Beware the law of unintended consequences (From Machines Are the Easy Part)

From Machines Are the Easy Part; People Are the Hard Part. 

Illustrations by Brady Johnson

20. Machines are the easy part; people are the hard part. 

The very best technologist is a good psychologist. The skills needed to create a system, write software, or operate a piece of technology are all teachable: skills that may be complex and praiseworthy to be sure, but completely teachable. Skills that are akin to training a circus dog to ride a bicycle.

But technology plans fail in schools even when the school has people who can put the “stuff” in place. And then all this lovely stuff sits around gathering dust or is used by a pathetically small group of technology enthusiasts.

The book Crossing the Chasm (HarperBusiness, 2002) by Geoffrey A. Moore does as fine a job as I’ve seen explaining how to have new innovations adopted by nearly everyone in an organization.

Read it.

21. Beware the law of unintended consequences. 

The full impact of any technology adoption can never be fully predicted. (Just read any Michael Crichton novel.)

• Give kids access to the Internet, and they download term papers.
• Ask that all work be word-processed, and paper and toner bills sky-rocket.
• Give students a good means of sharing information electronically, and electronic cheating become endemic.
• Give parents real-time access to their children’s progress, and teachers become overwhelmed with e-mail.

Now, smart person that you are, you are probably thinking, “And you didn’t plan for this?” Nope, these things took me by surprise. 

View technology as the evil genie from 1001 Arabian Nights. You can get what you ask for – but it always comes with strings attached.

22. “Explain it to me like I was 6 years old.”

A common Murphy’s Law states: “Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.”

As an English major and former librarian who is sometimes less than technically astute and always has to sing in a soft voice “Righty tighty, lefty loosey” when encountering anything with threads, I always worry Murphy had me in mind when he wrote the law.

To counteract this, I try to remember Denzel Washington’s great line in the movie Philadelphia above. My frustrated technicians have sometimes worked with me for a very long time, drawing pictures, forming analogies, and searching for ever shorter words to describe functions and reasons for technologies.

Don’t make decisions about things you don’t understand. Develop an understanding no matter how long it takes.

GoogleMaps, "Avoid highways"

A setting when creating a driving route in GoogleMaps allows you to "Avoid highways". The suggested route will then keep you off interstate highways and re-direct you mostly on to smaller, less trafficked roads. Some of which are very small indeed. The routes are longer both in time and distance usually, but always more interesting and mostly more scenic.

I used this setting often on the road trip I took this March. Having received my first COVID vaccination and suffering from cabin fever, I threw some clothes, my old just-in-case sleeping bag, and  hiking boots in the car and headed south. My goal was to visit my son and daughter-in-law in Atlanta and my daughter and her family in Kansas City, but it was also to feed my hunger for  back road travel. (See Traveling the Blue HIghways.) 

I took some precautions for traveling during this never-ending pandemic, including staying in motels with outdoor room entrances, eating take-out, and wearing a mask, even when I was the only one doing so. Thankfully, I rather like convenience store sandwiches.

A large part of my drive was spent on the Grear River Roads and National Scenic Byway Route. I caught the route in Preston WI and followed it to Memphis TN where I veered inland to Atlanta, drove to Baton Rouge after briefly visiting Florida's Gulf Coast (mistake). From Baton Rough I again followed the scenic path north, nearly back to Memphis, where I headed west toward Kansas City via the Missouri Ozarks.

Some of these roads were familiar. My then 11-year-old daughter and I drove to Orlando on an extended road trip in June of 1984 - a last hurrah before I left to teach in Saudi Arabia, leaving her back in the states. After DisneyWorld we checked out the World's Fair in New Orleans and started the drive north to home - following the Mississippi back to St. Louis.

The charm of the old towns along Old Man RIver seems to have grown. I felt a newly appreciated darkness to their history. - plantation houses built on slavery and Natchez's recognition of its role in the sale of enslaved persons - which I hope are also felt by most tourists today. Cairo IL, Tom and Huck's destination, remains a ghost town after race riots of the 60s. Downtown Dubuque IA is still in a sad state of abandoned storefronts.

Yet the charm of the old towns along Old Man River seems to have grown. Small towns like Trempalau WI, McGregor IA, Keokuk IA, St. Genevieve MO, and Natchez, MS still delight me. Clever town planners have encouraged the development of small coffee shops and B&Bs, antique stores, and other touristy type draws. Natchez has great walking paths and several old plantation homes can be visited north of Baton Rouge. The battlefields near Vicksburg are worth a drive-through.

View of Natchez Under the Hill and bridge across the Mississippi to Vidalia.

My goal was to visit my kids, and happily that worked out great. But along the way, I also accomplished something - a renewal of my love of small river towns and the remnants of history they contain. Plenty has been written about the impact of rivers on the human psyche and I have nothing to add excpet that the impact affects me as well. While I am not yet ready to hop on a raft for a months long float, I am keeping my eye out for a cabin next to a river.

Importance of teacher quality (From Machines Are the Easy Part)

From Machines Are the Easy Part; People Are the Hard Part. 

Illustrations by Brady Johnson

17. The importance of teacher quality.

It’s my job to see that technology is effectively used by teachers and students in the district. I “advocate” for its use for the simple reason my job sort of depends on it. And I’m rather fond of my job.

But here is my problem. Now and again I run into an absolutely terrific teacher who utterly despises technology. These modern-day Socrates get kids passionate about learning, begin important discussions that carry on into the hallway and weekends, and somehow instill not just facts or skills, but true knowledge and even wisdom in their students.

Most parents would rather their children had a great teacher with mediocre technology than a mediocre teacher with great technology.

I don’t try very hard to “improve” the truly gifted teachers with technology.

18. If you can't afford the whole cure, don't even start it.

I call this the Antibiotic Law of Educational Change.

If you get a prescription to kill a germ, you are sternly warned to keep taking the medicine until it is gone – not just until the symptoms disappear. If you don’t, the bug can come back, strengthened by new resistance to the antibiotic.

We in education kill ourselves by ignoring this rule. We formulate a budget for a program, a grant, or a project then happily accept less than the full amount of the funding request without changing the promised result. We then get half-assed results that demoralize the participants and increase skepticism of those who funded us.

Don’t accept project funding if it is not for the full amount.

19. No parent has ever had an ugly baby.

Ask any group of people if they themselves are the parents of an ugly baby. No one is.

Ask the same group of people if they have ever seen an ugly baby. Nearly all the hands go up.

This phenomenon is why all of us need reality checks of our programs, our policies, and our teaching styles. The things we do usually look pretty darned good to us.

Who can tell us if we have an “ugly baby” that we may not be aware of?

• Advisory groups
• Outside evaluators
• Anonymous surveys
• National or state standards

It’s in out students’ best interest to get an objective opinion on the things to which we are closest.