As I have traveled around this country participating in education conferences I have made several observations in regard to the effects of the Internet and social media on various levels of education as a profession, as an industry, and as an institution. These are often the topics of sessions at education conferences that draw thousands of educators in to look at, examine, talk over, consider, and move on. This all takes time and has been going on since tech was first introduced to education in various forms as tools for learning. It may be time to step back and look at the bigger picture.
As technology advances there are consequences for many industries that either fail to adapt, or whose product is replaced by what technology offers. Horse drawn carriages were replaced by horseless carriages. Typewriters were replaced by word processors. Instamatic cameras were replaced by digital cameras, which are now being replaced by cell phones. Photographic film is not found in any of the millions of stores from which it was previously sold in mass quantities. The news cycle no longer faces deadlines because of 24-hour news cycles. Newspaper and magazine stands have only a fraction of the offerings they had even five years ago. There is no longer a Kodak, Polaroid, Underwood Typewriter, or Newsweek magazine. They were all giants taken out by technology.
With all that, we as educators should have learned from all the examples of those industries that preceded us as victims in the advancement of technology. Why is education so slow in making decisions that would employ tech rather than resist it. Kodak was huge. It was in the “too big to fail” category. Its products included cameras, but its main product was film. Once digital photography moved into the industry it was a very short run to ruin.
The product of education is content. My path of reasoning must be getting clear about now. The key to content was always held by the academics to be shared by those who attended and prevailed in the education system. Teachers were the content experts. The Internet has now strained the value of content experts. Few content experts will ever be able to retain and command the content held by the power of the Internet. The shift that should take place in education is to teach students the skills to responsibly and critically access that content in order to create additional content.
We shouldn’t be guided by the demands of industry to teach skills that may not be in existence over the course of a student’s academic career. The idea that business can best direct the needs of learners is surpassed by the fact that business will only direct education to meet the present needs of business.
If education is to direct its own path and avoid becoming as irrelevant as a film company in a digital world, as educators we need to change. We can’t continue contemplating the use of technology for the sake of protecting our comfort zones. We need to update and restructure the way we administer Professional Development. We need to employ strategies to incorporate social media for collaboration. We need to better understand how to use technology to help us do what we do best even better. Our professional organizations need to move from the models of the past and lead teachers through professional development, discussion, and collaboration to a deeper understanding of their profession in a modern world. We are not a profession of the 1800’s, yet in many ways we carry ourselves and approach it that way. This to must change.
Professional development is a necessary component of the teaching profession. It must be part of every teacher’s workweek. It needs to be prioritized, funded and supported with time. Too many educators have no idea how much they do not know about their own profession. This will require a good amount of directed professional development, which is never popular with educators. Technology has changed things and continues to do so at an incredible rate of speed. If educators are to be effective they must be relevant. If harnessed, technology can be used to our advantage with proper training. If ignored, or not taken seriously by the entire profession, it could very well make educators irrelevant. Our education system is not too big to fail.
Tom,
In the same hour, I read this post and your tweet that around 4000 were scheduled to attend MACUL today.
Is MACUL doing something different?
Many professional organizations of educators are struggling to attract members. Is the professional conference scene now so dominated by tech conferences that the ones for librarians, social studies teachers, etc. are sidelined?
It certainly seems clear that the ground beneath our feet is no longer solid. We must, as you say, become more nimble, finding a viable path forward or be swallowed up in the drive to treat education as merely a delivery system for “content” and test in shallow ways that students have retained the content.
[…] As I have traveled around this country participating in education conferences I have made several observations in regard to the effects of the Internet and social media on various levels of educati… […]
[…] As I have traveled around this country participating in education conferences I have made several observations in regard to the effects of the Internet and social media on various levels of educati… […]
[…] and I wonder, do educators really know what the current reality is? As Tom Whitby comments in The Business of Education, ”If educators are to be effective they must be relevant.” Is it easier to be relevant […]
Bang on as usual….and why a group of us are organizing #edcampwest – which will also bring together K-12 and Post-Secondary for the first time in the edcamp format. http://teachdifferent.ca/about-2/ (website created by interactive design students at my university – content will be complete soon)!
I do not disagree with your article, but I have raed a lot of your work over the years, and I have to say I am very dissapointed to hear you say that teachers were content experts. I hope you have the wording wrong here and what you meant to say was that, “teachers knew their content well and were and still are experts on sourcing knowledge and sharing it nin ways that allow learners to learn.” I fundamentally disagree that the role of teachers has every been to give information and nothing else. @yeates_mark
I was trying to decide what approach to take on this comment when I saw Mr. Yeates’ comment. When it comes to your statement about teachers holding the content, the problem I have seen over these many years is that there are too many teachers who THINK they are the holder of all content. Too often students aren’t allowed to discover knowledge and with the millions of places to go find knowledge we must not only allow students to go find it but we should be requiring (and facilitating) their seeking of information.
The pathway our students must take should not be blocked by technology or by the keepers of the knowledge.
[…] …As technology advances there are consequences for many industries that either fail to adapt, or whose product is replaced by what technology offers".. […]
Education is the most famous and growing business this time.There are so many companies are try to check his luck in this. Nice post and good blog.