In Monday’s (July 2, 2007) Opinion section of The Boston Globe (p. A13), guest columnist Nolan Bowie offered a solution toward bridging the U.S.’s digital divide in a piece titled “Education for the long term”(I suppose his solution could also work for other nations, even the globe, yet in many nations a digital divide is the least of its citizens worries).
Bowie’s proposal for erasing the digital divide involves creating a national broadband infrastructure in which everyone would have access to a high-speed Internet service.
I think most educators would agree that educating children alone in this digital/global, knowledge-based economy is not enough; educating adults is just as important. Thus, the critical question, as Bowie frames it, is What kind of society do we want?
“When the question is phrased in this manner, it becomes clear that long term public policy about information technology inherently involves society’s core values concerning power and politics, philosophy, sociology, economics and justice. Therefore, the answer ought to come from “we the people” ourselves, after necessary public discussions, debates, teach-ins, arguments, and democratic conversations in open public arenas and forums.”
This scenario is clearly what many of us envision for the future. We have the tools and capacity to hold public debate and discussion; we have the ability to educate ourselves, investigate possibilities, run simulations, poll readers-writers, etc. In this sense, Bowie’s idea for a national broadband seems positively Dewey-rrific. The Read Write Web could easily support a hypervocal conversation where participation blurs public/private boundaries (think voting in your underwear). We have the ability, but do we have the national/international will (or trust) to pull it off?
We are faced with many important decisions regarding our long-term future (however you wish to define long term, e.g., five-ten years or our grandchildrens’ grandchildren). Is equal opportunity something that is open to all or some? Do we want our shared social institutions to be democratic or plutocratic, open and free or authoritarian, inclusive or exclusive, integrated or segregated? I recognize I am framing this issue in dualities that necessarily point to the poles as opposed to plowing a more fertile middle ground. My point is to suggest that if “we the people” are not careful and do not actively participate in this debate, then we could easily be left with fewer choices.
Bowie goes on to argue that open access to broadband Internet service could empower our workforce, allow our citizenry to be better informed, more engaged in local/national/global politics, and more likely to participate in the machinations of democracy. He suggests that adult illiteracy would be reduced, that we would all be more critical thinkers and more readily access life long learning opportunities available via the Web. Bowie goes on to argue that a national broadband infrastructure would allow for better healthcare services for all, including those of us with physical disabilities. He even suggests that this proposal would improve national security and economic prosperity.
Somehow, I find Bowie’s appeal to prosperity for all of humanity a bit naive. But I do see great value in providing high-speed access for all. Can you also imagine government issued laptops for every citizen? Better yet, perhaps not a laptop, but a mobile device that handles email, voicemail, that serves as a pager, chat client and gaming platform. You know, a device that provides us access to maps, guidebooks, Web browsing, and our local election precincts. A device that is a video player, music player, radio; a device that serves as a transit ticket, a payment system, a biometric ID, an environmental safety sensor; a device that serves as an alarm clock, camera, laser scanner, navigator, pedometer, flashlight, remote control, a high definition projector, an office key, car key, house key…. (these features are listed in Bruce Sterling’s article Dispatches From the Hyperlocal Future, Wired magazine, July 2007, p. 163).
I believe that access is only one part of the overall equation necessary for Bowie’s utopian vision to become a reality. More than the a digital divide, we still truly need teachers and administrators who can work with both children and adults, who understand the consequences of our actions and, perhaps more importantly, the consequences our inactions. We still need educators who are more interested in teaching people to think critically as opposed to focusing on standardized test scores.
In the end, it’s not about technology; it’s about people. The digital divide is a symptom of a larger issue of access to open, educated, creative, ethical, caring, critical people. The prosumer, do-it-yourself ethic generated by the Read Write Web is only as powerful as the people using it (think GIGO). I don’t want to rain on Bowie’s parade, but I do want us all to be realistic. The question of What kind of society do we want? is indeed a critical question, one not to be taken lightly. Getting members of society to really focus on this question, to engage in the debate, to participate in the conversation, is the $6400 question. When billions are spent annually on entertainment and escapism (pdf), getting people to focus on the critical questions will remain marginal at best. Yet change often starts at the periphery, at the fringes, before it becomes part of the larger conversation. High-speed access has allowed the conversation to begin. Will high-speed access for all move the debate to the center of our collective will? I feel it would be worth giving it a shot.
Lately I’ve been giving thought to the value of the Read/Write Web in education. While there are numerous texts cataloging the conceptual advantages of using computers in support of educational aims, I am still struggling with why adoption has been relatively slow.
As an educational technologist and teacher of teachers, I find myself asking “What do I want to see happen in our classrooms?”
Blogging and the Read/Write Web has opened numerous social and educational doors for me. Thus, I wonder if other educators are not facile with Read/Write technology, will the Read/Write Web be as useful or meaningful to them?
