On the use of smartphones in education
On Thursday I took part in a roundtable discussion for Spanish state television (link to the video in Spanish) about the educational uses of smartphones and other mobile devices in the classroom. We covered most of the bases: open methodologies; student blogs, the flipped classroom, edupunk; and of course the problems that some teachers face at the institutional level in implementing these kinds of initiatives, as well as some parents’ opposition to newer, more dynamic, teaching methods.
For me, the biggest enemy to effectively using technology in the classroom is the continued use of textbooks. Whether paper or electronic, textbooks are a thing of the past due to their limited content format, rigidly establishing “everything” that a student needs to learn during an academic year, and totally at odds with what should be the objectives of today’s education: information is now omnipresent, ubiquitous; so what we need to teach children is how to manage information. Packaging information and subjecting children to confining it to memory, to be regurgitated in an exam, no longer makes any sense whatsoever, and what is worse, is subject to manipulation for ideological purposes.
The task we face in educating our children is teaching them how to search for information, how to qualify it, and how to use it, a goal that is infinitely more motivating than rote learning from a textbook, and an ability that will better equip them to learn the skills they will need if they are to be useful members of society.
Mobile technology is a an excellent way of lowering entry barriers to education, a way of breaking down the digital divide. Sure, not everybody can afford a smartphone, but there is no denying that it is a device that offers a wide range of possibilities and one that is becoming increasingly affordable (aided by initiatives such as Firefox OS), and their open architecture. I also mentioned the ThinkBit initiative in Spain (about which I wrote a few days ago).
The subject of the role of teachers, as well as their training and motivation, came up, as did the younger generation’s growing tendency to question authoritarian systems. With my daughter in mind, I also raised the issue of what I believe to be the fallacy held by many parents that their children are in some way better equipped to use technology, when most of them admit that they use their smartphones and computers to carry out just a few simple tasks, and would love to be given a better grounding in the use of technology.
We are not going to fulfill the educational needs of our children and prepare them adequately for the future if we automatically assume that because they were born into the digital age they have somehow absorbed an understanding of the mysteries of, for example, programming, simply because they spend all day on the social networks or listening to Spotify. They may be more comfortable using such services than their parents, but we cannot simply leave them to use a few tools intensively, without thinking about the wider uses of technology, or how things really work, or what is behind the myriad digital services available today.
All in all, the round table discussion identified some important, and controversial, issues, that will take on increasing importance in the years to come. The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.
(En español, aquí)
