Why I love tech-using kids

A recent note from one of our techs to her staff...

Many of you who have new computers have mentioned to me that strange messages [most of which were not very nice] are showing up when you are displaying from your computer to a smartboard or a screen.  This is occurring because your computer has a technology called Bluetooth active on the computer.  Students can then use their cell phones or PDAs or any technology with bluetooth on to send messages to your computer which are then displayed to your screen or smartboard.

To turn off Bluetooth:...

Reminds me of an incident from a few years ago when televisions in one of our schools at seemingly random intervals turned off and changed channels. We took them into the shop, called the electrician, etc. Eventually we discovered that a kid had a watch with a built in TV remote.

And all we had were spitwads. 

Games and One Big Room

My column about why we ought to have games in schools is now posted at Education World. (if it sounds somewhat familiar, it's a polished version of comments from earlier Blue Skunk entries.)

Because of the conversation about filtering and intellectual freedom, I re-read my columns "One Big Room" which appeared earlier at Education World in 2006 and Maintaining Intellectual Freedom in a Filtered World that was in Leading & Learning, 2005. Amazing - both still seem to make sense to me. And had less "rant" about them.

I did read a remark somewhere that a tech director felt he would be fired if any student in his district accessed inappropriate materials on the Internet. Hmmm, I feel a blog entry formulating...

________________

At the Minnesota state library/tech conference (MEMO) at a beautiful resort near Brainerd.

Looking forward to hearing the always stimulating Jamie McKenzie's keynote and it is nice to get caught up with AASL President Sara Kelly Johns who is visiting our conference.

I have only one breakout session to give so I get to listen and learn most of today and tomorrow from my fellow Minnesotans!

Suppose we didn't have to use every new thing

Herb Wilburn gave me permission to take a response he made to this blog and creat this post. Herb's blog, Let's Just Suppose, is always thoughtful and you do worse than to put it in your aggregator.

Doug,

I've posted this, but wanted to send it to your posting since you are discussing teachers and technology adoption.

Let's just suppose we didn't have to use every new thing...

Today I cataloged and inventoried one of those interactive response units being sold to work with smartboards, whiteboards, and so on. The teachers using it are all excited, the kids think it's cool and I'm pretty sure the school tech people are cheering it on as well.

Well, not so fast, let's think about this. I've used these things at Dept of Ed meetings and as with most types of new technology, if one isn't careful, the lowest possible use is most popular. At the DOE mtg, we were given prefab multiple choice responses to the issues we'd met to discuss for two days. Now, rather than the give and take between thoughtful professionals sparking new ideas and conversation, we clicked on 1 if we wholeheartedly agreed, 2 if we sort of agreed, 3 if we didn't really disagree, and 4 if we just didn't care. OK, so those weren't the real choices but you get the idea. Worse, the instant gratification of this exercise was met with wows and gee whiz from all quarters. Sure we knew in seconds that 52% chose 1, but would they have chosen 1 if a passionate number 3 had spoken?

Now as professionals at a conference we should know how to correctly interpret and discard such nonsense when it occurs. What has me concerned is the underlying message we are giving kids by using this in classrooms. If we are just tallying up strictly objective, numerical, no doubter type answers, it's probably not terrible. But you know, you just know, that someone will want to be "on the cutting edge" and use it to gather responses to all sorts of questions. I'm afraid that the kids will come to expect, demand, immediate answers, immediate feedback as a matter of course. Life's not like that, at least not a considered, thoughtful life.

Sometimes, often, one needs to hear opposing views and think about them for a day or two. One might change their mind, it happens. I think I'm right when I take a position, but people and experiences have changed my mind many times. The idea that we will always arrive at the conclusion in one sitting is terrible training for our children.

I guess you can use these devices with my blessing if answer 4 is "Let me sleep on it."

How often do we as adults say and mean "let me sleep on it" before making a decision about technology - or anything else for that matter? And we complain our kids don't take time to reflect! 

 

 

 

Device at left seems to be a required purchase for some Arizona State University students. Do note "confidence " level indicator.