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- Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
In an age where young people seem to have a natural affinity with smartphones, computer games and social media, teachers and lecturers face a big challenge - or a golden opportunity. How can new technology promote learning, engage students and motivate them to sustain a lifelong career in learning? For educators everywhere, our challenge is to take devices that have the potential for great distraction and boldly appropriate them as tools that can inspire and engage. On the back of Steve's hugely popular blog, also named 'Learning with 'e's', he shows how the world of learning is changing, and how new technology - and you and I - can make a difference. The proliferation of digital technologies and cultures is having a profound impact on learning, prompting questions which need answers. How will technology change our conceptions of learning? How will new ways of learning impact upon our uses of technology? How will teachers and lecturers' roles change; what will they need to know; and what will we see learners doing in the future? Grounded in his research and in pedagogical theory, Steve explores the practical ways in which technology is influencing how we learn, and looks toward emerging trends to examine what the future of learning may look like. Subjects covered include: learning with technology, theories for the digital age, digital literacies, pedagogical theories and practices, new and emerging technologies, new learning architectures, changing education, global educators, a 21st century curriculum. For teachers, lecturers, learning and development professionals and anybody who wants to be inspired by the new ways learning is being revolutionised through the use of new and emerging technologies.
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Contents
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the many members of my personal learning network for the inspiration to write this book. I would also like to thank my colleagues at Plymouth University and elsewhere for their support, for reading my blog and commenting, and for generally being there as a sounding board for my ideas. Lastly, I wish to thank my wife Dawn, and my family for their constant support and encouragement.
Foreword by Richard Gerver
We Woz There …
I first met Steve Wheeler on a camel, by a Bedouin encampment, in the desert on the outskirts of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It could be the start of a bad, dare I say it, irritating joke. It wasn’t, but it is funny how and where you come across people who appear in your life and help you to make sense of it.
We were there, not on some Saga style holiday – The Lawrence of Arabia package. We were there to speak at a major education technology conference. If I’m honest, whilst I knew of Steve and knew a little about his work, he was not the fellow speaker I was most looking forward to meeting. Now I have had the great privilege of meeting many amazing people in my life, but at this particular event, we both were going to have the opportunity to ‘hang’ with a man who has, arguably, changed the world: Steve Wozniak. Now when I say hang, what I mean is, grab two minutes to muscle in on a selfie with the great man. Imagine, by the way, my clear discomfort when I pulled a Samsung phone from my pocket for the snapshot moment.
I know that we were both looking forward to our ‘Woz’ moment but, I have to confess, it was an event and a circumstance that made me feel a little uncomfortable, as I felt a little like a fish out of water. This was an edtech event and I am not an edtech guy; just ask my kids. I am always a little intimidated around people who are experts at anything, but particularly people who know what buttons to press.
As a teacher, I remember the early days of edtech: BBC model B computers, tape recorders and vectorised maths games. I remember thinking at the time that this is all very nice but …
Maybe those early encounters somewhat coloured my judgement, particularly when I started getting sent on courses run by my local authority, I was always the one sent because I was, at the time, the youngest member of staff in my primary school and, also, male! The courses were run by even younger, more thrusting guys, who spoke a language I had no understanding of; they were also able to play a keyboard like a virtuoso violinist. Like many, in those early days, I became a little dismissive, a defence mechanism I think.
Of course, over the following twenty-five years, tech became better, more user friendly and frankly, very groovy. I got into it and, as my confidence grew, so did my use of it as a teacher. Then things accelerated, because tech got cheap and the Internet transformed everything.
