On iPad, Education, & Technology

engaget photo of Steve Jobs & his iPad ((Attias, Cyril. “Apple iPad Keynote.” Flickr. 27 Jan 2010. Engaget, Web. 28 Jan 2010. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/newyork/4309048745/>.
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I was riding back from Salisbury, yesterday, while Steve Jobs was announcing Apple’s new iPad. The best I could do was read a live blog, updating with the features and peppered with the writers skepticism and acknowledgement of the Jobs mystique. I left it a bit underwhelmed, hoping for something a little more earthshaking.

However, upon getting home and doing a Google search for iPad and video, I found a link to this Mashable blog post (Official Apple iPad Demo [VIDEO]) with an embedded Apple promotional video about the device — and “I’m sold,” as I announced on Twitter just after viewing piece.

I’ve been thinking about the device since — and why I am so sold on it now, despite my admitted disappointment over not being rocked by something really “Amazing.” A core question I’ll be asking myself as time goes on is the iPad’s suitability as an institutional learning tool. But, quite frankly, we have bigger problems than that.

Today, I am writing about a viewpoint article published in The Daily Gamecock, University of South Carolina’s student newspaper. Written by freshman literature student, Michael Lambert, the article (Education, Technology Share Weak Connection), at first, affirms what we already know, that technology is changing and it is changing us. Lambert writes,

Life before text messaging feels harder to imagine than life before the wheel.

Then he writes something striking to me, especially as I am reading Jaon Lanier’s You are Not a Gadget (see Another Great Tilting). He says,

I neither glorify nor decry the digital age. Technology does change us and how we act, but so does every minute of the day: every handshake, every look skyward, every farewell.

Continuing on to answer the question that haunts us all, new technology impacting teaching and learning?

I have never understood how technology enhances learning. The only digital age staple I see nowadays is PowerPoint, a tool that has become more of a crutch for teachers than a study guide for students. And we all have our experiences with Blackboard (and its pandemic lack of use by professors). From what I see, little has changed in education, given all the technology that has been imposed on it.

Although there are many valid reasons why formal education has resisted the transformations indicated by technology, and more importantly, by a new information landscape. There’s no excuse. But we all know about the barriers.

What truly disturbs me about Michael’s piece is that he seems so indoctrinated to a teacher-, textbook-, standards-directed education experience that information and communication technologies seem to have little impact on his vision of himself as a learner.

To illustrate his dismissal of digital technology as a learning tool, he shares an anecdote.

A film historian once asked my high school media class what we thought films were stored on. He answered: old 35mm. DVDs, Blu-rays, even VHS — he wouldn’t touch the stuff, he said. It takes advanced technology to play those. But 35mm takes light, a wheel and something with which to turn it — nothing else.

It is an interesting observation, and one I might use some time. But it makes sense only within the narrow context of one who studies film. Michael believes that

We aren’t quick to embrace technology in our learning because the old lecture-and-notebook way of doing things works (and has always worked). Most of the time this technology requires experts to work it correctly and the right generation to receive it. We aren’t that generation.

It’s a perspective that is narrow, institutional, and wholly out of date — and it percists.

Perhaps Michael will become an academic; reading, write, and submitting for publication — and teaching college students comparative literature. If so, I sincerely hope that he discovers, somehow, that finding ways to help students learn, by making them knowledge workers, will better prepare his students for a lifestyle of learning better than helping them learn to “Be taught.”

4 thoughts on “On iPad, Education, & Technology”

  1. David, I agree with your feelings about the iPad(Hate the name!) I see it’s potential as an elegant media delivery device. I think the folks who are disapointed were looking for an all in one solution. The iPad is not for creating awesome multimedia projects. It is for doing everything else whenever you want. I would be happy to have all of my journals, magazines, and newspapers in one place with no recycling. In a few years I can imagine sending kids to school with no 40 pound backpacks! All of their textbooks will be on an iPad or similar device that also accesses the school lms so they can submit their work electronically. (There goes the “I forgot my book or the dog ate my homework” excuse). We are getting there one step at a time and I think the iPad may have helped us jump forward.

  2. David, What you see in Michael is actually more widespread in youth than you might think (especially as students move along in the American high school system). Many students (not all) simply want the teacher tell them at the start of a quarter how many points they need for an A, B, C etc. After they know that, the game begins. Many students (not all) figure out the grades that they think they should get across their 6-7 classes and then start figuring out a way to do the least amount of work possible to achieve the desired grade. For many students (not all), extra-curriculars aren’t something to truly be engaged in, but merely something to do in order to put a feather in their college admissions cap. Analogue textbooks, pens, pencils, papers, powerpoints, word processors, overhead slides, etc, are actually all very efficient at delivering a tightly packaged body of information and concepts to the majority of students in the classroom. A teacher can even differentiate the learning in this scenario by giving out paper handouts, allowing some students more time on tests, giving extra help during prep times/after school, etc. This isn’t the system I want, but it is the system that has worked for many students like Michael and it is a system complete with momentum and inertia.

    But its going to change…this legacy system is a part of the “Race to Nowhere.” This film looks like it is going to have an impact on our school communities: http://www.racetonowhere.com/

  3. Out of all things otherwise, the iPad may usher the next gen e-books. Technology will inevitably make its way into the various facets of education; for the better. You may want to attend this webinar as well – https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/740238105 – It will be looking at how disruptive technologies are poised to revolutionize education.

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