These are some of my postings on this topic:
The Digital Divide
November 14, 2012 8:04 PM
I think it all gets back to what we believe educational technology is about. If it is about improving learning and learning outcomes then all students should be included. It shouldn’t be used as a “leg-up” for the “have-nots” or something we assume the “haves” have already accomplished. All students deserve our best. If I could predict which one of my children will grow up to change the world, I could make a fortune selling my technique. Truth is….we can’t really predict so we give our best to everyone. Thinking economically…we invest in a wide ranging portfolio with a mix of low, medium and high risk commodities… not really knowing which will pay off biggest in the future!
The Future of Public Education in Canada
Posted Date: November 12, 2012 8:24 PM
What do you think will be the future of public education in Canada? Where should resources be focused? What can be cut?
I really enjoyed the conversation with Warren Jestin. It seems trite to say that things will change but they will. I don’t think it’s about doing more. I think we need to do things differently. So I believe it’s not just about more money it’s also about doing something different with the money. We have to give up something to fund the things we want to do.
What should we give up? Paraphrasing Jestin, I worry that the people making the decisions will base them on the last fifty years and not the next 50 years. I agree with his thought that we are making a mistake when we think the strategies we had ten years ago are the ones we need to keep in order to prosper.
Perhaps we should ask our students. The explosion in the mobile web suggests they might have some insight into current and future trends. They should at least have a voice in shaping their future. We made the mess and plan to let them clean it up. It’s a bit arrogant to tell them how! I am reasonably sure a lot of students would suggest we could save money on photocopying. Not another worksheet!
As Jestin said, prosperity rest of the skills base of our citizenry. I appreciate the skills he named were: cooperation, flexibility, passion, diversity, adaptability. Let’s focus on this kind competency and learning outcome. Let’s fund what we want not what we have. It was so much easier to resist my weekly trip to Starbuck’s last year when I knew I was going to Mexico for Spring Break!
I always enjoy a good quote:
“Will not the good people respond to a united, and earnest appeal from us? Can we, can they, by any other means, so certainly, or so speedily, assure these vital objects? We can succeed only by concert. It is not “can any of us imagine better?” but, “can we all do better?” The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”
Abraham Lincoln (1862)
The Digital Divide
November 12, 2012 7:33 PM
We need to be very careful when we divide people into “digital haves” and digital have-nots”. We only need to worry about this if we believe that having technology is superior or better to not having technology; somehow the “haves” are more developed than the “have-nots”. Getting technology into the hands of the “have-nots” assumes that the “haves” have the worked out the issues surrounding access, ability, and empowerment so successfully that they should pass on their insight. They will be successful if they have what we have and do what we do! We also seem to associate the digital divide with an economic divide. I think this is far too simple and doesn’t reflect the real world.
Please consider the work of Jan Chipchase: The Anthropology of Mobile Phones
and Hans Rosling: Let My Dataset Change Your Mindset. As Rosling might suggest, we need to be careful when we apply a 1950’s theory of economics to the modern world.
I do intend to minimize the signficant contribution technology can make but I think we need to remember that not everyone shares our beliefs about technology. Not everyone has the same level of access. Not everyone has our ability and not everyone has our level of empowerment. Some have more and some have less and some have different. We need to keep this in mind when we use technology in our classrooms.
The underfunding of education is a tragedy. The lack of fiscal responsibility is also a tragedy. We rely on PAC’s, social agencies, and corporations to fill in the gaps. I hope that the excitement of technology helps generate a real conversation about money and schools. More money isn’t the whole answer. We need to rethink education and how it is funded.
The Digital Divide
November 12, 2012 5:32 PM
Just to turn the idea of the divide on its head. My school is in a middle to upper middle class neighbourhood. We are a large school so funding is not as tight as it might be in a smaller school. Our PAC is active and supportive of teacher initiatives, including technology. All this said, when I started working on technology at the school. I visited one of the “inner-city schools” in our district. I quite evied their class set of iPads, Wifi, and integrated computer lab. They were light years ahead of what we were doing. However, my request to a community agency for funding was turned down. I was told they would have approved it for the other school as it would have addressed issues of access and equity. Making it wider is a funnier way to address the divide. I think teacher initiative is a significant factor in educational change. In two years, we have dramatically changed the school’s level of technology. Enthusiasm is catching. Get everyone excited and interested and the dollars seem to appear.
