Technology Integration is the Messenger

Comments Off on Technology Integration is the Messenger

For the past twenty-two years, I have partnered with teachers to integrate technology in the classroom. During that time, my partners have fallen into three broad groups with a corresponding range of experiences. The first group consists of those teachers who recognized at some point that student engagement could be radically improved without sacrificing rigor. As a result, these folks were open and willing to experiment with technology tools that met their learning goals, even if some experiments failed. In most cases I served as an enthusiastic coach in the wings just in case something went wrong, encouraging the teacher to take the lead. The second group was open to trying new things, recognized the student engagement issue, but was not completely sold that some form of technology integration was the best solution. They wanted me to play a more visible role, raising their comfort level and being present when the new tool was launched so the kids would see me as a partner in crime with the teacher if the lesson went south. The third group was convinced technology integration would take on a life of its own, and would detract from the classic content and skills that defined the goals of the course (the distraction argument). They weren’t completely closed to the notion that some technology tools might support student learning that was difficult to achieve otherwise, but those scenarios required convincing and a strong support commitment (I’ll work by your side until the bitter end).

This pattern was repeated for many years in a culture where faculty were encouraged, but not required, to innovate. in short, we wanted the development of faculty innovation to move at the pace most comfortable for our teachers. And why not? Their existing teaching was not broken, and in many cases met that high standard of excellence. Our idea was to “future-proof” teaching and learning so societal and technological changes would not take us by surprise. Then one day we changed the rules a bit. We gave every teacher an iPad, but still did not ask anything of our faculty other than to experiment and assess whether this tablet device might help us enhance teaching and learning. Shortly thereafter, however, we did require our students to purchase an iPad. The rationale was that if teachers incorproated great apps to use in and out of the classroom, every student would be able to participate in the new experience. The response, as always, was mixed as the program evolved, but there was a different tone to the negative responses. For the first time, I heard anger. The source of this anger is wonderfully articulated in this post by Terry Heick on the te@chthought site.

I agree with most of Terry’s points, but there is one that stands out for me:


Not everybody articulates all of these challenges on a regular basis, but they persist as subliminal stimuli that can serve to frustrate and sometimes enrage a teacher who takes great pride in what they do on a daily basis. Again, Terry articulates the underlying reasons; that edtech tools tend to make everything we do more explicit and exposed to the outside world:


When edtech consisted of a chalkboard, we walked into our classroom, closed the door, and engaged in the art of teaching. When all of your course content, explicit pedagogy, assessments, and rubrics are on the web, for example, the whole world might know how you teach, how you approach your curriculum, and your relationship with students. Removing the kimono can be a very humbling and threatening experience, even if this additional explicit scaffolding has a significant upside for students.

Then we hear Finland bragging that they achieve the highest PISA scores in the world without any technology, and one is suddenly cast in the role of questioning whether the anger of some of our teachers is justified. In response to the anger issue, I would supplement the view Terry presents. First, technology integration, as Terry points out above, can be inherently disruptive to educators and education. There are a cadre of people out there, led by Clayton Christensen, who champion disruptive innovation on the grounds that education today suffers from an incompatibility between current practice and the way kids learn. Their solution stops short of blowing up the existing infrastructure, but creates evolving pockets of disruptive innovation that demonstrate success, and then incorporates them into schools in ways that will effectively transform the traditional structure. What Christensen calls for, customized learning, student-centric classrooms, and increased use of appropriate technology, are sound principles of twenty-first century education. The challenge is getting there, and if we are going to retain the good teachers who have dedicated their lives to our kids, then I suspect a less disruptive and more organic shift will be necessary (putting tremendous pressure on good professional development resources). It is critical to remember that while this disruption is occurring, we are still educating children. I would hope that our students do not become the casualties of a necessary sea-change in the educational process. For many years, each time school systems implemented new programs, the kids caught in the transition were the losers while teachers and administrators adjusted and learned new approaches on an annual basis. Further disruption on a larger scale could result in more disconnect between students and their educational goals.

