Technology and 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. 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. In education, the student who once plagiarized from Encyclopedia Britannica will now plagiarize from Wikipedia. When plagiarism software becomes more available, the student who asked a friend to write their paper in exchange for doing laundry will hire a service online.
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. For all the information available online, it is even more necessary to learn the skills necessary to determine what good information is. Is the information in this article about the iPhone there to inform the user or encourage a buyer?
If one takes only a few minutes on Tumblr or Twitter, clicking on trending topics or searching popular tags, and one immediately sees the number of students posting, tweeting, and arguing, while in class. Each one likely using approved technologies for the appearance of taking notes, while actually just fiddling around and ignoring the contents of lectures. And it is not just students, there all posts from people at work, and, of course, teachers, revealed when they admit that they just burst out laughing in from of their students!
In the teaching literature, technology and the classroom are almost invariably described as positive experiences for no other than “technology!” Obviously, Twitter and Tumblr are not to blame, but the appearance of new technologies has not arrived with an equally developed sense of appropriate professional use. Take for example this Tumblr, http://bricksandmortarandchewinggum.tumblr.com/, the contents of which reveal a state employed property tax lawyer in Michigan, who writes about her married co-worker’s sexual affairs and includes images of the blog’s writer, her fiancé, their cats, and their pot bongs. Throughout the blog, there are pictures of notes passed between herself and other employees in meetings, faceless images of co-workers, business offices, etc. On the one hand, this is not an ethical breach greater than saying too much to the neighbor about your job as a property tax attorney. On the other hand, the sheer number of people who have access to the information and that it is virtually impossible to scrub such things from the Internet entirely, it can be concerning to see so many professionals exposing their lives online, let alone the number of juveniles doing so under their own names and with pictures of themselves included.
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?” Just as we teach 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 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. 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. Academics like those cited by Careless in 2012 article about social media fall into the two well-worn categories, with social media or against it. Risks (the usual bugaboo of kids and “strangers”) are either presented as media specific, odd since strangers on the Internet are among the least dangerous people in a person’s life, or as nonexistent in the media (no limits!). In reality, we have a working knowledge of how to deal with strangers on the Internet, because we have a working knowledge of how to deal with strangers in real life: do not give them your name, do not tell them where you live, work, or go to school., etc. While the rules may need some tweaking to work online, for example, even people with whom you become friendly are actually strangers, meet in groups, trust your discomfort, etc., they do not need to be reinvented.
In the case of plagiarism and copyright infringement, social media like Tumblr are a great teaching opportunity at they are rife with plagiarism. The sheer number of copyright infringements one finds on Tumblr, and the number of urban legends on Facebook, provides excellent teaching opportunities about how those media work and important academic concepts and subjects. Byrne’s article discusses the many free cites that can help students and teachers find plagiarism in written materials, but students and teachers also need to learn how to use them. An axe, for example, has to be used in a particular way to be effective and safe, and plagiarism checkers are the same. One way to insure that students really understand the concept is to have them apply it to largely visual media like Tumblr. Often you will find that neither student nor teacher is as familiar with the realities of plagiarism and copyright infringement as thought.





Byrne, Richard. “Tools for Tackling Plagiarism: For Teachers and Students, Resources to Help
Detect and Prevent Appropriation.” School Library Journal 57.6 (2011): Jstor. Web. 9
Feb 2012.
Careless, James. “Social Media: It Does Have a Place in the Classroom.” Technologies and
Learning 32.7 (2012): Jstor. Web. 9 Feb 2012.