I have always had a big fear though, and that fear is this. I am an educator who truly believes that the moral imperative of what we do must be centred on the development of people; of individuals; their unique talents and interests and of their growing awareness of their own aspirations and values. For me, that is what education has always been and will always be about. What concerns me is that some people see technology as the answer to the future of education and, at times, I think that we have thrown huge amounts of money at that belief: filling classrooms with computers, then laptops and interactive whiteboards, palm tops and tablets …
I always worry when I am at an edtech event that people will get carried away with the latest flat screen, 4D, fibre optic portal and be seduced into believing that that is the holy grail. I passionately believe that technology is absolutely at the heart of life in the 21st century and can only imagine what it will do to the 22nd century, but I am also passionate that education is more than that, as is life. For me, technology can only be of power in the hands of educators who understand its context.
So it was that amongst the humps, rugs and wood smoke of that evening in Riyadh I made my tentative introduction to Steve Wheeler. As well as being a hugely impressive person and incredibly good company, he is also a skilled and passionate educator who sees the power of technology as a tool to support the education of our children; an education that is clearly about the development of gloriously organic, unpredictable beings. The next morning, we sat next to each other to hear Woz’s address to the conference. It turns out that he too is deeply passionate about children and their future, it turns out that he has always been driven by the use of technology as a means to support the development of people and their lives, not as ‘the answer’.
As I have got to know more about Steve, his work and this book, the more I have grown to admire a man who has the ability to communicate, in the most human of ways, how technology is a catalyst for the change so vital in our global education landscape. His work always returns to the power and potential of people; he is deeply human, accessible and provocative. He has taught me a great deal about the integration of education and technology and the future challenges we face. This is a fantastic book written by a hugely important figure in our education landscape. Whilst I will always have an image of that first meeting in my mind, if I’m honest, it is still the selfie with Woz which hangs on my office wall. This, however, is the book that will take pride of place on my shelf.
Introduction
They say that your school years are the best years of your life. For me, school was a strange place where lots of confusing things happened and very little made much sense. My formative years went by in a blur of indifference with the occasional memorable experience.
One such occasion was at the end of my time in school, when I met with my careers guidance teacher. This was 1972, during the heady days of the final lunar landings, where space exploration was top news. Space travel and moon landings had caught the imagination of just about every kid in the school. On a school trip the previous year I had also visited the Philips Evoluon, a science and technology exhibition run by the electronics manufacturer in Eindhoven, Holland. The building was shaped like a huge flying saucer. Inside, we had watched live science experiments and tried out exotic new technologies like video conferencing. It had fuelled my young imagination even more. The conversation with my careers guidance teacher went something like this:
‘So, Wheeler, what do you want to do when you leave school next year?’
‘I want to be an astronaut, sir.’
A moment’s silence. A slight pause while the career teacher’s spectacles glinted. He adjusted his tie, then …
‘Don’t be silly, sonny. Being an astronaut isn’t a real job.’
‘Yes it is, sir.’
‘No it isn’t.’
‘It’s what I want to be, sir. I want to explore space and stuff.’
‘Well, I’m afraid that’s just impossible. Anyway, you have to be an American to be an astronaut.’
‘Or a Russian, sir. They’re called cosmonauts in Russia, sir.’
‘Well, clearly you’re neither, so you need to think again. What are you good at?’
This teacher works as a careers adviser at my school. He should know this, I thought. He should have done his homework on me.
‘I’m good at art, sir.’
‘Hmm. What else are you good at?’
‘Music. Not a lot else.’
‘OK … not academic …’ he muttered, jotting down a few notes, ‘so you’ll be an artist or a musician then. Good luck with that. Time’s up, Wheeler, I have a lot of other students to see.’
He indicated toward the door, and I walked out, none the wiser.
And that, as they say, was that. I left school even more determined to be an astronaut, or more realistically, I resolved at the very least to get myself involved in some form of exploration. From my time studying geography and history, I had learnt about the explorers of old, including my heroes David Livingstone, Mungo Park (who always sounded to me like a municipal recreation area) and Robert Falcon Scott, whose mission to reach the South Pole ended in heroic failure.
Astronauts, I felt, were the last great explorers – launching into the deep unknown, exploring the final frontier – space. I wanted to boldly go where no one had been before. To be the first.
Captain Kirk and Mr Spock had a lot to answer for.
