Education

Technology and education have always gone hand in hand. Unfortunately, the idea that technology can or will in and of itself resolve problems is an idea that creates another set of problems, and often interferes with the use of technology itself. We have all heard or read it, New Technology X will democratize information! Versus New Technology X will further divide people from one another! And on they go, having the same argument over and over and apparently never noticing how ridiculous they sound. In spite of the horse, the boat, the train, the bicycle, the car, the airplane, in spite of everything, problems in transporting ourselves remain, and remain pretty much the same. To some degree, the answer there will always be culture, and our tendency to return to some sensation with which we are comfortable. In one culture, no matter what, the trains will always overflow because that culture’s idea of what constitutes a full train will remain the same. In another, you might that a “full” train has only half as many people, but they will wait for a later train rather than pack themselves more tightly.
At the end of the day, teacher and education culture are not much different. While an individual may be helped, the problems in the systems of education will remain whatever gadget comes along. The rich will have more access and familiarity; technology-phobic teachers will further exacerbate the paucity in their students’ knowledge and familiarity with certain technologies, while the early adopters dazzle their students with every new fad, sometimes teaching little beyond the fad itself. It can be extremely difficult in this culture generally and education specifically, to remember to focus on students’ learning and the ways that technology can support and expand it, rather than replace it. We are, after all, no less human that our students or their parents. What we are is professionally tasked with the responsibility to sort through this morass in order to improve our students’ education.
In the teaching literature, technology and the classroom are almost invariably described as positive experiences for no other than “technology!” For example, an eight-year program in one rural school where all kindergarten students are taken to a manufacturing plant, and the article is cutely called, “Kindergarten Production Line” (2011). The programs lasts an hour, and the children take home “a product”. While the article includes some of the teaching that goes along with the field trip, equipment and material names, etc., the comment that it is “always a great time to partner with local businesses” reveals something of the attitude that any and all interactions with business technology are good, simply because they exist. But this is not the case. Interactions with numbers are not all good, what if they are incorrect? Interactions with doctors are not all good, what if you are sick and the doctor is incompetent? What makes the interaction good, are the contents and results of the interaction. In this article, the focus was on the experience for educators, teaching institutions, and businesses, and with little information about student experiences or outcomes other than the products they received or bought in relation to the product received. In the long term, the goal seemed to be to teach all the children about working on a production line.
In “Kindergarten Production Line” (2011), the products were toolboxes and birdhouses. These are somewhat harmless items, readily available across most incomes, but it seems unlikely that wealthy suburban schoolchildren would ever be taken to such a location or that merely being in the presence of toolboxes being manufactured would be considered an adequate lesson. Often the interactions with technology involve mere glimpses at items that can form nothing more than the desire to make aspirational purchases, or opportunities to familiarize young children with product lines. While schools across economic classes may all involve interactions with technology, one set of students learns how to make tool boxes, while another meets the engineers who work at Google, Amazon, and Apple. A program in Philadelphia attempts to mix that usual divide up. Elementary age students engage in building sailboats, wind mills, wind turbines, and other technologies (Herbert, 2011) that are complex and offer levels of engagement that develop the knowledge and skills of students who are interested in design and/or manufacturing concepts.
The program in Philadelphia does not assume that all students will end up on a production line assembling parts nor that they will all one day be behind a computer working on the 2040 version of the iPhone. Rather, the program is complex and varied enough that it is teaching technology itself, while also providing opportunities to work with different kinds of tools, learn about architecture concepts, clean energy, recreational activities, and more (Herbert, 2011).
In spite of the blind praise of articles like Hobson and Trundle (2011), who cite the students of a single teacher to heap praise on the younger generation for being technologically savvy, it simply is not the case that a majority of grade school students have used Skype, for example. Further, as any librarian can tell you, that one has the ability to read, does not mean that one has the ability to understand how information is organized and find the books one loves on the shelf. That is, while students may use computers and internet technologies, does not mean that they understand the technologies or how they are functioning. To make another comparison, while most adults in the United States have a license to drive a car, very few of those could repair an engine or even define the drive train, let alone describe it. In some cases, if we are not careful, all we are teaching students is what to buy or what to want to buy.
There is nothing wrong with teaching children how to use relevant technologies, but sometimes we do little more than say, “here is a ball, see how it can be rolled?” Familiarity with certain technologies may be the best we can do, sometimes. However, just as we teach we children about the many things a ball is and can do, we also teach the games, jobs, and processes in which a ball can be involved. We teach them about the density of a sphere and how that density effects motion. When it comes to internet and other electronic technologies, we need to be doing the same. We need to teach children not just that something can be found on the internet, but how it is found, why it is organized that way, how business and commerce effect that organization, and the technologies that make it all possible. Students should be able to understand concepts regarding algorithms involved fundamental to services like Facebook, Google, and YouTube.
We would never settle for our students simply knowing that math exists or that objects can be counted, should we ever want to count them. We should not settle for this level of engagement with technologies either. They are simply too important to modern life, social interaction, and job performance, for us to continue to settle for a surface level engagement with modern technologies.




Herbert, Marion. “Tech Ed At the Elementary Level.” District Administration 47.10 (2011).
Hobson, Sally and Trundle, Kathy Cabe. “To the Moon and Back: Using Technology to Teach Young Children Space and Science Concepts.” Science and Children 48.4 (2011).
“Kindergarten Production Line.” Technology and Engineering Teacher 70.8 (2011).