Second, since the advent of the personal computer, the laptop, and particularly with mobile devices, it has become clearer that the teaching and learning focus in the classroom is shifting. In that shift, teachers are still the experts and the necessary role models for our children, but the learning process becomes more dependent on active engagement by students (as a result of both culture and brain research). We have evolved beyond an educational system that was designed to turn out good American citizens who would find gainful employment, making a contribution to our world-class economy (the factory model). We have progressed from a series of self-contained disciplines and skills that had a finite core to an interdisciplinary world that has an unlimited scope of knowledge and leaves us with more questions than answers. Problem-solving is often beyond the reach of individuals, and must be attacked by groups of people globally with a variety of skills and expertise. So, the other source of teacher anger with technology is the age-old process of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Yes, there are technology tools that will enhance the learning experience in a teacher-centered classroom, but they  are limited to tools that support the curation and presentation of rich digital resources, basic research, and document production. Reaping the full benefit of edtech in a mobile environment requires students to take charge of their own learning, and use their mobile tools for good reason: to connect with others to solve problems, to polish and enhance collaborative research skills, to create their own content in peer groups, and to make things using tools for design. If the approach to teaching and learning changes to a more student centered enterprise, then technology integration becomes a smoother process because all of the issues that Terry mentioned above must be addressed prior to the incorporation of technology (the last step in curriculum design is matching the technology tools to the goals of the lesson). Otherwise, edtech becomes the stimulus for rethinking teaching and learning. That has been a widely used strategy for promoting innovation in our schools, but one unintended consequence is that edtech becomes the messenger that innovation is necessary, and is therefore the object of the ire of some teachers.


Adaptive Learning and Other Educational Challenges

Comments Off on Adaptive Learning and Other Educational Challenges

I subscribe to Dan Meyers’ blog because he thinks and writes with great clarity about the teaching of mathematics. I’m no mathematician, but good teaching techniques are cross-disciplinary, permitting me to apply many to the teaching of history. One of Dan’s recent posts has a title that would catch anybody’s attention: “Adaptive Learning Is An Infinite iPod That Only Plays Neil Diamond.” In the post, Dan laments his encounters with futurists, who are promoting an adaptive learning solution to solve a problem that is part of a teacher-centric classroom. For Meyers, who practices a student-centered approach, the adaptive learning solution, in its current incarnation, does not apply. Rather than elaborating, Dan sends the reader to a series of excellent Education Week blog posts by Justin Reich, where the topic is explored in more detail. I recommend that you read Justin’s work because he lends some additional perspective to the Meyers lamentations.

While we have watched technology tools blossom for consumption and content creation, enhancements to online assessment or any related automated learning program such as adaptive learning have fallen woefully short of what good teachers require. Reich elaborates on the reasons why, and offers a few suggestions for future software development. The operative questions are whether the lack of good adaptive assessment tools is a show-stopper for blended and online learning (clearly not), and if the real question is not so much about assessment, but who is at the center of the classroom. The answer to the latter question might shape the direction of the development of educational technology tools.

The point of adaptive learning is to focus individual student effort on types of questions that were difficult or impossible to answer while minimizing questions for which the student showed mastery. Computers can certainly “learn” or adapt to a student based on prior results, but Reich argues that computers are only effective with specific kinds of quantitative or objective questions. Meyers says, in a student-centered classroom, computer-based adaptive learning provides a shadow of what good peer and teacher interaction would provide to help clear up conceptual and procedural misunderstandings for students learning at different rates. Those different rates fall under the umbrella of personalized learning services, driven by the assumption that children’s brains understand things quickly or slowly for a variety of reasons, ranging from emotional and physical states to specific learning challenges.

Returning to the arguments of  Meyers and Reich, one can infer that a student-centered classroom permits the teacher and student peers to provide effective personalized learning as necessary without adaptive learning software. The software applications of the future might then be used to provide a more specific diagnosis subject to the constraints of the data collected. Without a student-centered classroom, we are compelled to design and build curricula and pedagogy that expects students to learn at the same pace. Our current philosophy of assessment is that students move forward together and are assessed on at critical junctures. Once we have the results of those assessments, we move into reactive mode for students who have fallen short of mastery. Some of our greatest teachers are those who come to the rescue of “fallen students” and effectively erase the gaps in student understanding. In that type of classroom where all students are expected to end up in the same place with respect to skills and content, good teachers must rescue students. However, there seems to be a flaw in this strategy. Instead of building on prior successes, we are repairing failure. This is not the best method of improving student performance unless one is working with an incredibly resilient child.

How about a more proactive approach to student learning? We already see signs of that in Dan Meyers’ classroom, and others. When students work with their peers under the right circumstances, they level the playing field by trying to achieve some form of common understanding. It can work with teacher-student interaction as well, but the process is not as natural and intuitive. Better for the teacher to intervene when the peer dynamic breaks down or gets stuck. How is a student-centered scenario more proactive? All of this interaction reveals problems with understanding and potentially corrective action prior to the major assessment, and therefore avoids the need for damage control after the assessment is graded. It also maximizes student learning prior to the assessment, which is what we seek in our students.

