Reflection on Influential Technologies

The children in "Learning to Change, Changing to Learn: Student Voices" have grown up with technological devices--and the learning styles those devices facilitate--that I have only recently adopted as an adult with children of my own. I grew up without television, cellphones or GPS devices, but each these things has impacted how I learn about my world, for better and for worse.


My current television

Before the age of twelve, I had very little exposure to television. When I was a young man, my family lived overseas as part of my father's work for the State Department. We had few channels, if any, and I spent most of my days outside, riding my bicycle and playing with friends. I developed a real passion for foreign cultures and when we returned to the United States, I found that I could continue to experience those cultures through the many travel channels available from our cable network. 

I also used television to learn about American culture because I had so many questions about American music, sports, and slang. What did it mean when some told me something and then said, "psych"? I had to use television to learn, just as the children in "Student Voices" have probably done since birth. The only problem was that I watched too much television and began to miss out on what was happening in the real world. Now, with my smartphone, I can be out in the real world and still be ignoring it, just like everyone else! 

Actually, I use my smartphone as a  roving encyclopedia, allowing me to look up the answers to the many random questions that run through my head each day. I often make little notes to myself in class or at the playground with my children to look up the life story of a random politician or celebrity. 

The other day, I wondered to myself if Lamar Hunt, the former owner of the Kansas City Chiefs was still alive (he is not) and where his father, L.B. Hunt, had made his fortune. With my smartphone I had the information in seconds; as a child, finding the information would have involved a trip to the library with my parents, or a search of our encyclopedias. That kind of paper search is foreign to the kids in "Student Voices." 

The first boy to talk in the video stated that "writing and reading have been taken over by technology," and he's right. It's still a foreign concept to me to read a book on an electronic device. I still prefer paper, but the kids in the video are so accustomed to reading on a screen that they will probably prefer it for life. 

The students in "Student Voices" have developed communication and research skills that are wildly different from the ones I developed as a child. I do wonder if the kids in the video would know how to learn about Mr. Hunt's life without access to their phones. One of the young girls in the video mentioned that she wouldn't mind if her phone was glued to her hand, she felt that attached to it. I have come to use my phone in the same way; it is my entertainment, communications and research device all in one. I have a laptop and a desktop, but I rely on my smartphone ten times as much as I do those devices. In fact, it has come to replace another device on my list: my GPS.

I used to use my GPS to get everywhere. I had to: I seem to have been born without a sense of direction. With my GPS, I could go for drives without really worrying about getting lost. In fact, I would sometimes just drive for an hour or so, then turn on my GPS and find my way home. The kids in the video live in a different world technologically than I did when I got my license. The cars they will learn to drive are almost all going to be equipped with some form of navigation, and if they aren't, these kids will be able to use free GPS apps on their phones, just as I do now. I no longer need a standalone GPS device. 

My now abandoned GPS device. 

I like learning as the children in "Student Voices" do, but I'll stick to paper books for now. 

Pew Survey Results: Teachers' Technology Use

Reading the Pew survey results about teachers' technology use, I wasn't surprised at all to see the disparity in technology resources available to poorer students, the prevalence of technology in the classroom, or the knowledge gap between students and teachers. 

The Pew survey results are reflective of my own experience with my tutoring students. My students range in age from eight to fourteen and all of them use computing technology for their school work. All of my middle and high school students have class assignments, syllabi and textbooks available online, and some them can only access their school work online. These students are more typical in affluents areas, where technology is readily available at home. It's no wonder that 70% of teachers in the most affluent areas say that their school districts to a "good job" of providing adequate technologies to their students.

As a tutor, I have stuck to a more traditional approach with my students. I believe that technology has its place in the classroom, but what I see is an over-reliance on computing technology to fix fundamentally poor English and writing skills. The Pew survey states that 71% of teachers agree that "today's digital technologies discourage students from finding and using a wide range of sources for their research." I think it also discourages the study of grammar and writing.

My younger students typically have poor handwriting and a tenuous grasp on spelling. Their abilities to format sentences without the aid of a word processing program are, I think, negatively affected by too much dependence on technology. 

I don't want to completely discount technology as a learning tool. I know that I have a great deal to learn about educational technologies as a teacher. The survey stated that 64% of teachers under the age of 35 state that they were "very confident" with new digital technologies. I'm 37, so I have a lot of experience with new technologies but I wouldn't call myself "very confident" with it.

I'm like many of the teachers in the survey who say that their students know more about technology than they do. I was surprised to see how many of my students don't even use textbooks and how much of their homework is done entirely within the confines of programs such as Google Docs. I need to learn more about collaborative, online work. Hopefully, this course will allow me to improve in those areas.