Bumps in the road to using Technology in education

In class this week, we read chapters 2 & 3 of Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America by Allan Collins and Richard Halverson.

[This book, by well-regarded authors , came out this Sept. It has received favorable reviews/comments by many important names in the field. ]

Chapter 2 sets up the primary arguments from the proponents in this discussion. The first of the points made in this chapter can be summarized by this sentence. "Enthusiasts argue that trying to prepare students for the 21st century with 19th-century technology is like teaching people to fly a rocket ship by having them ride bicycles."

While it makes sense to lead with this argument, given how widespread it is, to me it is like suggesting that we should be worrying more because the education system is not preparing children well enough to drive cars. There are some skills one can learn when one needs to - like driving a car, or learning to use a word-processor (I am fairly sure that none of these authors has been complaining much that their education did not prepare them adequately for learning to use word processors once they were invented). Separately, of course, there are literacies one must acquire. There, again, the education system of the past has not prevented academics like these to move from blue-tinted 35-mm slides to bland Powerpoints, to multi-media, and so on. While some people seem to suggest that these are literacies, I think that misses the distinction between presentation and content.

Chapter 3 then presents the skeptics point-of-view. Predictably, given their primary theses, Collins and Halverson don't do as good a job summarizing the reasons why it is difficult for Technology to get a foothold in the classroom. Here are the primary barriers they see to technology use in schools.

• Cost and Access
• Classroom Management (also see Authority and Teaching below)
• What computers can't teach (Many social skills, and Teacher as Counsellor)
• Challenges to instruction (taxes already stretched teachers)
• Authority and teaching
• Assessment (emphasis on standardized tests holds back transformation of the system)

I have not read the rest of this book, so I don't yet know what they propose. But the tone in the first two chapters unnecessarily sets up a Us versus Them confrontation. Why do people keep doing this? If you want to change the status quo, support what is good in the present system and tap into people's existing wishes to improve. Why bash them for being dinosaurs? Notice in the list of 6 items above that there is only one item which suggests that teachers can do somethings better than computers.

I feel the authors missed at least two other points.

1. The primary flaws in US education are not related to Technology.

Among the camp that believes that the primary purpose of education is to prepare a skilled workforce (and thus maintain an economic advantage in a competitive global economy), there is widespread concern about how the 'quality' of US education is steadily deteriorating when compared to the emerging threats. While Technology can certainly help recover some of the lost ground, it is not the primary solution - for the simple reason that India and China and Singapore are S.Korea are not closing the gap with Technology.

2. Universities are setting the agenda for High Schools.

For all the the reforms and transformations that are proposed in schools, educators on the ground are stuck with having to 'prepare' their students for college, not for the future. Whatever one may say or hear about the workplace of the future, just-in-time learning, and the like, it is the colleges that call the shots on the pre-requisites for admission and that in turn determines what schools will do (in large part because of the earlier mentioned reason that a college education is necessary for economic advantage).