I admit it - I've been programmed!

We must believe in free will — we have no choice.

     Issac Bashevis Singer

I chuckled at this morning's Dilbert that expresses a common theme in Scott Adams's blog:

 

Source

Then I remembered reading this:

 

Source

So seriously, when was the last time you refused a system or app upgrade? Or do you just have "auto-update" enabled?

I thought so. We're already programmed.

Bow to your silicon masters.

Adapting to technologic climate change

A number of tech leaders in MN wrote reactions to a damning op-ed piece that originally appeared in the NY Times - "Can Students Have Too Much Tech?" by Susan Pinker. In it, Pinker works to make the case that technology in the classroom is detrimental to student learning. (I do wonder about the real motivation of any op-ed writer who begins any piece by bashing Obama.) Anyway, she writes:

... mounting evidence shows that showering students, especially those from struggling families, with networked devices will not shrink the class divide in education. If anything, it will widen it.

And then cites studies from 2000 and 2006 to back up her claim, studies which one tech director here describes as a "stretch" to having relevance to classroom use of technology today. My friend Jane caught the same line that caught my eye:

To the extent that such a teacher can benefit from classroom technology, he or she should get it. But only when such teachers are effectively trained to apply a specific application to teaching a particular topic to a particular set of students — only then does classroom technology really work.

In other words, effective technology requires effective teachers.

And another thoughtful tech leader in the state cited three studies from his district that "refute" the old studies Pinker cites:

Apathy Project Skills: Collaboration, creation, survey, data analysis, advocacy

 Government Service Learning Project Skills: Collaboration, service, creation, Websites, reflection

 10^th Grade Passion Project Skills: Collaboration (globally), service, creation, Websites, authentic learning

As I read through these comments this morning, I though a little about a public radio story I heard driving to work. A climatologist from the University of Minnesota claims humans in our region have not only gone through several climate changes, but have adapted to them. The crops we grow, the houses we build, and even the flood abatement practices we use have all changed as Minnesota's climate has changed.

Is Minnesota's (and the world's) technology climate changing as well? Are our children living in an environment that, for good or ill, is saturated with technology whether we like it or not? If so, might adaptation be the best reason we give our students technology - to help them learn to change and deal with the new distractions, possibilities, hazards, and requirements of using technology well?

If at the end of the last ice age, the natives of Minnesota had refused to let their children practice agriculture because it might weaken their hunting skills (although the animals were moving north and it was easier staying feed growing corn) would they have been doing them a service? As a information becomes ubiquitous, learning becomes self-motivated, and post-literacy becomes the norm, are we doing our students a service by keeping them from using the tools of the technologic climate change that is on us now?

Pinker, in trying to discredit Obama, you are doing our children a disservice...

Maslow and school spending

This little tongue-in-cheek interpretation of Maslow's Hierarchy has been making the rounds via Twitter and Facebook, so I'm guessing this is not the first (or even tenth) time you've seen it. And it rather neatly captures a technologist's world view. The road to self-actualization is built on a foundation of good wireless network access. That view is myopic.

As I have entered school buildings in the mornings over the past few years, I notice a growing number of students participating in school breakfasts. Our Free and Reduced Price lunch program counts are up. We send some kids home with backpacks full of food for the weekend, and in the summer schools run food to various sites around the community where kids can come to get a meal.

Some of our schools now stay open during times when extreme weather closes other schools just so some kids will have a place to stay warm during the day. Drives for warm coats, gloves, and hats are not uncommon.

We've been spending dollars on making our schools more secure - adding cameras and police liaison officers and new vestibules that force visitors through the school office when using the only unlocked door of the building.

Zero-tolerance policies on weapons, anti-bullying efforts, bus safety, low-risk playground equipment, environmental air quality studies, and Internet safety curricula are attempts to minimize a child coming to physical and emotional harm in our schools.

Establishing academic groups like Avid, creating mentoring relationships with adults, and providing co-curricular clubs, activities, and sporting opportunities are schools attempts to give students with a sense of belonging, a group identity, a social safety net. There are a growing number of social workers in our schools.

Resources and energies that may have in one era been directed to the classroom, to academics, to learning now go to meeting Maslow's most basic areas of need: physiological, safety, and social.

I am not complaining, mind you, only observing. In fact were I the Emperor of Education, I would do everything in my power to make sure all students had these basics met.

Because if these needs are unmet, if you believe Maslow, students really won't be able to learn anyway.

I think about this when funding dollars I would like to go to better wifi go other places instead.