Adoption of technology in the classroom can’t be turned back.

The publication yesterday of the OECD’s latest PISA report about the impact of computers on school students’ grades provoked an avalanche of absurd and irresponsible headlines, many of them screaming that the introduction of technology into schools either “has no use at all”, or was potentially “dangerous for learning”.

Anybody who has read the report properly will know that this is not what it is saying. What the report does say is that under the present circumstances — whereby technology is used without changing the way students are taught, and that is still in the trial stage — the results have not been miraculous, but simply logical: when we replace children’s pens and paper with a tablet, guess what? They get distracted. Did anybody really think it would be otherwise?

Surely it should go without saying that an electronic device connected to the internet offers more opportunities for distraction than a pen and paper.

So, if all we do is change the format, rather than the methodology, and if we don’t bother training teachers, or even bother to adapt the way we assess students’ progress, all we’re doing with this new technology is creating a new generation of students who are going to spend most of their time in class sending emails, looking at videos, or checking their Facebook page.

This has been the story with the introduction of new technology throughout the ages, whether in schools or business. But we never seem to learn from experience.

Let’s see what Andreas Schleicher, the OECD’s director of education has to say:

“technology in the classroom can be a distraction and lead to students spending their time cutting and pasting pre-prepared answers from the internet for their homework.”

YOU DON’T SAY! Good grief, if we don’t change the nature of homework, if we continue asking children to “find me this information” when the information can be found through a few clicks, then obviously children will be quite happy to save themselves a trip to the library and having to copy in longhand said information and will just cut and paste from what they find on the internet. What’s more, if we then tell them this is wrong, they will simply spend their time rewriting what they find so that it looks as though they wrote it themselves. What a waste of time.

The problem here isn’t the technology, it’s in not having sufficient common sense to change our approach to teaching and to learning. It’s easy to understand what the OECD report is saying: we have introduced the technology without thinking the implications through, we have allowed children to use it based on outdated teaching methods, we have set exams along the same lines… and the results are not good. I’m sorry if you can’t get your head round that.

I talked to a Spanish journalist about the report yesterday who wrote an article about how Spanish schools are not using tablets and computers properly (pdf in Spanish). I told her that technology is not a magic bullet, and that we’ll only see an improvement when teaching methods change. At the same time, it is obvious that we cannot keep technology out of our schools.

As the BBC noted through several quotes in its coverage of the report:

“When people say too much money is being spent on technology in school, my response is ‘Nonsense’. What we need is more money, more investment.” (John Morris, Head Teacher)

“It is endemic in society now, at home young people will be using technology, there’s no way that we should take technology out of schools, schools should be leading not following.” (Mark Chambers, CEO of Naace)

“Adoption of technology in the classroom can’t be turned back.” (Tom Bennett, British government behavior expert)

But of course, none of this made it into the headlines. It’s much easier to come up with a series of absurd conclusions: why let the facts get in the way of a good story? Rather than actually reading the report and pointing out that nobody is talking here for a moment about removing tablets and computers from the classroom or delaying their use, and that in fact the process will be speeded up, and that doing so will help create an environment in schools and colleges that will reflect the world that students actually live in, strengthening learning through the right teaching methods.

If you’ve read the OECD report, and you still draw the conclusion that we have to slow down or even prevent the arrival of technology in our classrooms, I hope for the good of society that you play no role in making decisions about this topic, because you’re a public menace. If you are a worried parent and think that your children are in danger because of the use of technology in the classroom: IT’S NOT TRUE AND ANYBODY WHO SAYS SO IS LYING. That is not what the OECD is saying.

The more familiar your children are with technology and the more skilled they are at using it to learn, the better. If you can, send your children to schools where technology is not a stranger, where it is not pursued, and that is not trying to build a bubble to protect it from the 21st century. And above all, choose a school that is not only investing in technology, but in developing teaching methods that integrate it into the learning process. You’ll soon see how this will give them the head start they need in life.

(En español, aquí)