It is back to school time, and all across America students will be returning to what educational researcher Alan November calls the "Reality Free Zone." In most classrooms the technologies which define our age, that control our economy, and that determine our future will find themselves relegated to corners or rarely accessible labs, if not banned completely. In the few schools where the equipment is in place it will be used clumsily as an adjunct to the curriculum. The essentials will not be taught and students will not learn the things the must know if they are to enter the 21st Century economy.
This will be bad for all students, but it will be especially disastrous for all children who struggle with disabilities, with learning differences, or who require help to master the English language.
I watch this. I watch it closely. I visit many, many schools. And I can report definitively that there is less technology use in our schools than in any office, than in any Wal-Mart, than in any other public space. Out in the real world it is 2007, but in the typical classroom it is 1970 and holding.
American schools, even more than most of the world's, have locked themselves
and their students in this prison of the past. They deny the needs of their
students. They deny the tools of the society they exist in. And they deny
their students the essential skills of employment in the economy of the future.
"School" of course, has always been a conservative institution. It
is, first and foremost, a method of social reproduction. Politicians, administrators,
university education faculties, and teachers themselves, all believe that they
are in the business of teaching young people to be "just like themselves" -
after all, they've succeeded, right?
That's a dangerous business in most times. History (if taught properly) teaches
us that societies which stagnate, fall. It is incredibly dangerous right now,
with global change spinning at a faster and faster rate, and all the populations
of the world grasping for their piece of the future.
The world of yesterday relied on a certain set of what November calls information "containers." It
used printed books and handwritten notebooks. It used index cards and card
catalogues. It used radio and film and television. It used landline phones
and magnetic tape. It even began using computer hard drives.
Schools, of course, are not even happy with those technologies, treating printed
and handwritten notes as better than any other information source. They often
pretend that all knowledge within books is accurate and good, and all knowledge
gained by other means is suspect. What is the accuracy difference between a
print Encyclopeda and Wikipedia? Nothing, say real research, except that Wikipedia
is more up-to-date. But teachers and administrators constantly attack use of
this remarkable resource rather than teaching their students to double-check
anything read, online or in print. Might not a student learn more about Europe
by watching European television, listening to European radio, and reading European
newspapers online? Of course they would, but schools persist in purchasing
(at great cost) outdated textbooks to do a lesser job, so committed are they
to the supremacy of 15th Century information technology. In schools, everything
that comes from outside the historical lines formed by the invention of the
pen and Gutenberg's breakthrough in 1450 is deemed less than legitimate. Students
were no more allowed to audio record a lesson than they were permitted to count
on their fingers.
The problem for our students is that they know something their educators refuse
to learn. Today the containers have changed. The dominant information holders
in the world are the laptop or handheld computer, the mobile phone, the iPod
(digital music or music/video player), and the text message by phone or computer.
But schools continue to resist them all, even as the best universities leap
to embrace them. Northern Michigan University (and many others) require laptops.
Duke University hands out iPods. In Europe, handheld learning via mobile phone
has taken off. But not here. Here in the US we continue to abuse children by
separating them from reality and by preparing them for the best jobs of 1967.
What should your school do? It must do four things: Welcome technology. Teach
technology. Embrace technology. Leverage Technology.
Welcome technology: Every technology banned - or not actively used - is a technology
unlearned. It was important, in 1850, to teach handwriting - handwriting was
the prime communication method, along with Morse Code. It was important to
teach the typewriter in 1950, that was a principle business and academic communication
tool. But there have always been other "containers" that schools
avoided, which have produced massive cultural failures. In 1850 it was vital
to teach students how to listen to political rumour and political argument,
how to pick facts from fiction. But this was not taught. In 1960 it was vital
to teach students how to view film and television, how to pull real information
and determine veracity. But this was not taught. One could argue that the legendary
response to Orson Welles' 1938 War of the Worlds represents an absolute failure
of American schooling, as was Fox Broadcasting's concerns in 2003 that viewer's
of The Simpsons would mistake a fake cartoon news crawl for the real thing.
So bring them in... the iPods, the mobile phones, the laptop computers, the
handheld computers. Bring 'em in, pass 'em out. Flood the classrooms with them.
We need to stop complaining about how kids use technologies and leap into the
conversation.
Teach technology: Teaching responsible use of information and communications
technology is what will open the world for your students. I constantly hear
teachers whine about the "way kids use these things" (the strange
English of IM and Text, over-reliance on unchecked Wikipedia), but I barely
see them teaching Google (half the US teachers I meet don't even know the
use of quotation marks with search terms, how could they teach Google?).