Is there a downside to this proactive and student-centered approach to learning? Well, students won’t move at the same pace (that will be a reflection of how their brains actually operate), and that has implications in our current factory model of testing and evaluation. Perhaps there is an alternative that will thrive in both the traditional culture and a more innovative environment. In a typical scenario, if a student scores 90% on a first test, we view that performance as good and move forward. If the course material is cumulative and there has been no intervention, however, then a 90% on the second test means the student understands 90% of the 90% they previously understood, or 81%. You can see where this exercise is going. Furthermore, checking the declining cumulative result of successive tests requires regular intervention with most students, and in a reactive mode since the intervention is triggered by the test result. This process does have an appropriate role in diagnostic testing such as tests that determine a student’s reading level. But in a summative setting, the teacher is always chasing the tails of the students and practicing damage control.

Try this on for size. Is it better to complete 100% of the learning expectations at a rapid pace and understand 70% or is it better to complete 70% of the learning expectations at a comfortable pace and understand 100% of those expectations? If the summative assessment covers all of the material equitably, then one would, in theory, score 70% either way. In the former case, the student lives with some misunderstanding throughout the course and brings that misunderstanding to each subsequent assessment. In the latter case, the student has experienced mastery for 70% of the material going into the final assessment, and has the confidence to apply that mastery to what will be new material for the last 30% of the learning requirement. I like those odds better.

Yes, we need enhanced assessments, and computers may be able to help. While we are waiting for them to be developed, we might rethink how we structure our classrooms and existing assessments so we can be more proactive addressing gaps in student understanding.

The Independent School Case for Grassroots Innovation


For many years, we have understood the roots of change and innovation to result from either a grassroots movement or top-down mandate. Like the difference between democracies and dictatorships, one produces rapid change while the other is much slower based on the need for consensus. In education, there is a growing view that public schools are frequently constrained by top-down policies and programs, while independent schools have more flexibility. The latest paean directed at independent schools comes from Tom Vander Ark in his recent blog post: “Independent schools have the benefit of independence but most don’t use the degrees of freedom to innovate.” Tom goes on to say that parents of independent school teachers are looking for a better rather than a different experience. Because independent schools are not subject to federal and state education policy, they are mission-driven, but the paths to achieving that mission are often subject to interpretation by members of each respective school community. There is some tension between the ways in which faculty members choose to best serve the learning needs of children and the strategies of senior administrators who are held accountable to boards, alumni, and parents. Most of the time it is a healthy tension, resulting from different points of view regarding the balance between tradition and innovation.

We have all heard about twenty-first century skills (the list was frequently discussed under other names in Classical Greece) and the challenges our children face. Every generation has faced challenges, but this current group of kids may have to exhibit a kind of flexibility, resilience, collaboration, and consensus building that was less familiar to many of us during our formative years. If we continue to educate children in the same manner as we were educated, we might be doing them a disservice. Yet our educational system has shown an uncanny ability to maintain status quo with small pockets of innovation. In a perfect world, we would transform the educational mission to become a synthesis of best practices from the past with the most creative and exciting pedagogies we can muster. In order to do so, we need a firm grasp of the linkages between yesterday and tomorrow, and they must be part of today’s practice. While senior administrators come and go (the average tenure of a school head is five years) or rotate through key positions, the faculty corpus represents the link between past and future. Thus, innovation is the domain of the faculty (while the goals may be developed by administrators or boards), and they represent the grassroots movement in our schools.

This hypothesis is troubling news for a school head who is driven to innovate quickly. It implies that he or she will have to depend on the faculty to bring innovation to a school. Some schools have decided that this is a workable scenario under the following circumstances:

  1. A school makes faculty hiring decisions, and therefore can effect innovation over time through hiring decisions.
  2. A school can launch an innovative program, and call for faculty volunteers to lead the charge, hoping that those brave individuals will positively influence their colleagues.
  3. A school can launch a comprehensive and required professional development initiative that is targeted to innovative teaching and learning, with assurances there will be no sacrifice of excellence or outcomes.