Puryear (1999)
November 12, 2012 5:14 PM
I agree that pedagogy plays a significant role in the success of a lesson. I also believe that technology can dramatically challenge our pedagogy or a least cause us to reengage with it. Technology can remove some of the barriers to learning when children are not sufficiently literate to use traditional print media. For me, this challenges the limits we sometimes place on students. There is a stereotype that small children can only handle very simple ideas. I believe that this is an artifact of waiting until they are literate before we present big ideas. My kindergärtners and I are playing around with reflection and self-evaluation using iPads. The kids make movies and take pictures of their performance. Watching themselves talk to the class and hearing their classmates’ questions and suggestions, has resulted in some pretty significant changes. When they talk about their Lego creations, it feels like I am attending a TED talk. They have lots of important things to say. Their questions start with why, how come, and how. No one asks “Do you like your Lego?” it is far to simple a question! Playing around with my students and the iPads has challenged all of us and enriched our learning!
Puryear (1999)
November 10, 2012 9:21 PM
A funny thing happened during the writing of my last message. My wife, Lucy, was enjoying Adora Svitak’s TED talk What Adults Can Learn from Kids. As Adora might say, “It is worth thinking about – considering our “credentials”.
Puryear (1999)
November 10, 2012 8:51 PM
I am going to climb back on my soapbox. I think that Puryear has made a fundamental mistake in his discussion of the economics of educational technology. I think his understanding of costs, fixed and variable represents a way of thinking that ignores how our present comfort impacts the future. It is a business model which I believe has a limited place in education. Children are frequently described as our greatest asset and our hope for the future and yet we want to limit our investment in them to what makes economic sense today! Our children are inheriting a planet ravaged by the results of this kind of thinking. We need to renew and revitalize education by opening the doors and embracing things that do not always make sense. We need to meet our 21st century learners digital natives CHILDREN where they are, engage with them in ways we may not understand, and help prepare them for a future without us. We allow present costs to limit our investment and at the peril of their future.
Pavan Sukhdev presents this idea much more eloquently than I have. Take a minute to enjoy his TED Talk: Put a Value on Nature! As he speaks about “the value of what comes to use from nature and which doesn’t get priced by markets” think about our children. Consider that they are one of the ”free benefits that flows to human beings from nature”. They are their most valuable asset: one we should not squander!
I am not saying that we should embrace technology at any cost. I am saying that we need to consider all of the costs before we limit or expand its use in schools.
Another Approach to Choosing Technology
November 10, 2012 5:57 PM
I haven’t started the reading this week but feel the need to respond. Thanks for SELECTIONS. I like this kind of acrostic mnemonic. What concerns me most about the idea of cost effectiveness is the role of goals in the formula. So often goals reflect our understanding of the world today. We educate children to understand the world as we think it is. This makes sense ’cause it’s more difficult to write a goal for something that you can’t define. And yet, this is what we need to do. Everything I read about 21st century learning tells me that we need to break out of content based teaching and define competencies that may, we hope, equip or children for an uncertain future. Perhaps we need to factor the cost of not preparing our children for the future into the formula. It may be cost effective for the meat industry to cut the down the amazon rainforest today but the cost to the world of the future will be enormous. How much will it cost to build enough oxygen generating plants to keep the world breathing? Sometimes saving a bit now costs us a lot more in the future! I am not saying that we should just run with technology at any cost but I am saying that our children are on to something that resonates with them in a way that traditional education does not. Look at the growth of the mobile net – teachers need to engage in the conversation. It isn’t cost effective to buy a globe when you still teach that the world is flat!
And now I will climb down off my soapbox.
Puryear (1999)
November 10, 2012 5:20 PM
I agree with the idea that linking the use of technology to specific educational goals makes sense. I do think that the cost of learning materials should be weighed against their real benefits for students. However, I think that fun is an essential factor in maximizing learning. For William Glasser (Module 8) fun and learning are the same thing. True autodidactism or learning that is truly self-directed,self-motivated, and self-taught almost always contains an element of fun! My little students know this but we work in a system that teaches it out of them and then laments at their lack of interest and motivation. As we discuss the role of technology in schools at the grass roots level – students, parents, and teachers – we have the opportunity to reengage with pedagogy. We need to reconsider what learning is and how we measure it. There may be a more cost effective way to produce apple juice but the point is moot when we are trying to produce champagne.