedman (and Carlin) are describing is not to education - that is actually never brought up in the article - but to the notion of who controls the room, who controls the learning process - and who controls the technology. This goes way back, at least to Postman and Weingartner in 1969 and "Teaching as a Subversive Activity."

There might be something else - and you have made it clear from your library security story - or, as a teacher from England (visiting MSU last spring) put it, "You seem to spend far more energy stopping technology from doing things than doing things with technology." In other words, if we do not have these devices in our classrooms, if kids do not learn to use them well there, if we don't allow screw ups - even a glimpse of pornography - as part of the learning process, don't we abdicate our right to complain?

http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2007/11/fight-future-fight-present.html

[Troy Hicks]

Hi Nancy and Ira,

Having just finished my program at MSU, I am still on the EGSO list and have been watching this debate unfold.

I, too, am interested in hearing more about where the power and control of technology fits in to this conversation. Given MSU's decision to ban the use of tools like Google Docs along with articles like this that appear in the NYT, I, too, feel like we are fighting an uphill battle.

But, there are others fighting, too. As Kelly pointed out, The Vision of Students Today video is one that shows the multiple and complex ways in which technology, power, and privilege influences higher education. Maybe asking people to view that video and then engaging in a debate -- through EGSO, blogs, or in person -- might be the way to go.

Interestingly enough, the Economist just had an online debate series about the topic of using new media in education, too: http://www.economist.com/debate/?sa_campaign=debateseries/debate1/blog/bloggers

That might add some more to the EGSO discussion.

Troy

[Nancy Flanagan]

Hey, Ira. I'm glad you brought up Postman and Weingartner. A lot of my thinking has been influenced by Neil Postman's "Technopoly" and "Amusing Ourselves to Death," both written well before the WWW, on the surrender of the culture to technology. In Freedman's piece, there's a lot of raving about that very thing--losing our kids to technology.

I guess my point is that human beings control technologies. They have no magic powers, for good or ill. They're just...stuff. And smashing a cell phone may be a dramatic tour de force but it also imbues the tool with power it doesn't have.

Which is why I fully defend Scott Carlin's advice to novice teachers. While there are tons of ways to use cell phones as learning tools, power and control *are* relevant issues to inexperienced practitioners. While we hope they will learn, down the line, to seamlessly incorporate an array of relevant tech tools into their practice, it's OK for them to ask for respectful attention at the outset.

[Nancy Flanagan]

Thanks for posting the link to the Economist debate,Troy--looking forward to absorbing the whole thing. Did notice that there was a 44-56 split in opinion on whether new media and technologies were positive additions to the educational process (I'm paraphrasing), which seems odd to me. Perhaps economists are fearful traditionalists, too (laughing).

Actually, I wish we could stop thinking of this issue as a battle. The thing about any new addition to the collection of tools we use in education is that its ultimate worth will be decided by the users. Forcing teachers to use technologies for the sake of being "cutting-edge" is a sure recipe for backlash. The most useful tools will incorporate themselves into practice when they become indispensable. The flap on the MSU EGSO list may be proof that some graduate students aren't ready to publicly risk revealing their thoughts and opinions. Too bad, because changing your mind is a good thing, sometimes.