Technology for the Sake of Technology

William Pflaum's book, The Technology Fix, paints a disheartening picture of hodge podge and trivial pursuits. When he reports that he found 85% of the computers off or unused in most schools he visited, we are left wondering which is worse - the questionable practices he reports or the cold machines. His book is reviewed in the March 2004 issue of FNO at http://fno.org/apr04/technologyfix.html.

Technology for the sake of technology is a peculiarly modern phenomenon related to various presumptions that new things are almost always better. The companion article this month describing the death of email raises the possibility that voicemail may regain its former footing as a messaging system as e-mail declines in predictability and reliability.

Successful teachers with a long career of achieving good results with classical tools and methods have good reason to ask why they should stuff new technology into their programs when there is so little evidence of value and so little time for fashions and fads.

Schools are currently preoccupied with showing students how to perform well on tests that require inferential reasoning. And some teachers are struggling with huge lists of content that students must memorize in order to score well on exams. These twin foci permit little distraction or diversion. If new tools add little value, they deserve little place in the classroom.

First Things First

The choice of tools to support student learning should come after the designer has clarified learning goals and considered which strategies are most likely to produce results. We should not start with a particular tool and make room for it unless it belongs. If we start with a hammer, we'll look for nails. If we start with a saw, we'll look for something to cut.

Purpose first. Strategy and tools next.

With many reformers pushing hard for accountability and imposing high stakes testing, these are hardly ripe times for educational speculation or reckless experimentation. Many teachers find themselves hard pressed to welcome technology demands while shouldering pressures from reformers intent on lifting outcome measures..

Sample Lessons That Fall Short

Well meaning educators are sometimes commissioned by educational departments to create sample lessons to make the integration of technologies more user friendly.

Unfortunately, many of these sample lessons can be quite mundane and unworthy of teachers' time. It is not the purpose of this article to point fingers at any particular states, departments or ministries, so we will not critique actual lessons and lists of lessons, but it is possible to give the reader an idea of unworthy lessons by providing examples in which the names, places and identities have been changed to conceal the identities of the authors.

These sample lessons often suffer from several important weaknesses:

1. The learning activity offered does not address the ambitious thinking skills listed in the state or provincial curriculum standards.
2. The activity asks students to use specific tools such as spreadsheets in ways that seem forced, awkward and artificial as if the mere use of the technology were an end in itself.
3. The activity shows little awareness of quality teaching research or sound pedagogy, as the strategies suggested are either archaic, unduly pedantic or lacking in appeal, amounting to little more than "one more brick in the wall."
4. The lesson plans show little sign of pilot testing and are speculative early drafts that should not have been published and distributed until tested, adapted and refined in real classrooms with real students.

• Example One - The Bad Trip

One lesson suggests that students take a virtual tour of a region and collect a whole bunch of "stuff" about the towns and people they might encounter along the way.

Sadly, the sources they suggest students use will provide them with a tourist office view of life in those towns, a disneyfied image of those regions and a distorted collection of facts that focus on entertainment, recreation, shopping and attractions. The lesson is pushing "virtual social studies" - an approach to learning that falls far short of learning the truth of the communities being studies. For a more comprehensive explanation of this trap, read "Other Worldly Research" in the December 2002 issue of FNO.

This lesson perpetuates a very bad school practice that has been going on for decades - the mindless collection of facts of little import - trivial pursuit. The activity requires little thought while subtly endorsing false images and marketing as a reliable source of information about cities, states, provinces and nations.

• Example Two - The Razzle Dazzle PowerPointless Show

One lesson encourages students to compress complex issues into slide presentations that contain little more than sound bites, mind bites, eye candy and mind candy. Flying images collide with irritating sound effects as students demonstrate a complete ignorance of artful communication. Rigorous thought is replaced by "slabbing¹" - the cutting and pasting of "stuff" found during brief tours of Internet duty. Ideas and content are secondary as the show becomes the focus of effort.

This kind of lesson breeds mentalsoftness² and glib thinking. To learn an approach to presenting that stresses thought and effective communication, read "Scoring PowerPoints" in the September 2000 issue of FNO.

Unstuffing the Curriculum

The point of this article is quite simple. We should emphasize learning goals and strategies when planning lessons. We should then select tools that match purpose.

Those who impose technology integration from above should stop doing so.

Those who create empires around ICT should desist and should instead expect that curriculum planners within the areas of social studies, math, science, language arts and the fine arts will make smart choices of technologies as they might blend naturally and comfortably into the content areas.

Policy makers should back off the pressure to integrate tools that are often imperfect and disappointing,. They should consider rewarding the discerning use of new tools in concert with classical tools.

We might do our best to avoid folly lest we end up like Shakespeare warned with a "tale told by an idot signifying nothing."