The years have flown by, and on reflection, somewhat indirectly, that is exactly what I think I have become – an explorer. I started my career as a graphic designer and photographer, then did technical work with videos and computers, before training as a psychologist. I was also a part-time musician, youth leader, a small businessman running my own independent record label, a lecturer in education, and finally a researcher and associate professor at a large university. In my mind this makes me an explorer, investigating previously unknown areas of education and discovering new forms of pedagogy. I experiment with social media and mobile technologies, learning how they can fit into new methods and contexts, trying them out to see what happens. My job is to navigate new and emerging theories and test their validity.
In a strange and roundabout way, I have actually fulfilled my schoolboy dreams to become an astronaut, although I now explore a different cosmos. This is the cosmos of the mind and technology. I explore learning in the digital age.
My convoluted journey has led me to the writing of this book. I wrote it by drawing on all my previous experiences and a diverse and eclectic range of skills and interests. I wanted it to focus on the big questions and major challenges that teachers face in the digital age.
So here it is. The book that is now open in front of you features my own personal stories and reflections about learning. It is an exploration of some of the new phenomena that I have noticed as a direct or indirect consequence of using technology in education. This book attempts to excavate the theory and practice of education in an age of disruption and change. It highlights new approaches to education in an era where technology is commonplace, and where mobile phones and social media are shaping the perceptions and behaviour of students. It is also a critique of the current education system.
Some of the sections in this book may seem familiar to regular readers of my blog ‘Learning with ‘e’s’. That is because they started out as blog posts, and have subsequently been developed into a more considered and expansive commentary on pedagogy, technology and education. Some sections are presented as personal reflections and narratives, while others are based on empirical research.
Inevitably, this book also features some contributions from members of my personal learning network, teachers and other professionals who have contributed to the dialogue on my blog. It is inevitable because my personal learning network has had a profound influence on my thinking. To all of the wonderful educators who are featured, and to the many others who might have been if space had permitted, I value you and I thank you.
The commentary that runs throughout the book, although not exhaustive, will highlight many of the issues that are currently impacting upon teaching and learning in all sectors, including change and disruption, the redesign of learning spaces, the disputed nature of knowledge in the age of Google, and several new and emerging pedagogical explanations and theories. I pose some challenging questions about our changing identities, roles and positions in society as we teach and learn using digital technology. I point out some of the dangers of the digital age, such as the risk of technology becoming an obsession, and the issues of technophobia. We hear many stories of video game addiction, lost sleep due to excessive hours spent on social media, or relationship breakdowns due to compulsive use of the Internet.
I believe that for educators everywhere, the challenge is to take devices that have the potential for great distraction and boldly appropriate them as tools that can inspire learners, focus their minds, and engage them in learning.
I also propose the possibility that new technologies can provide solutions to some of the current problems of education. In an age where children seem to have a natural affinity with smartphones, computer games and social media, teachers face a big challenge – and a golden opportunity – to make a difference. This challenge is like no other. The challenge set before teachers and lecturers is to try to make sense of how new technology can promote learning, engage students and inspire them to sustain a lifelong career in learning.
In this book I cannot promise to provide any of the answers to the problems teachers currently face, but I will certainly pose some pertinent questions about the theory and practice of education. Hopefully, I will also offer hints to where some of the answers might be found, and how teachers can start to make a significant impact on the future of education.
So, if you’re still with me, let’s go on a voyage of discovery – to find out how the world of learning is changing, and how new technology – and you and I – can make a difference.
1
New Wine, New Wineskins
Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives, and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.
Voltaire
The search is on to discover the best ways technology can be used to enhance, enrich and extend learning. This is not an easy quest to achieve, because technologies do not sit easily alongside traditional pedagogical methods. And yet they should, because as Clay Shirky1 argues, the social media tools and mobile phones we use are not alternatives to real life, they are now an integral part of it.
