In a recent blog post, Terry Heick pondered the fact that some teachers are against technology in education. It’s an excellent, thoughtful post and I encourage you to read it. It attempts to balance arguments about education technology; that while it can be transformational, it can also be costly, awkward and manipulative.
Throughout his post, Heick repeatedly uses the word “technology” to mean electronic or computer-based technology. By doing so, he frames the debate about teachers and technology as one about teachers and electronic devices and services.
Technology is an incredible enabler of development, opportunity, productivity and — particularly in the context of the classroom — learning. Technology is one of the hallmarks of human progress, of civilization. It’s surely true that to take a stand against technology, per se, is a task as misguided as it is Sisyphean.
“Technology”, on the other hand, is a word, a label that has taken on a meaning that has, lately, become narrower. “Technology” has become almost synonymous with “computer-based devices” or “web-based services”. Such a narrow definition intuitively seems to place technology in opposition to the analogue tools or artisanal methods of a bygone era.
When, as Terry Heick argues, some teachers are “against technology”, there’s a temptation to conclude that such teachers must be some kind of modern-day Luddite, to be against progress, and therefore to risk doing harm to the progress of the children in their care. Clearly, at this point it’s difficult any longer to have a sensible discussion, and people neatly divide along partisan lines, technophobes against the technophiles.
But it seems to me that this narrow definition of “technology” is actually holding back a more useful discussion about classroom culture and the role of teachers to inspire interest in their students. If we could expand our definition of technology, take it back to its original meaning, then we would not be inclined to see some teachers as being for technology, others against: we would recognize that all right-minded teachers are advocates of technology in the classroom, but that some prefer one set of technologies over another. And why not?
In order to get a sense of what I mean, it’s helpful to consider one of the greatest technologies ever to grace our culture: the humble book.
Books: A Practical Application of Science
A beautifully hard-bound book contains more innovation — characterized by generations of hypothesizing, experimentation, application, testing, failure, improvement, marketing, consumption, competition, investment, loss, gain and, above all, patience — than a smartphone.
I know there will be many people who disagree with this, and point to the incredible sophistication of the technology inherent in a smartphone. It is true that smartphones are an archetypal state of the art, but to think that a book is not so is to see technology excessively through what I’d like to call the lens of now.
Right now, we’re impressed by the density of silicon squeezed around a state of the art lithium ion battery, perched behind toughened glass and a liquid crystal display constructed so you can’t even see the tiny dots of colored light that create the sensation of a moving image on the screen.
It is the very definition of magic, as once described by Steve Jobs:
It takes these very simple-minded instructions—‘Go fetch a number, add it to this number, put the result there, perceive if it’s greater than this other number’—but executes them at a rate of, let’s say, 1,000,000 per second. At 1,000,000 per second, the results appear to be magic.
But what the lens of now conceals from us is that once upon a time, we were just as stirred by the tough, portable, innovative combination of print, paper and binding that put the Word into the hands of the People.
Technology Does Not Equal Computers
Technology is not synonymous with electronics; even less, the internet. But we are routinely persuaded so by the narrow focus of much current discussion about technology.
In his blog post, Heick uses “technology” in a narrow way. He states, for example:
that “technology” seems all lumped together, the iPads with YouTube with social media with mobile learning.
Heick argues that debates over “technology” obscure other, more important pedagogical conversations:
including the new learning models like blended learning, self-directed learning, flipped classrooms, mobile learning, and sync teaching that technology enables.
Through it all, he intends by “technology” a certain very narrow subset of technology: iPads, social networks, mobile devices and interactive screens among other things. By their omission, there is a clear implication that tools like books and blackboards would not count. This act of definition may be accidental, but Heick seems to see later technologies as replacing earlier ones.
This version of technological progress is analogous to the form of scientific progress proposed by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Prior to Kuhn, scientific progress was understood as “development by accumulation”. Kuhn proposed a more drastic theory, where the inevitable failure of successive theories leads scientists to question the underlying assumptions of the current paradigm. A new paradigm consequently emerges, resolving those issues that plagued the previous one. That technological progress can move forward in a similar manner was later proposed in the much-cited paper, Technological paradigms and technological trajectories.
Under Kuhn’s model, earlier paradigms are rejected in favor of newer, more successful ones. This version of technological progress is one-directional, perpetual, ecdysial: books and chalk, inkwells and pinhole cameras, abacuses and slide rules are part of an earlier skin, since shed to reveal the glistening veins of silicon and copper that characterize technology now.
But what if technology is not ecdysial, but accretive? Can’t we accept there are advantages to both books and iPads; that they can work alongside one another; that in a learning environment using both is in fact better than using just one? Isn't it possible that if one teacher prefers to bring together a set of older technologies, while another is an early adopter, this is in fact the optimum scenario for children, who learn from both teachers?
Choosing is Not Rejecting
The teacher who encourages her students to embrace technologies of a bygone age openly and honestly — whether alongside or in place of more recent inventions — is making a choice, not a rejection. The teacher who feels personally and strongly that books are better than iPads or vinyl is better than MP3 is not rejecting technology: she is merely expressing a preference for one technology over another in a specific context.
She may want to have some good reasons to back up her choice. She may be challenged by students, colleagues or parents: buy why did you think it would be better to learn like this? That’s just fine. This is exactly the kind of discussion that fosters clear thinking.
The teacher who instills in his charges a love of learning, as well as the fruits of study, through the consistent application of a set of technologies that work together well — such as pencils and paper, skipping ropes and Elastoplast, YouTube and GoPro, iPads and Dropbox — is changing the world, one child at a time, in the way only he knows how. This is how we should judge him.
I agree with Heick that technology should not obscure our view of what matters in education. His post is not a judgment, but an open-minded inquiry into the phenomenon of teachers rejecting technology in the classroom. Yet it’s hard to ignore that whenever he uses “technology” to mean apps and iPads and PowerPoint and things like that, he ignores the fact that trumpets and books and chalk and trainers are all types of technology that —I strongly suspect— those teachers he finds rejecting “technology” would be inclined to embrace.
If we can recognize that technological progress is not a one-way street, then we must be able to allow teachers who don’t use PowerPoint to remain — potentially at least — excellent teachers. There is room in modern education for digital evangelists as well as lovers of artisanal paint-making and bookbinding processes. Children will benefit from the breadth of an education shaped by teachers at each end of this spectrum, and all those in between.
We shouldn't force teachers on to the horns of a false dilemma: iPads or books, Playstations or footballs. We should put down the lens of now and recognize that technology is about choices, not rejection. Most of all, we should trust teachers to make their choices openly, shaping the learning experience of their students on the basis of their training, inspiration and passion.
Let’s judge teachers by their ability to inspire learning, not by the tools they choose to do it.
I’m not a teacher but my work focuses on technology adoption and behavioral characteristics of people working with technology, mainly of the electronic-computer-web kind. I have worked with a number of high profile education organisations, and am an inquisitive blogger. I’d welcome your comments on this post, if there are areas I've failed to understand or get across.
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