As long as I have been involved with education there has been a discussion of whether or not technology is making a difference in learning, and whether or not we should use it in schools. This discussion takes place on a teacher-to-teacher level, as well as an administrative level. It occurs on primary, secondary and higher education levels. It may be time to shift the discussions to what we need our kids to learn and how they will implement that learning in our culture, and continue to learn, as the life long learners, which we, as educators, supposedly strive to make them to be.
The more we learn about learning, the further we seem to be getting away from the primary teaching lessons of the past. Lectures, although necessary, are no longer the focus of teaching methodology. Today’s methods seem to be relying on more collaborative and authentic learning. Actually doing and making, as opposed to having descriptions and theories delivered by lectures, is a shift, which is taking place in education today. Critical thinking, always addressed to some extent in learning, is now becoming more prominent in education.
The skills that educators are emphasizing more and more are skills of: curating information, analyzing information, understanding information, communicating information in various forms, collaborating on information both locally and globally, ultimately, creating information for the purpose of publishing and sharing. These are the goals of 21st Century educators. These are also the today’s needs of industry, business, and banking. Many of these skills are also needs of artists, writers, and musicians. Even politicians could use these skills, which are apparently lacking in a majority of our current leaders.
Now that we have seen how the needs of society have structured the needs of skills for students, and now that we have seen how the needs of education have structured the changes in methodology to address those skills, we now need to consider the best way to deliver access to information for curation, analysis, understanding, communicating and creating. For that direction let us consider what tools are used by Industry, Business, Banking, and the Arts. If the answer is TECHNOLOGY, why is there any debate about why, and how much technology should play a role in education? Yes, good teachers can teach without technology, but to what end, if the student will need to master technology to compete, or even exist in a technology-driven environment?
It is time that this debate ends. There are no choices for educators to make here. If we are educating our children to live and thrive in their world, we cannot limit them to what we were limited to in our world. As things change and evolve, so must education. As educators we have a professional obligation to change as well. We must retain a sense of relevance and that requires effort. Relevance does not come to us as we sleep in the night. Educators need to employ the very skills they are passing along to their students. They need to: curate, collaborate, communicate, critically think, and create. All of this is best accomplished through the use of tools of technology. An education without technology does not prepare our students with the skills that their world will require. Technology should be ubiquitous in education.
Tom,
For the most part, I agree. As I wrote back in 2011:
Sometimes I think we work too hard to push (force?) those along who will eventually – and very naturally – be left behind. Sometimes I also think that if we’re really serious about making change happen more quickly in our schools, then we need to do a better job of understanding and helping the culture within these schools to change.
More thoughts here, if you’re interested:
http://drapestakes.blogspot.com/2011/06/change-culture-and-youve-changed-future.html
-Darren
Whether or not kids need technology to learn is a question I leave to educators, but isn’t it rapidly losing relevance? Seems to me, the more current question is whether, as a society, we can leave out of education the technologies that are are wholly embedded in students’ (and everybody’s) everyday lives.
Thank you for your enduringly thought-provoking work, Tom!
A thought-provoking and well written post. However, I have to differ with you on some of your statements. I do not believe that we have no choice when it comes to technology. Yes, technology is going to develop, and it is going to become more and more integrated in each aspect of our daily lives, including the classroom. However, we do have a choice — as to how and when we use it. There are still concepts that are better taught “bare knuckles” — face to face with no intermediaries. When we do choose to use technology, we must also choose what we do with it.. Lessons are not automatically improved through the addition of technology. It is our responsibility to determine what we want to achieve in a lesson, then identify what we need from the technological aid, and negotiate with the technology to ensure that it does support our goals.
Another great blog Tom. I think that too often the discussion of ‘technology’ gets trapped into a thing-in-itself, whereas the reality is that it is one facet of 21st century learning, which encapsulates a wide range of skills and practises. Personally, I think that technology is best understood as enhancing and boosting these things.
I think that one of the worst things that we can do in regards to 21st century learning is to attempt to talk about aspects such as ‘tools for working’ in isolation. ATC21S (http://atc21s.org/) team have split 21st century learning into four areas:
– Ways of thinking
– Ways of working
– Tools for working
– Skills for living in the world
When you start looking at this list you realise quite quickly that it does not work to think about each aspect individually. To do so is to restrict learning to four different colours. I think that they are better considered as four different colours on a pallet, mixed and combined in the creation of a complex painting.