There should be no false distinctions between the real world and the digital world in schools. There are certainly none in the minds of students. Sadly, in institutional terms the distinctions do persist, because a notoriously conservative culture pervades schools and universities. New technologies and new ideas are regarded with suspicion. Computers are confined to ‘special’ labs in schools. Mobile phones are banned in many classrooms and social media services are blocked by education authorities. Video games are viewed as a distraction and a waste of time, and certainly nothing to do with learning.
Meanwhile, as education strives to preserve its old traditions, an entirely new generation of learners, immersed in the digital world from birth, is entering our gates. They are demanding – and expecting – new approaches to learning, approaches that incorporate technology.
All change
Incorporating new technology into everyday professional practice is not an easy prospect for the average teacher. Schooling in its present form was designed to meet the needs of a society that no longer exists. This is a view that is gaining a great deal of traction. In his famous TED Talk, Sir Ken Robinson2 argues that while other professions are rapidly adapting to meet the changes, education is standing firm, stoically preserving its status quo. This is not simply rhetoric. It’s a warning. The formal learning spaces, traditional approaches, standardised delivery of content, and the restrictive manner in which learning is measured, all seem increasingly anachronistic.
Society is in transition, and the changes are rapid and relentless. Organisations everywhere are investing in new technologies, and the world of work is constantly changing, shifting from centralised to disaggregated. Almost every week, news channels report the arrival of a new device or technology that will supposedly make our lives easier. The changes seem to accelerate, leaving us all just a little bewildered.
The futurist Ray Kurzweil3 has suggested that where change was linear, now it is exponential. Change is now accelerating at an unprecedented rate. The result is that many traditional systems such as government, healthcare, transport, entertainment and communications are being disrupted and consequently transformed. Meanwhile, state-funded education stands like a rock amidst this maelstrom, largely unchanged.
Improving education
Is education changing at all? Some would assert that it is. Later in this book I will offer some evidence to support this claim. There are some signs in certain places that change is happening, but with change comes uncertainty and anxiety, and there is often a human price to pay. New technical infrastructures are now widely available, the Internet is familiar to many, and mobile devices are proliferating. This has prompted a rise in informal learning. The growth of movements such as Massive Open Online Courses4 (MOOCs) are accelerating this growth, heralding an uncertain, turbulent future for formal education.
Clearly, those who are fighting to preserve what is good in education will need to ensure that what happens in schools and universities is relevant to this generation, and is reconciled with the needs of future society. However, they may be fighting a losing battle if they rely solely on technology. Simply introducing technology into the classroom is not enough. Teachers will need to understand how new technologies can be used to improve pedagogy. Additionally, education leaders will need to understand the link between change management and the optimisation of learning outcomes. Often this is less than explicit. Most crucially, all educators will need to know how pedagogy should change to meet students’ needs in this disruptive era of technology and new working environments – teachers will need to understand the theory behind the practice.
Teachers will not achieve these quests by being timid, or reluctant to engage with technology. Nor, on the other hand, will they fully understand the benefits of technology if they believe that it is the only answer. Technology is not a silver bullet. Simply applying technology because it’s new and shiny, or because ‘everyone else is doing it’, is almost always a mistake. It is a false economy, and it does children a disservice. It also opens the door for sceptics such as Larry Cuban5 to argue scathingly that computers in schools are oversold and underused. Indeed, there is a truth to this opinion. Many schools and universities have cupboards full of technology that is gathering dust because no one actually figured out what to do with it before it was purchased. They are the proverbial solutions looking for problems to solve.
A greater problem arises when new technology is introduced into an old system only to be used to perpetuate old practices. Let me explain this with the help of an ancient tale.
An old story
We can learn a lot from old stories and ancient histories. This extract from the Bible illustrates the perennial problem:
No man putteth new wine into old wineskins; else the new wine will burst the wineskins, and be spilled, and the wineskins shall perish. But new wine must be put into new wineskins; and both are preserved.