Faculty are understandably skeptical of all three approaches because they either create a chilly climate or make for additional commitments layered onto a plethora of daily responsibilities. Then how does one create the spark that motivates a faculty to pursue appropriate innovation, benefitting their students and their professional lives? There are three strategies that will enhance the effectiveness of the faculty grassroots initiative. We know about all three, and only one costs real dollars (#2), but those dollars are an investment in the future success and viability of independent schools.

  1. Reposition technology so that is not perceived as synonymous with innovation. We live in a digital, connected, and information-rich world, and it has permeated our schools. Technology is sometimes a necessary, but never a sufficient condition for innovation. That means a teacher innovates by rethinking pedagogy and outcomes, and then identifies technology tools that enhance that pedagogy or improve the outcomes . We have a responsibility as educators to recognize both the power of technology tools in helping students to learn more effectively and the counterbalance of face-to-face human interaction supplemented by time for unencumbered personal reflection. Together, these elements represent the ideal learning environment.
  2. Develop creative solutions to address the practical and financial challenge of providing time for faculty to think about teaching and learning, engage in curricular and pedagogical redesign, develop personal learning networks, and participate in traditional professional development of their choosing without feeling like they have let their students down as a result of an absence. We must accept the notion that good teachers are good learners, and provide an environment where both are valued.
  3. Develop strategies that permit both administrators and faculty to do what they do best. For example, it is well within the purview of academic administrators to define the educational outcomes we expect of every student at our schools (it would be enlightened management to ask for faculty input). We can then ask academic departments to define more specific outcomes within their disciplines and major courses. Now the school has defined what a graduate of that school will be able to do, know, or discover. Those outcomes are then valued and accepted by the faculty, but not the prescription for how to achieve those outcomes across a diverse student body. Groups of teachers are then charged to develop curriculum and pedagogies that will produce the desired outcomes. Thus, innovation is owned where the rubber meets the road, between teachers and students.

Some would say that this analysis only scratches the surface of what independent schools have to do in order to provide educational value to families who will be paying, in twelve years, over $100,000 per year for a residential experience. Point well taken. But none of the construction projects, new programs, and more diverse student demographics will lead to value without the steady self-transformation of the faculty from a grassroots level. We can all smile at the pundits who claim that students will not need to attend school because they can enroll in MOOCs, “taught” by the leading experts in their fields. Those who make that claim either are desperate for the survival of their institution or have limited knowledge of teaching and learning. The more innovative education becomes, and that includes blended and online learning, the more important and complex the role of the teacher becomes.

I’m certain that some independent schools have already embraced the idea that innovative education requires a grassroots faculty movement. These are schools that have shed the image of “test results factories,” and are embarking on journeys to new frontiers in teaching and learning without sacrificing core skills and traditions. One of those schools is my own, and it is characterized beautifully on this topic by John Chubb in a recent blog post. I have spent twenty-two years in one school because I am charged with innovating on a daily basis, both as an individual faculty member and as a model for my colleagues. There are a few places such as my school where innovation is a key driver and is generated through the creativity and energy of a grassroots faculty.

No Contest

Comments Off on No Contest

I generally find myself reading books that have been published recently since so many are published daily, but over the summer I went back to read a 1986 classic by Alfie Kohn called No Contest: The Case Against Competition. While the second edition was published in 1992, there has been very little discussion of the book recently. That is surprising because Kohn presents an argument that is very provocative and controversial, and would have a profound impact on K-12 education.

Cover of

Cover via Amazon

Briefly, Kohn’s thesis is that our entire culture of competition is destructive to child development, and stunts the growth of intrinsic motivation. He cites numerous studies in which students that were given a carrot for completing a project produced inferior work in comparison with those students having no external incentives. Kohn is well aware of the role of sports in the lives of our students, and makes the arguable point that competitive sports is only advantageous for the best athletes while the rest of the competitors are hurt by competition. He does say that the focus of sports should be on personal excellence rather than winning.

After completing the book, I found myself torn. Kohn’s arguments are very convincing and well-presented (some critics argue his conclusions go beyond the data), but they fall short in the litmus test of reality. What would it take to alter the values of an entire society? Even if we agreed that eliminating a culture of competition would improve the human condition, how would we get there? One major premise of our schools is that individuals should strive to do better than other students because getting ahead leads to success. How do we alter our beliefs and commit to personal excellence of the kind that Malcolm Gladwell describes?