I have also written about this: http://readingwritingresponding.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/21st-century-learning-more-than-just.html
As a simple reminder of the challenge, consider the first chapter of Hard Times by Charles Dickens.
CHAPTER I
THE ONE THING NEEDFUL
“‘Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!’
The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and…”
(Full text available from Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/786 )
What bothered me as I read it was the image of college professors, high school teachers, middle school teachers, etc. Those images are in my own memory, not from the late 1800s.
Is it really going to change?
I certainly hope so.
Great reference, Algot. I think many of us agree that this scene is still very relevant today (maybe even more so). However, I guess my question is whether technology in itself is going to alleviate the problem. (Think of rows of identical monitors in a computer lab; think of powerpoint presentations,) Technology is not creativity; if we are going to infuse the classroom with the vitality that is so lacking today, we need to bring the creativity ourselves. Relying on technology in and of itself is not the answer.
Once again, we are in agreement Tom. There is no longer any choice in this matter. This morning, I awakened to technology, brewed my tea with technology, checked news and weather with technology, paid bills with technology, researched visible planets with technology, did some shopping with technology, etc. Technology is so embedded in our daily lives that to not provide students opportunities to gain mastery of digital literacies would be a huge disservice to them. Students in other countries are learning to write programming code in elementary school. Which students will be most able to compete in a technology-rich, digitally connected, world economy? Lastly, I want my doctor, my dentist, my mechanic, and my accountant to have the best skill and knowledge that technology can provide. Don’t you?
A thought provoking post and I agree that we have to incorporate technology in our teaching and learning. However, as already mentioned above, it is important to choose the tools carefully to complement good pedagogy. The technology itself won’t necessarily improve learning. Education has always been a bit behind the eight ball when it comes to adoption of technology but is that because we are reluctant as teachers or because we are bound by curricula and systems that haven’t always given us the time and space to explore and gain personal competence and confidence? Now that there is a greater move towards risk taking and experimentation, inquiry based learning and developing thinking skills and other skills that have been recognised as being of more valuable than learning content, more educators are feeling happier about being the “guide on the side” rather than the all-knowing “sage on the stage” . We are learning that it is ok to learn from our students who sometimes, but definitely not always, have better skills using technology than we have.
as resault our way along of the course the student need to learn what is useful for the subject althoug the information in class is always generous not ever this will be necesary to learn what they want
teachers should demand their students some goals because I sometimes feel that I do not get learn what i really want and i feel a bit disappointed
so sorry if my point of view is not higlithg
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[…] As long as I have been involved with education there has been a discussion of whether or not technology is making a difference in learning, and whether or not we should use it in schools. This disc… […]
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Thank you Tom for another wonderfully throught provoking piede, but I do gave one question as I walk away from it: Why do we still need to have thus discussion? It concerns/bothers/frustrates me when I read posts such as this that ciuld gave been written five years ago. We as educators no longer have a choice. Our students have always been behind many nations in the world on standardized tests, but our nation has come up with many solutions to the world’s problems because we used to be able to think outside the box. Our students will not be able to compete, not because they can’t fill in a circle on a test, but because they can’t understand how or why that is the answer, because they won’t be able to come up with a creative solution to the questions the world us asking of them, because we won’t have encouraged risk-taking and creativity in our classrooms.
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As I’ve said on more than one occasion, “A good teacher doesn’t always need technology, but technology will always need good teachers.”
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“An education without technology does not prepare our students with the skills that their world will require.” Agreed! And even though our students’ lives are filled with technology that they largely consume, my experience has been that many lag behind when it comes to creating with technology. Unfortunate, as this is what jobs of the future will require
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Although I agree that technology is here to stay and as such, educators must prepare students for a world in which technology literacy is paramount; I think it is a mistake to begin with our preschoolers and kindergarteners. They need to be taught how to interact with others and to master some very basic skills before being “booted up”.