Specifically, to what end should we be using the Read/Write Web in classrooms? And, in terms of accountability, who decides which instruments and measures are to be used as a means for assessing our skills and abilities?
As a fledgling member of academia who studies computing in education, I am regularly asked to show evidence of how computers and access to the World Wide Web lead to higher student performance.
Over the years, I have come to observe that tools do not lead to better student performance unless the tools are a part of the student skill set. (This same issue is similar to a student’s facility with languages and how well she performs on standardized tests based on the languages she is skilled in.)
Is my wish to see the Read/Write Web ubiquitous in learning environments both for students and educators alike what Dewey (1938) calls an “illusion of perspective”? In other words, I never saw how I might have been constrained by my lack of access to the Read/Write Web until I had access.
“We are likely to live quite unreflectively with an illusion of perspective until some change comes along to challenge it and bring a new illusion into existence” (p. 42).
Illusory or not, the introduction of the Read/Write Web changed many of our lives for the better; yet, at the same time, it created an imbalance in the way many of us think about what it means to be educated in this day and age.
Read Write technology provides both affordances and constraints for how we understand and act in the world. This “new” technology and our understanding and use of it are limited by the means we are necessarily employing. If reality as we know it will always be a selection, a perspective we choose to take, then it will be a reflection of reality based on the means we choose to view it.
Without getting too engrossed in the ontological nuances implied here, my main point is that my use of Read/Write technologies influences the way I see the world and guides my thinking about how I feel we need to educate future generations of students and teachers.
Not that this necessarily a bad thing, but how important is such a perspective? Well, consider how the limited perception of policy wonks and other elected officials so grossly mis-define the aims of public education as seen in the mandates associated with No Child left Behind (NCLB)? While I assume most people believe that transparency and accountability are good things, how did we end up framing our educational system (in the U.S. at least) on age-based standardized test scores of basic skills that assume all can children learn the same thing the very same way?
If we are to hoist a petard that shows how informal educational opportunities associated with the Read/Write Web will better serve global interests, what will be the markers of success? Who will determine these marks? And will we be able to mobilize educators to adopt Read/Write technologies in meaningful ways?
In a commentary in the Friday, July 13ths, Philadelphia Enquirer, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, chair of the Education Commission of the States, and the 2007 Kansas Teacher of the Year, Josh Anderson, noted that the United States spends 240 percent more per student than it did in 1971 (after adjusting for inflation), yet recent data released by the U.S. Department of Education shows achievement test scores to be the lowest they have been in 20 years.
Other provocative research included in their commentary reveals that only 5 percent of U.S. high school graduates can demonstrate advanced reading skills while 2 percent can demonstrate advanced mathematics and science skills. NCLB focuses on providing public school children basic skills. Yet, if the U.S. wants to thrive in a global economy, basic skills are simply not enough.
In their commentary Sebelius and Anderson call for a change in the way educators and citizens think about the education system. But calling for change is not enough. Similar to A Nation at Risk panels assembled in the 1980s, I believe it is time to call another set of panels to task that understands how important innovative and creative thinking are to our world’s survival.
Every action is a political action, and every action shapes our collective future in some way or another. Can bloggers call for this new task force, help outline the course of action, or is our perspective so limited by our choice of Read/Write technologies that we will not be able to see the whole picture as clearly as we need to?
As my wife regularly notes, perhaps I’ve had too much to think. Thus, I turn it over to you and your thoughts. Comments and links to other blog posts, are openly welcome and encouraged.
References:
Dewey, J. (1938). Logic: The theory of inquiry. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Wertsch, J. V. (1998). Mind as action. New York: Oxford University Press.
If you don't visit the faux news site The Onion, America's Finest News Source, on a regular basis, you owe it to yourself to do so at least once a week. Here is a recent video that left me lol-ing!
I recently ran across an essay by the neoconservative sociologist Nathan Glazer titled "Some Very Modest Proposals for the Improvement of American Education" (1984).
In the essay Glazer offers 7 proposals for improving education ranging from disconnecting the loudspeakers within schools to enlisting children in keeping their schools clean. Not bad ideas, really.
The one item that really captured my attention was "No. 5. Look on new hardware with a skeptical eye." For Glazer, and I suspect many others, the “passion for the new” hardware, i.e., computers, smartboards, etc., serves as a distraction and a means for avoiding the “real and hard tasks of teaching—which require almost no hardware at all, besides textbooks, blackboard, and chalk.”
Glazer goes on to note that when “Japanese education was already well ahead of American, most Japanese schools were in pre-war wooden buildings.” While they are now up-to-date, Glazer insists that their “up-to-dateness” has little to do with their record of academic success.