More importantly, why did Kohn’s book fade into oblivion when he had identified a fundamental cultural bias that, according to him, is destructive to child development and adult happiness? Why did innovative educators not embrace Kohn’s proposal and test it on a somewhat limited scale. From my brief research, it appears that there were very few initiatives in schools that produced any significant results, and a few initiatives died due to parental pressure to maintain a competitive environment. I hope some of you will read the book, and think carefully about he implications of Kohn’s proposals.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Now I have an iPad? What to do next?

1 Comment

So you’ve received a shiny, new iPad, set up email and calendar, used the browser to check some basketball or hockey scores, watched a Netflix movie and installed Facebook. All of that functionality exists on your laptop, so why use the iPad? It seems like duplicated effort. Here are some reasons, and recommendations for getting started small so you are not overwhelmed by the 200,000 apps out there.

Reasons for using the iPad

  •  Mobility – You walk ten miles with your laptop; i’ll walk with my iPad. Let’s see who’s more tired at the end of the trip. Imagine an iPad eliminating the need for a backpack, or at minimum, reducing the weight by 50%.
  •  Spontaneity – “Okay, let’s go to the computers.” Ten minutes later, every student in the classroom is logged in (some forgot his/her password), and has found the web page you asked them to locate. Can you afford to sacrifice ten minutes of class time? With the iPad, this process occurs in 30 seconds. Would 30 seconds deter you from using an iPad in class?
  •  Size – Smaller than a breadbox, bigger than a smart phone; a great size for note-taking and reading.
  •  Multi-purpose – With a little creativity, you can satisfy most of your needs with the iPad (some apps are still in development – remember Woody Allen’s Sleeper).

Getting started

Very simple: Read, read, read with your iPad. Books, newspapers, magazines, web pages, journals. Start taking notes using the built-in Notes app or ask your friends for note-taking app recommendations if you want to use a stylus (purchase at Walmart for under $10). Begin with shopping lists, to do’s, and  meeting notes. Finally, start using Dropbox so you can share documents between your laptop and the iPad. These steps will help to unleash the passion — the commitment comes when you add a few other functions.

“Over the High-Tech Rainbow”

Comments Off on “Over the High-Tech Rainbow”

The title of this post is borrowed from Sue Halpern‘s article in the November 24, 2011 issue of The New York Review of Books (ironically, the article is behind a paid gateway). It is by far one of the most fascinating and concise articles I have read in some time because Ms. Halpern raises questions that are fundamental to our future. Beginning with a tribute to the genius of Steve Jobs for developing Siri in the iPhone 4S, Halpern reminds us of Jobs’ frequent tribute to hockey great Wayne Gretzky, “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going.”

In a society that has many broken institutions, Halpern is remarkably hopeful, describing efforts to improve “clean-tech” energy production, viewing the world’s most pressing problems as opportunities, and the kind of innovative biotech that Steve Jobs used to manage his cancer. He was unsuccessful, according to Halpern, because he was playing where the puck was going to be, not where it was.

A statue of Wayne Gretzky raising the Stanley ...

Image via Wikipedia

The implications of Halpern’s ideas are profound, particularly in our current society that has lost sight of planing for the future, and is understandably interested in recovering the status quo. When your car doesn’t run, you have it repaired so it will run as it did before. But all of us experience that moment when we decide it is not worth fixing the car; it is time to buy a new one. Society today has not yet crossed that threshold, and until we do, we will be stuck on the near side of the rainbow, forgetting there is a far side that contains the proverbial pot of gold.

The kinds of innovation Halpern discusses will require both heavy financial commitments and big-time brainpower. Those are the two characteristics of our society that are sitting in the garage rather than on the open road. As a democrat who always believed in the value of public goods and social programs, I am humbled to say that the Republican emphasis on protecting the “5%,” who are the captains of our economy, may be well-placed. Yes, we need to get the rest of our society back to work, but that will only happen if the 5% get excited about funding technology research that will create jobs. President Reagan’s “trickle-down economics” may have been ahead of its time.

More importantly, the 5% will not live forever, and their offspring represent a very small slice of our workforce. The challenges for education are enormous, teaching all kids to think about where the puck will be rather than where it is. Imagine an educational philosophy that promotes the charge, “Question everything.” We need to cultivate a Steve Jobs type of mind in almost every child, and we need teachers who buy into the notion that preparing our kids for a very challenging future is in their best interest, and bureaucrats who understand that higher order thinking skills cannot be cultivated in the realm of the multiple choice question.