Guaranteed: our students will need to use internet search engines in their
university, in their jobs, in their careers. Guaranteed: our students will
communicate with their employers and co-workers via email, IM, and text message.
Guaranteed: our students will need to learn from podcasts, blogs, and vlogs,
as well as downloaded and "voiced texts" in higher education and
in careers. Guaranteed: our students will need to use Google Maps, on-line
translation software, on-line international conversion software, and will
need to access news sources on-line simply in order to survive in the world.
If your school is not actively teaching these technologies, it is really
not educating at all.
Embrace technology: The hardest thing about education is this -politicians
who were educated 40 or 50 years ago direct administrators who were educated
20 or 30 years ago. Those administrators direct teachers who were educated
10 or 15 years ago. And someone, out of this ancient training, we're supposed
to produce students fully prepared for the future.
Students must be taught not just how to use, but how to learn technology. How
to learn it on their own. How to share that knowledge with each other. And
how to use that knowledge positively and constructively.
You won't teach that with filters. You won't teach that with locked down devices.
You can only teach that by opening up the technology and by letting students
learn by doing, by failing, and by screwing up, in an environment with less
than drastic consequences for mistakes.
Leverage Technology: In study after study, American schools manage to make
no more than one-third of their students "proficient" in the most
important skill, reading. These despite unprecedented dollars and time poured
into the effort. And in school district after school district schools "fail" No
Child Left Behind benchmarks because "Special Education" students
cannot keep up. Technology can help provide solutions to both. Computers can
solve the decoding mystery for students with reading issues by reading books
and websites to them (with free software). This can especially help elementary
students to stay with their peers on content acquisition. This same technology,
because it engages two senses (words are displayed and heard) and because it
has simple supports such as built-in dictionaries, can help almost any struggling
student. Other free software can help students organize their data and work,
can keep attentionally-challenged students on tasks (with mobile phone alerts
sent from teacher-controlled computer calendars), can ease the issues of math
notetaking. Or support spelling, or grammatical usage. And it can open up the
world to the interests that engage students. After all, the internet is nothing
more than the world's greatest library. Most importantly for these "troubled" students,
technology fosters independence. Students can "do it themselves" at
the same time all other students are working. They can learn to control their
own lives, not to depend on a continuous series of aides.
So, school is starting: It is almost time for those "Meet The Teacher" nights and open houses. This year, ask the important questions. Ask if your school is a 21st Century School or a museum piece.
Here are four simple questions to begin with:
How does this school teach contemporary communications technology? Do our
students learn to write a business email? Do they learn how to apply for a
job online? Are they taught how to send a "business style" text message
to a hypothetical employer? What about appropriate voice mail messages (both
outgoing and incoming)? Can they send an email from their mobile phone that
an employer can understand? Do the students learn the etiquette of selecting
appropriate email addresses for themselves? If not, how will they become employable?
How does this school teach contemporary research? What is the curriculum as
it relates to effective use of Google, Google Scholar, Wikipedia, Library Resources?
How are search terms taught? How do we show students how to analyze the quality
of information received via searches? How do we show students how to document
their searches? If not, how will our students succeed in either college or
high-level professions?
How does this school prepare students to learn new technologies? Our sixth
graders will graduate into a technological world we cannot quite yet imagine:
what is being done to prepare them to comfortably play with and learn all the
new, and essential to employment, technologies that will appear across their
lifespans? Are computers set up to re-image themselves, so students can "play" without
causing any real damage? Are teachers allowed to download and install software
to investigate? Is there "a low cost" to failure when students try
new things and new methods? If not, aren't we preparing our students for the
best jobs of five years ago?
How does this school embrace Universal Design Technology? Are students with "disabilities" and "differences" being
actively encouraged to test and discover technology solutions for those things
they have difficulties with? Do we teach the proper set up of spell-checking,
grammar-checking, and Auto-Correct in Microsoft Word? Do we demonstrate spell
check in Firefox? in Email programs? Do we have alternative keyboards and mice?
Do we have (at very least) the free literacy support software - CLiCk, Speak
- NaturalReader - Microsoft Reader - installed on every school computer? Is
Speech Recognition routinely available? Screen magnification? If a struggling
reader tests badly do we try the test with text-to-speech software? Do we always
favor tech solutions that promote independence over "we'll read to you
- write for you" solutions that promote dependence? If not, how will these
students become independent?