Luke 5:37–38
This parable is often wrongly cited as ‘new wine in old bottles’. To appreciate the full meaning of the metaphor, it’s important to use ‘wineskin’ rather than ‘bottle’, so let’s deconstruct the meaning behind the parable of the new wine in old wineskins.
Two thousand years ago in Israel, at the time of Jesus Christ and his disciples, wine was stored in skins. These were usually bladders fashioned from goat or sheep skin, which held the liquid. Invariably the wine would ferment inside the skins, forcing them to expand to their limit, eventually causing them to become brittle. Once used, the wineskins had to be discarded; otherwise, if reused, the new wine would ferment, expand them beyond their capacity, and cause them to burst. It was a false economy not to buy new wineskins to store the new wine. Wine was spoilt and money lost when the rubric was ignored.
The power of the parable therefore resides in the nature of the wineskin. It has been used to show how volatile it can be when old and new cultures collide. Alvin Toffler6 illustrated this phenomenon in Future Shock, warning that where old and new cultures clash, there will be disorientation, confusion, stress, disruption … and there will also be winners and losers.
Disruption
Today we are witnessing a clash of cultures in education, across all the sectors of learning and teaching. In fact we have been facing this challenge for some time. It is a struggle between the old and the new, the closed and the open, the traditional and the radical. In this context, putting new wine into old wineskins means that new practices do not sit comfortably with old mindsets. I would develop this further to argue that it is difficult to explain or justify new methods with old theories. New approaches often break the boundaries and rules that were established by the old traditions, which results in a human cost. People become uncomfortable when their old practices are disrupted and they are forced to relinquish that with which they have become familiar. Some resist valiantly, others simply pay lip service.
Change is inevitable (except apparently, from a vending machine). Change is rarely an easy process to manage, and disruption is never fully welcomed by any profession, but it is not necessarily bad news. As well as presenting a threat, disruption can be a positive force, providing fresh opportunities to improve practice. The rapid influx of new technologies into formal education has already disrupted many old practices, and has created a fair amount of stress for practitioners who have become comfortable with old practices. But it has also ushered in new ways of doing things. There are winners and losers. Some teachers thrive, others merely survive, and some sadly fall by the wayside.
Change is exactly what educators face each and every day, but is it the right kind of change?
New wine technology
The parallels between the wineskin parable and the state of the current state education system are abundantly clear. A new society with new needs clearly requires new methods of teaching. I have heard it said that the 1.0 School is no longer able to effectively teach the 2.0 Student. Massified state-funded education is no longer adequate to support the needs of a distributed, diverse society. When what is offered does not meet the needs or satisfaction of students, they will either subvert the system or they will fail.
If a school bans mobile phones, the students will still use them anyway, most probably for unscholarly purposes. If new technology is used in the same way as old technology, the pedagogy ‘wineskin’ is likely to fail. If the new technology is used inappropriately we can expect a similar outcome. There is no pedagogy for irrelevance.
When interactive whiteboards (IWBs) were first introduced into classrooms, they were a surprise. After a short hiatus while the new tools were appraised, many teachers began either to overtly resist, or use them conservatively, often in the same way they had used the older dry-wipe whiteboards. This kind of ersatz compliance was in reality a passive form of resistance. Usually teachers resisted because of ignorance due to a lack of training, but it might also have been because of technophobia – a fear of the new technology and the discomfort it might bring. Again, the application of some useful pedagogical theory would have helped. An understanding of how interactive tools such as the IWB can be applied to engage students and to support their learning would transform its use in formal education.
There are alternative uses for the IWB which draw on pedagogical theories. Allowing children to come to the front to use the IWB would transform it from a didactic teaching resource into an interactive learning resource, and extend students’ knowledge beyond what they could achieve on their own. Creating their own content on the IWB would increase their chances of developing a deeper understanding. However, teachers are often reluctant to allow students to touch the expensive equipment due to a host of perceived risk factors, or they simply don’t conceive that student use might be possible – they see the IWB solely as a teaching resource.