Finally, there are those who favor progress, but worry about the ethical issues that result from “messing with the essence of humanity” in laboratories. Recall that dinosaurs became extinct because they were unable to adapt to environmental changes. That is perhaps the best reason for “rewriting the life code,” to adapt to a changing environment. Halpern speaks eloquently of the ethical issue in the article: “It’s not clear where, in the process of innovation, questions of ethics arise, or if the process is so solipsistic and self-referential that the answers are largely beside the point.” The Open Source movement grew out of a desire to democratize knowledge and expertise, and it has provided numerous benefits to individuals and the marketplace, but over the long haul, knowledge will become the premier unit of economic value, and if it does not command a handsome return, what will provide the incentive to develop new ideas and technologies (Daniel Pink should weigh in here)?

Halpern has posed all the right questions, and now we need the appropriate answers. The purpose of this post is to begin the conversation, not to end it.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Alone Together: Sherry Turkle and The Challenge of Illusion

Comments Off on Alone Together: Sherry Turkle and The Challenge of Illusion

Several days ago Sherry Turkle, author of Alone Together, Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, spoke to the Choate Rosemary Hall faculty. The talk featured the core theme of her book with an educational spin. Thus, the dilemma of managing new technologies so that we are able to continue being human while grappling with the onslaught of communication devices that create the illusion we are interacting with each other  was translated into a school setting. As teachers, is there a way we might model behaviors that would permit us to effectively and appropriately utilize collaborative tools while still maintaining quality face to face contact with our students? The operative question we were all left with was: “how hard would it be to do this?”


Sherry Turkle

Image by jeanbaptisteparis via Flickr


I spend a great deal of time with my technology toys, and like to think I use them effectively for collaboration with my students and colleagues. I look at Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn through Flipboard on my iPad, as they are part of my Personal Learning Network. Each day, however, there are periods of time when I am living in a technology blackout. My thirty minute morning walks everyday are technology-free; that time is reserved for recharging my mind and body, and while I may be reflecting on issues here at school, my brain is forced to rely on its own resources during that process. At the end of the day (whenever that occurs), I come home to my significant other, and we have a conversation about our day stripped of any props including TV or music from the iPod. It is just my partner and me interacting in the same room, close together, using our five senses sans electronics.

As Sir Ken Robinson speaks about cooking in his kitchen, I experience the writing process. I have my word processor  or blog editor open, I’m not checking emails or texts, I don’t like interruptions, and I’m not reading an RSS feed while I write. Professor Turkle confirmed that we cannot multi-task, even though reliable sources such as the New York Times claim we do.

Without a complete frontal lobe, I understand that our students may not be able to make the distinctions I am able to make. But Professor Turkle clearly made the point that adults with full frontal lobes are as prone to being confused about the differences between “real communication” and digital or virtual communication. If we overcome that challenge, we are then unable to prioritize the appropriate use of both forms of communication given all of the demands made upon our busy lives. Thus, if we are unable to model good judgment in the world of communication and personal interaction, how can we expect our students to do the same?

The challenge of finding the balance that Professor Turkle seeks between our real world and the virtual world is a bit of a trick. As I think about my courses, I fully buy into the notion that they are F2F discussion-based classes because that pedagogy is the sine qua non of the boarding school and because we still haven’t topped the educational effectiveness of the Socratic method of learning or the spirited discussion of the Greek Agora. On the other hand, classrooms are a bit like musical chairs. when the music stops, everybody changes their demeanor in the rush for a chair. Outside the classroom, how does one perpetuate the kinds of exchanges that occur in the classroom? If we view learning as a 24/7 experience, then virtual communication becomes an effective substitute (but not a replacement) for the F2F exchange. And while the boarding school setting provides more opportunities for F2F contact, virtual communication is very scalable for reaching those students who have shorter school days. The same rules apply for adults, who are continually learning as well. The primo solution to a specific pedagogical or course content challenge is a F2F conversation with a colleague. When that conversation ends in the real world, however, it continues in the virtual world with the “wisdom of crowds” and the spectrum of knowledge that is provided to me by the entire world, or at least those I choose to follow on Twitter.

We who work in technology are often branded as the folks who got us into this mess that we love to hate, who created the illusion that virtual is as good as F2F. In our enthusiasm for progress we have to bear some of the responsibility for the dilemma that Professor Turkle describes so eloquently in her book. But like any skilled guide who gets lost in the woods, we are most likely to find our way out of the mess, and I see that charge as the challenge from Sherry Turkle. Let’s zoom out of the jungle of social interactions so we can see the forest through the trees.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Older Entries

%d bloggers like this: