Being a "tech" advocate is meaningless

In his recent post, How One Science Teacher Integrates Technology into Lessons, Stanford education professor Larry Cuban* writes:

Veteran Carol Donnelly works hard in her five daily classes but knows how to pace herself. By her admission and my observations, I see that laptops have energized her. She sees the benefits from using the web to enrich her teaching through other teachers’ lessons, videos, and websites that permit students to dig deeper into content than their text. She sees that students become engaged with the animation, lectures, videos as she skillfully integrates content from the text, websites, and new software activities. Yet her teaching, while remaining within the tradition of teacher-centered instruction has incorporated elements of student-centered instruction–she is creating a mix of instructional approaches.

Nothing new here, of course. Most subject matter teachers in secondary schools, whether affluent districts or ones with largely low-income students, teach within that tradition, one with variations to be sure–what I call “hybrids.”

But for “pedagogical dogmatists“–think of those at Edutopia– there is only one way to integrate technology into lessons:  “Learning through projects while equipped with technology tools allows students to be intellectually challenged while providing them with a realistic snapshot of what the modern office looks like. Through projects, students acquire and refine their analysis and problem-solving skills as they work individually and in teams to find, process, and synthesize information they’ve found online.”

Donnelly’s classes remind me that thoughtful teaching and smooth weekly integration of laptops into biology lessons –within a five period workload and three preparations across different levels of students–can be done with finesse, humor, excitement, and-yes- within a blend of teacher- and student-centered pedagogy. Like many teachers, she hugs the middle of the spectrum.

Cuban is among the more articulate and vocal critics of the use of technology in education (see Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom). And while I have disagreed with him in the past, I also have to admit he is uncomfortably clear-headed about seeing beyond all the hyperbole that often accompanies educational technology.

I really enjoyed Cuban's blog post from which the quote above is extracted. Pundits too often confuse the general promotion of technology in education with particular ways of using technology in education.

There is a critical distinction.

Aristotle (if I remember the right Greek) observed that all technology is an amplification of human abilities. Educational technology can "amplify" either a teacher or student-centered approach to classroom instruction - or as Cuban observes - a blended use of both.

To be a "technology" advocate is meaningless.

* I was lucky to have Prof. Cuban as teacher when a member of the 1996-98 Bush Educational Leadership program. His grasp and use of educational history to illuminate current educational practices and reforms is always worth considering. Add his blog, Larry Cuban of School Reform and Classroom Practices to your reader.

Data vs. Information

2010: Data doubling every 11 hours. ZDNet headline, Feb 13, 2007

A part of my Thanksgiving weekend was spent creating the 2011 Johnson Family Calendar. It's a labor of love, to be sure, that requires digging through musty smelling stacks of photos. (It's a project I've written about several times before (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

While I enjoy revisiting a past when my whiskers were dark and my waist was slim, I also get a taste of my own fleeting importance to the world and the people in it. Because every year I come across photos like these:

Each of these men are handsome devils hence undoubtedly related to me in some way, but the backs of their portraits lack names and dates.

By scanning and posting these pictures, I've added to the world's data supply. But not to the world's information supply (or not much anyway), let alone knowledge or wisdom collection. Data - digital or analog - remains pretty much worthless without the context that makes it information.

This is why the woo, woo factoid about the world's data doubling every X hours has always had a "so what" quality to it.

It also speaks to the value of librarians in the digital world. While cataloging has changed from Dewey to folksonomies, from institutional to personal, placing information in context and more importantly helping others to do so, remains a vital task we should be performing.*

Tag your photos, dear readers - online and off. Your grandchildren and historians may not recognize you if you don't. Who would have thought you were ever that young and beautiful?

* For some other tasks, read Joyce Valenza's elegant post, What librarians make.

A last mystery photo from the Johnson archives.... Who are these people? Where is this house?

BFTP: A Second Thanksgiving Day

A Saturday holiday Blue Skunk "feature" will be the revision of an old post. I am calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. This post originally appeared, Saturday, July 5, 2008.

 curmudgeon: An ill tempered (and frequently old) person full of stubborn ideas or opinions - wiktionary

A not uncommon response when asking a Minnesotan how things are going is, "Oh, could be worse." Effusive, we're not.

The "could-be-worse" philosophy is one I personally need to remember more often. 

The LWW and I are spending a few days unwinding by visiting the beautiful Texas Hill Country north of San Antonio. It's been a busy summer and a few days of getting up late, reading and touring are welcome. Yesterday, July 4th, we took the whole day visiting President Lyndon Johnson's ranch and hometown of Johnson City.

While most of us remember Johnson as the "Vietnam War" president with chants of "LBJ, LBJ, how many babies did you kill today," I was struck by his efforts to create his 'the Great Society." It was under Johnson that effective civil rights legislation was passed. Medicare and Medicaid was enacted during his term. Money poured into schools with the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Thanks to Lady Bird, the environmental movement got started, and he added substantially to the National Parks domain. LBJ signed into law funding for the start of public broadcast. Any NPR listeners out there? 

Johnson was motivated by the experiences of his own childhood. He grew up poor, worked his way through college, and remained in close contact with his Hill Country neighbors and empathized with the disadvantaged. He was described as the last great "rural liberal."

 Anyway, something about LBJ and the 4th of July made me question my curmudgeonly stance on so many issues:

• I complain about aching knees when getting up in the morning when thousands of our veterans have no knees to ache.
• I grouse about my steak being over-cooked when I eat more in a week that others do in a month.
• I fuss about the seat pitch on airplanes when I can fly across the country in hours, safely.
• I moan about my grandsons living too far from home when they are healthy, smart and loving.
• I steam about a lack of funding for technology in schools when education in this country for both boys and girls is universal.
• I grumble about taxes, gas prices, and my 401K's performance when I am blessed with a job I love that allows me comforts unknown to 99% of the rest of the world.
• I despise the politics in this country yet I recognize that I live in a society in which its citizens enjoy more freedom and safety than during any place or time in history.

When it comes right down to it, what do I really have to complain about?  Perhaps we need two Thanksgiving Days in the US. Just as a reminder that many, many, many of us do indeed lead charmed lives.

Could be worse.