And so the old practices continue, negating the disruptive, creative potential of the new technologies, with the result that teaching does not improve. Because teaching does not improve, learning does not improve. Teachers fail to capitalise on the affordances and potential of the ‘new wine’ technology, because they are still limiting their practice and imagination to the ‘old wineskins’ mindset of the past. This is a scenario that is played out time and again with the introduction of new technology into education. Ironically, it is not the technology schools introduce that will have the most impact on learning. The solution to the problem is staring us right in the face. The personal technology being brought into schools in the pockets of the students is going to be the real game changer.
Now that a large percentage of students in school own mobile phones, it is important that the old wineskin mentality of ‘banning phones in class’ should be discarded, and a new wineskin of ‘let’s discover together how we can harness the potential of smartphones in learning’ should be applied.
New learning, new expectations
Technology is one issue. Pedagogy is another. The current generation of learners brings a new set of expectations to education. Sadly they are often thwarted by the old, outmoded models of teaching that persist in schools, colleges and universities. Inflexible delivery of teaching, outmoded assessment methods and siloed curricula do little to support the development of the Knowmad Society.7 Knowmads, as John Moravec and his colleagues explain, are:
Nomadic knowledge workers: creative, imaginative, and innovative people who can work with almost anybody, anytime and anywhere. The jobs associated with 21st century knowledge and innovation workers have become much less specific concerning task and place, but require more value generative applications of what they know. The office as we know it is gone. Schools and other learning spaces will follow next.
Clearly, Knowmads are a new breed of learners. They tend not to stay in one place for too long, and if the prediction above is correct, they will not harbour any expectations about learning in one place. Most fundamentally, the manner in which they learn is different to the learning that characterises formal education. The Knowmad learns interactively, independently, autonomously. Whichever way we regard the future of education, many would accept that privileging teaching over learning is no longer tenable. Today’s students need freedom to learn what, how, when and where they wish.
You will discover as you read this book that there is plenty of evidence to suggest that today’s students are discovering new ways to learn, ways that are radically different to those of previous generations. They are more mobile, and more discerning about what is relevant to their personal lives and future plans. And although teachers generally recognise this, state-funded education has not advanced sufficiently or responded rapidly enough to support and nurture these new ways.
Often, in schools and universities, the new wine expectations are being let down by the old wineskins. Outside and beyond the walls of the school, society has new priorities that were unknown even a decade ago. These have arrived with such rapidity that they have caught the conservative, slow-to-change state education system off guard and ill-prepared to respond. The old wineskins are leaking at the seams, and are about to burst.
This is not simply rhetoric. Teachers are now preparing students for a world of work that has yet to be invented. It is not sensible, nor is it sustainable to continue to apply old methods. When students leave school and enter into that yet-to-be invented world, they will need to be equipped with a range of skills and literacies the preceding generation did not require. Not only will they need to be agile thinkers, they will also need to be able to solve problems that are exclusive to their generation, problems of which we are not yet aware. Some of the problems they will encounter may be uniquely caused by the very same future technologies they will use on a daily basis. Their ability to be flexible and responsive to change, and their skills of ‘learning how to learn’ will be just about all they have to help them survive. They will need to be digitally ready and technologically literate, probably beyond the experience and knowledge of their teachers and tutors.
As Singapore educator Craig Kemp observes, they will be the communicators, inventors and thinkers of the coming generation.8 They will also discover, through their extensive and habitual use of online gaming, that the coding that sits behind the game can be modified to create new versions. This practice of ‘modding’ becomes, in Gee’s terms,9 a way to hack reality, borrowing from and modifying what already exists and using it to create something new. This is a practice that teachers can surely learn a lot from when it comes to developing new curricula or designing learning spaces.
These are not elements that feature in much of current formal education. Consequently, it may not be possible for students to learn these skills solely in school, college or university. They will discover new ways to learn these for themselves, leading to the conclusion that young people are already preparing themselves for work in the future.
It follows that if school is to contribute toward this development, teachers will need new pedagogies to support these new ways of learning while students are actually in school. This will mean radically changing the way education is conducted. It will also mean that new theories should be applied to explain and underpin the practices that will emerge to meet the new expectations and new ways of learning. We need new wineskins for new wine if we are going to save education. We need a new vision in our schools, colleges and universities to preserve that which is good and great about education – a wineskin that will cope with the vast, sweeping and fermenting changes that are about to engulf us.
1 Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (London: Penguin, 2010), p. 37.
2 Sir Ken Robinson, ‘How Schools Kill Creativity’, TED Talks (2006). Available online at: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.
3 Ray Kurzweil, ‘The Accelerating Power of Technology’, TED Talks (2005). Available online at: https://www.ted.com/talks/ray_kurzweil_on_ how_technology_will_transform_us.
4 Fred G. Martin, ‘Will Massive Open Online Courses Change How We Teach?’ Communications of the ACM 55.8 (2012): 26–28.
5 Larry Cuban, Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).
6 Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (New York: Random House, 1990).
7 John W. Moravec (ed.), Knowmad Society (Minneapolis: Education Futures, 2013). Available online at: http://www.knowmadsociety.com/download/.
8 Craig Kemp, ‘What is School? Creating Change in Education.’ Professional Reflection Blog (28 August 2014). Available online at: http://mrkempnz.com/2014/08/what-is-school-creating-change-in-education.html.
9 James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
2
Changing Education
The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.
Peter Drucker
In 1925, a family living in a backwoods, rural area of Virginia won a prize to visit New York City. They were a poor family, and lived in a small community, in a log cabin with no electricity. They drew their water from a well and most of their food was either traded or hunted for. And so the family dressed in their best clothes and travelled to the Big Apple by Greyhound bus.
They arrived in the centre of the large city, and emerged wide-eyed and confused in the middle of Times Square. They gazed up in wonder at the skyscrapers, and marvelled at the bustling crowd, the noise and the lights. They had never seen anything quite like it before, and couldn’t believe there were that many people in the world.
After a few minutes, the woman said to her husband, ‘Come on, let’s go find Macy’s.’ Her husband asked, ‘What is a Macy?’ ‘Macy’s is a department store,’ she explained, ‘one of the biggest in the world. I’ve heard so much about it!’ They walked a few blocks down Broadway with their two children and entered into the foyer of the huge department store. ‘Come on, dear,’ said the woman to her daughter, and off they went to see the ladies fashions.
The poor husband was left standing with his son, bewildered, in the middle of the large Macy’s atrium. He saw hundreds of people milling around, walking up and down staircases, and then he noticed a queue forming over to one side. He wandered over to take a closer look.
He saw what appeared to be a door that slid open to let people into some kind of chamber. The door would then slide shut, and a dial above the door would rise and fall through a series of numbers.
When the door opened again, the people had changed. This happened several times, and the bemused man wondered what kind of strange machine this was in the wall, that could transform people before his eyes.
Then he watched as a little old lady with a walking stick hobbled slowly through the door. The door slid shut, the dial rose and fell, and the door slid open again. Out walked a beautiful, blonde bombshell of a woman. His jaw fell open in surprise.
He turned to his son, and said, ‘Son, quickly – go get your mother!’
What are these strange machines?
Arthur C. Clarke once said: ‘Any technology that is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.’ And therein lies a problem when we first try to introduce new technology into schools. We are seduced by it. It appears magical to us. We become enthusiastic about it to the point that it is seen as an answer to our problems, even though we don’t know what the problem is yet. The trouble is, when we try to impress young people with these new technologies, we fail. What seems magical to us is probably nothing special to younger users, who have most likely seen it all before.