Schooling for Glazer is about reading, writing, and calculating. It is just that simple. New hardware means spending money, not only on equipment, but also staff, training, software, and security, both physical and virtual. As Glazer puts it:
“When it turns out that computers and new software are shown to do a better job at these key tasks [reading, writing, and calculating]—I am skeptical as to whether this will ever be the case—there will be time enough to splurge on new equipment.”
For Glazer, the teacher, “alone, up front, explaining, encouraging, guiding, is the heart of the matter.” The rest of it is just fun and helpful to corporate income, and gives an over-inflated district staff “something to do.”
For Glazer, students can learn about computers at home and college. After all, getting into college has little to do with what you can do with a computer as compared to the level one’s verbal and mathematics scores as documented by standardized tests. (Ouch!)
The bottom line for Glazer is the same ethos that frames No Child Left Behind legislation--focus on basic skills-- creativity and innovation can be “learned” in college or during extracurricular activities.
Ungainly as it may seem, in a way I find myself nodding in agreement to many of these ideas. Have we really gained any measures of success by introducing computers into classrooms? What are computers being used for: creativity and innovation or skill and drill? How many students are using weblogs as a learning log or for persuasive writing exercises? Given the “security” risks of opening access to the Internet, how effectively is the World Wide Web or Read/Write technologies being incorporated into learning activities? (These inquiries also beg the question as to who decides what is effective and how it’s being decided/measured—more on that later).
Clearly, if you follow my weblog, you are aware I am a huge proponent of the Read/Write Web (pdf) and computing in general. But when I begin to survey educators in the K-12 arena, most computer use in the classroom is hardly creative or innovative. In most cases, computer use is not possible in the classroom at all for a variety of reasons. I do not want to throw the blame for this fact at educators’ feet alone; there are many reasons why creativity and innovation languish in classrooms, computers or no. Yet, literacy skills and multimodal literacy do not necessarily require a computer. Skills such as play, performance, navigation, resourcefulness, networking, negotiation, synthesis, sampling, collaboration, teamwork, judgment, and discernment can take place without the use of computers.
So what can computer really do for kids in the classroom?
I think this is a critical question that needs further thought and explication. While I have my opinion, I encourage you to share yours.
Reference: Glazer, N. (1984). Some very modest proposals for the improvement of American education. Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 113(4): 169-176.
Wired’s August 2007 Jargon Watch has minted a term many will find too delicious to pass on. The term Social Operating System is defined as
“n. A social network site like Facebook or MySpace that seamlessly integrates activities, including entertainment and shopping, to become a platform for online living” (p. 50).
Seamless integration. Now there’s two words the IT industry has bussed around for years (seriously, what piece of Web 2.0 software isn’t defined by its designer/marketers as easily and seamlessly integrateable?).
Two recent posts (here and here) positing the possibilities of Facebook triggered this imagining.
Perhaps it is only a matter of time before learning management systems such as Blackboard and Moodle develop APIs to plug directly into Facebook. What will that mean in terms of a PLE vision? Can a social operating system like Facebook seamlessly integrate “formal and informal learning episodes into a single experience” across institutional boundaries, and use “networking protocols (Peer-to-Peer, web services, syndication) to connect a range of resources and systems within a personally-managed space”?
Bowie’s proposal for erasing the digital divide involves creating a national broadband infrastructure in which everyone would have access to a high-speed Internet service.
Somehow, I find Bowie’s appeal to prosperity for all of humanity a bit naive. But I do see great value in providing high-speed access for all. Can you also imagine government issued laptops for every citizen? Better yet, perhaps not a laptop, but a mobile device that handles email, voicemail, that serves as a pager, chat client and gaming platform. You know, a device that provides us access to maps, guidebooks, Web browsing, and our local election precincts. A device that is a video player, music player, radio; a device that serves as a transit ticket, a payment system, a biometric ID, an environmental safety sensor; a device that serves as an alarm clock, camera, laser scanner, navigator, pedometer, flashlight, remote control, a high definition projector, an office key, car key, house key…. (these features are listed in Bruce Sterling’s article Dispatches From the Hyperlocal Future, Wired magazine, July 2007, p. 163).
Specifically, to what end should we be using the Read/Write Web in classrooms? And, in terms of accountability, who decides which instruments and measures are to be used as a means for assessing our skills and abilities?
Not that this necessarily a bad thing, but how important is such a perspective? Well, consider how the limited perception of policy wonks and other elected officials so grossly mis-define the aims of public education as seen in the mandates associated with 
The one item that really captured my attention was "No. 5. Look on new hardware with a skeptical eye." For Glazer, and I suspect many others, the “passion for the new” hardware, i.e., computers, smartboards, etc., serves as a distraction and a means for avoiding the “real and hard tasks of teaching—which require almost no hardware at all, besides textbooks, blackboard, and chalk.”
The bottom line for Glazer is the same ethos that frames No Child Left Behind legislation--focus on basic skills-- creativity and innovation can be “learned” in college or during extracurricular activities.
As a follower of 
