What should we expect from Technology?

The New York Times is reporting on schools that are dropping laptops from the classrooms [Read the article].

There are lots of reasons for dropping laptops – the cost of keeping up with the technology- not only the computers but the infrastructure to maintain the usability of the equipment. Some are critical that more students are using them fun and personally use – much more than learning. I think all of the criticisms are fair… technology certainly has it difficulties.

I wonder though, what are we loosing by giving up on using technology in the classroom. One of the major criticisms is that scores of the students haven’t improved – measuring performance should be a critical consideration (although it would be interesting to see what tools are being used to measure performance).

Unfortunately, I wonder if the school systems have adequately prepared the teachers for using technology in the classroom. Please don’t take this wrong – I have a great deal of respect for the abilities of teachers – but I know a good number who aren’t ready to use technology in the classroom. One of my friends that teaches in a middle-school commented to me recently that he was the first teacher in his school to even have a website. Why doesn’t anyone else have a website at his school – they don’t know how. That’s one problem. Compounding the problem is the issue of time. Teachers seem to have way more to do than time permits – so on top of everything else they have to become experts in teaching with technology.

My favorite quote from the article:

“The art of thinking is being lost,” he [Tom McCarthy] said. “Because people can type in a word and find a source and think that’s the be all end all.”

Hmmm. Maybe, but regardless of technology (pen, paper, laptops, 3-D immersive environment) critical thinking is challenging to think. But, it seems that technology could be valuable in assisting with this… but by no means should we expect technology to do the job.

Perhaps we should:

Prep teachers to better teach use technology

Research how technologies should be used to educate (come on, we can definitely do better than we are now)

Figure out what topics and subjects work with Technology (or at least leverage technology when it makes sense – even if that isn’t all of the time)

Probably lots of things we can do- but before we get up on technology in the classroom – maybe we should look at the bigger systemic issues and see what we can do -since technology isn’t really going away anytime soon.