When you write as much as I do, you tend to start seeing the larger context of your world view, and forget that some people are just poking their heads in every once in a while, for snapshots, and those snapshots can easily be misinterpreted.
Hence, yesterday, when someone I happen to respect a great deal, completely misunderstood something that I said, I feel a need to re-explain.
I said, It’s not about the Technology, It’s about the Information.
This statement comes from my extreme dissatisfaction with the term, integrate technology, as it is used a conferences and other staff development events to urge teachers to modernize their classrooms.
Many people say that, “technology is only a tool,” and this is correct. I would continue by saying that information is also a tool, used to construct knowledge. My question is what should teachers be thinking of as they are working through ways to modernize their classrooms. Should they be thinking of the machines? Or is there something else?
I think of my children and the learning experiences that they engage in on their own time and for their own reason. I believe that this is a valid place to look, because the future we are preparing them for will be the future that they choose. So their practices are quite relevant.
When I see them playing their video games and working their MySpace sites, I do not see them thinking about the technology. It’s merely the pencil and paper they are working with. it’s what their muscles are working. Their minds are engaged in the information. It’s the information that they are thinking about, not the machines.
Perhaps this is where we should be, thinking about the information. The information has changed dramatically in the last few years. It glows, it grows, it can be reshaped in amazing ways and with amazing affects, and it is even beginning to reshape itself. It’s fluid and dynamic, and that’s scary for a lot of us. But it is this new information landscape that our focus should be on, as we work through modernizing our classrooms — not the machines. If we think about the new information and the new literacies that they demand, and try to integrate that, then the technology will come on its own. Technology is the conduit. It’s the pencil and paper. The real tool is the information.
Of course, that guy is a really smart fellow. Maybe I’m completely wrong!
technorati tags:warlick, conference, ncetc, ncetc06, information, education, technology
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I often hear that ‘technology is only a tool’ usually said by people who know little about technology. It is a phrase that makes such people feel in control of the chaos around them. Among similarly minded people, one sees the nodding in agreement.
While technology is a tool, it is not ‘only’ a tool. As Kay and Papert have said, computers are magical machines that amplify deeply held human feelings. Those of us who have educated children in this time know that what they say is right. Don’t get pushed back on your heels David. Was fire only a tool?
I share your distaste with the integrationists. They really are the assimilationists, since what they tend to want is the continuation of the status quo. Technology is, after all, “only a tool.”
So while it is not just about the technology, it is in some sense about it whether consciously or unconsciously. About information, how is it a tool? Is the tree the axe chops a tool? Remember Eliot:
Where is the knowledge lost in information?
Where is the wisdom lost in knowledge?
I think what I dislike about the term “integrate technology” is that it implies that this is something sort of unnatural that has to be “layered” on top of what educators do. Maybe integral would be a better term.
Perhaps we see this as tools because to many adults, the tools are unwieldy and hard to figure out, so to some, they are not “natural” and teachers may have to work to learn how to use them because it doesn’t come naturally.
I think technology should naturally come to permeate what we do in schools as it is needed, just as it is naturally beginning to permeate all parts of our lives as it is needed, so that we aren’t thinking of it as some unnatural extension to what we are doing, but instead a way to accomplish what we are trying to do.
I think your analogy of a conduit fits pretty well, in that the technology is something the ideas or information flows through. I hadn’t thought of information as a tool, but I suppose it is a means to an end, the end of building knowledge.
I’m a librarian and the way you describe your children’s use mirrors what I see in the library. And I do think you are “spot on” at recognizing that it is scary to see how information creation and use is so fluid, and bewildering to consider the implications of all the changes we are seeing. How do we lead our students through that?
I do think wisdom is the key. Thoughtful guidance and class discussion is needed(–lots of discussion, for which I think blogs are a great tool–)to help them sort through the issues involved.
With interactive, ubiquitous Web 2.0 tools and mobile devices comes a shift from technology IN context, or “technology integration” to technology AS context. It’s an exciting time and though the tools keep changing I think we can identify and focus on classes of important learning functions that they allow. Collaboration, access to experts, modeling, making things visibile and discussable, mining rich data, access to up-to-the minute information, aids to organization and project management… these are the learning functions we should be considering as we plan meaningful learning experiences. The tools will just get better and better and our instructional planning should keep pace and capitalize on their best functions.
Information has always been the building block of education. Since the dawn of humans the transmission of information has been the bedrock of building new thoughts which leads to even greater thinking. I am not sure about the idea that information is a tool just as a computer, in my mind it is a creation of thought from someone at sometime. Newton said he stood on the shoulders of giants. I have always had my students compare or contrast one body of information to another which creates new information. Technology is creative tool like a car which shortens our time from one place to another. Technology allows information to flow like water over the path of least resistance. This resistance is what technology eliminates. What technology does for students is to delivers the information so they can think about it with out having to navigate the many obstacles of the past i.e. libraries, reference books, experts in the field all of this is now at the students fingertips. The question is still how do we get them to thirst for the water? Technology as a tool allows students many different ways to organize, develop and present information. Information is now liquid everything written on the net has links within the reading which allows the student to move with their interest to whatever link that sparks their curiosity. This mobility will lead to a greater consumption of material which leads to a higher order of thinking. I have been teaching in a laptop school for the past four years, all students have a laptop from 6th to 12th grade, the first few years we taught each other, teachers and students, and there was a lot of time spent learning new programs. Then as teachers and students learned more and more programs they developed a sense and confidence to attack new programs fearlessly. For example I learned how to make a power point for class presentations and then decided to teach them they ended up teaching me just as much as I taught them. I didn’t know how much time to give them I ended up giving them four class periods. Today they do power points for homework over a night or two. It is no longer limited to power points they can use one of many different presentation programs such as photo story, movie maker or something as simple as a word document in which they added photos. The point here is that by time I get the seniors they are techno literate it is not even a consideration it is just a matter of fact. The students and teachers have to be life long learners which is nothing new any person that wishes to gain wisdom has to throw off the chains of what Kant refer to as “self incurred tutelageâ€. Once this is done the sky is the limit. Technology is a matter of fact a means to get to the sources of information.