Learning in the digital age is different to any previous form of education. Teaching has always been a challenging profession, but in a time where technology is proliferating and has penetrated just about every aspect of our lives, teachers now have unprecedented opportunities to reform education and create previously inconceivable possibilities for learners. But they need to get past the idea that technology is special. It is not. Technology, just like any other set of tools, is there to help the user perform. In the case of learning technology, it fulfils the function of supporting learning. As such we should make it mundane. Technology that is transparent is more effective than technology that is so prominent that it demands our attention. Technology that frames learning so we can see ‘through it’ to engage and explore is more effective than technology that is the centre of attention. Introducing technology into schools is not difficult. Ensuring that it is used appropriately is another matter entirely.
Making a difference?
As we have seen, adapting to change is not easy, systems are slow to change, and new technologies are accompanied by their own unique problems. Not only must educators contend with huge demands on their time and energy, they now have to cope with rapidly changing environments while learning to use a bewildering array of emerging technologies. A prudent question to ask would be to what extent technology in schools has made any difference to teaching and learning.
A few years ago I was invited to sit on a discussion panel during a student teacher conference. Each of us was invited in turn to give a brief presentation on our teaching philosophy. As you would expect, my presentation heavily featured technology. Two of the other panellists challenged me to show how technology had made a difference in schools, as they were of the belief that it had made little impact. My response was concise – all I said was, ‘Special Educational Needs’. My fellow panellists quickly conceded the point, because it is irrefutable. For many children, technology supports and enhances their learning, but for children with special needs, technology actually enables it to happen. Without adaptive technologies, children with hearing and visual impairment would be fully disadvantaged. If specialist software and technologies were not available, children with physical and cognitive disabilities would be disenfranchised, virtually excluded from mainstream education.
But it’s not only special needs students who are benefitting from new technologies in the classroom – other students and their teachers are finding learning and teaching a more engaging prospect because of the affordances they offer. The relationship being forged between teachers and their students with technology is not a superficial one. UK teacher Drew Buddie recently stated: ‘It’s not about just shifting traditional lessons onto screens – it’s about allowing pupils to make use of their devices to truly enhance their learning while giving teachers better ways to track individual achievement and personalise lessons.’1
Technology has made a positive impact on the lives of millions of students and their teachers, making everyone’s lives easier by transforming tedious and time consuming tasks into super-quick automated processes. However, it is sometimes a little more difficult to offer evidence that it has changed pedagogy for the better. Often, this is because teaching is a profession that has a long conservative history. Let me elaborate.
Many teachers start their careers with an idealistic perspective on education, and aspire to great things. Some simply talk about ‘making a difference’, while others want to ‘contribute something important to society’. To some these may sound like the trite and naive comments heard during a beauty contest, but they are usually heartfelt sentiments that come from people who have somehow become inspired to carve out a career in the fraught, pressurised world of education. Teaching is often rewarding and challenging in equal measure. Those who stay within teaching for any considerable period of time are generally highly motivated to make that difference, aspiring to mould and develop young minds.
Sadly, many also leave the profession because they become disillusioned with the endless paperwork, behaviour management issues and huge workloads; in short, the culture of performativity in schools. They may enter into teaching newly qualified and idealistic about the changes they wish to make. Very quickly, however, they find that new ideas are not always welcomed, and that they are expected to comply with the methods and approaches the school advocates.
Those that stay learn some important truths about working in education. The first is that to survive, teachers need to learn as many shortcuts and time savers as they can. They need to be able to juggle several activities at once, multitasking continually to ensure that they reach the end of the day physically and mentally intact. Technology can help teachers to save time, but often it is restricted to ‘teacher tools’ such as email, software used to create resources, and technology that can be used to instruct.
Secondly, every successful teacher must also be a professional learner. The essence of good teaching is to get students to fall in love with learning. If teachers themselves aren’t in love with learning, how can they possibly expect to succeed? The very best teachers are those who constantly update their own knowledge and skills, reflect on their practice, and view their work critically and objectively. The most innovative teachers are those who discover how to adapt to constant change; they become flexible and agile in their approach to education. When new challenges present themselves, the very best teachers view them as opportunities rather than threats.