All students need to be taught how to think on their feet, as well. What happens if there is a power outage in the midst of your corporate powerpoint presentation? Do you have another method for conveying your thoughts or must the meeting be rescheduled at a cost of countless hours and dollars?
The most important goal in teaching has little to do with technology – it is teaching students to make valid interpretations: of literature, of data, of observations, of experimental results, of poetry, of non-verbal communication .. of everything that we see, hear, smell and touch. Valid interpretations are made by using both our subjective conclusions and the conclusions of others who have observed and considered the same literature, data, results … as we have.
teach kids to curate, collaborate, communicate, critically think, and create and they will not only figure out the technology for themselves but they will be more apt to develop new types of tech and be less reliant on current tech tools to think for them. You don’t need technology to teach kids those skills.
[…] down to business. I came across this post by Tom Whitby in my RSS feed the other day, and I think he raises some interesting and salient points about the […]
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Teaching is just like parenting. A good parent knows, how to maintain a balance that is when to be tough and when forgiving. A successful teacher also has to the balancing act between technology and personal touch. Those who can maintain a healthy balance will survive .
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It is too bad that K-12 schools don’t make a greater effort to review educational research on the topic. There has been many studies on student engagement and such. Linking the use of technology to student achievement (directly) is something of the ‘holy grail’ though. What research have you looked at or recommend?
Well written and succint. Remain relevant in a changing world. I would add the need to encourage invention and entrepreneurship among students with a tiny inclination to be makers. It is the main question I hear from high school students when talking about careers. As a lifetime inventor and entrepreneur– even while teaching–students are hungry for what its been like.
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[…] Learning Without Technology – Tom Whitby: https://tomwhitby.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/learning-without-technology/ My Kids Are Illiterate. Mosts Likely, Yours Are Too – Will […]
[…] The skills that educators are emphasizing more and more are skills of: curating information, analyzing information, understanding information, communicating information in various forms, collaborating on information both locally and globally, ultimately, creating information for the purpose of publishing and sharing. These are the goals of 21st Century educators. These are also the today’s needs of industry, business, and banking. Many of these skills are also needs of artists, writers, and musicians. Even politicians could use these skills, which are apparently lacking in a majority of our current leaders. Now that we have seen how the needs of society have structured the needs of skills for students, and now that we have seen how the needs of education have structured the changes in methodology to address those skills, we now need to consider the best way to deliver access to information for curation, analysis, understanding, communicating and creating. For that direction let us consider what tools are used by Industry, Business, Banking, and the Arts. If the answer is TECHNOLOGY, why is there any debate about why, and how much technology should play a role in education? Yes, good teachers can teach without technology, but to what end, if the student will need to master technology to compete, or even exist in a technology-driven environment? It is time that this debate ends. There are no choices for educators to make here. If we are educating our children to live and thrive in their world, we cannot limit them to what we were limited to in our world. As things change and evolve, so must education. As educators we have a professional obligation to change as well. We must retain a sense of relevance and that requires effort. Relevance does not come to us as we sleep in the night. Educators need to employ the very skills they are passing along to their students. They need to: curate, collaborate, communicate, critically think, and create. All of this is best accomplished through the use of tools of technology. An education without technology does not prepare our students with the skills that their world will require. Technology should be ubiquitous in education. […]
[…] The skills that educators are emphasizing more and more are skills of: curating information, analyzing information, understanding information, communicating information in various forms, collaborating on information both locally and globally, ultimately, creating information for the purpose of publishing and sharing. These are the goals of 21st Century educators. These are also the today’s needs of industry, business, and banking. Many of these skills are also needs of artists, writers, and musicians. Even politicians could use these skills, which are apparently lacking in a majority of our current leaders. Now that we have seen how the needs of society have structured the needs of skills for students, and now that we have seen how the needs of education have structured the changes in methodology to address those skills, we now need to consider the best way to deliver access to information for curation, analysis, understanding, communicating and creating. For that direction let us consider what tools are used by Industry, Business, Banking, and the Arts. If the answer is TECHNOLOGY, why is there any debate about why, and how much technology should play a role in education? Yes, good teachers can teach without technology, but to what end, if the student will need to master technology to compete, or even exist in a technology-driven environment? It is time that this debate ends. There are no choices for educators to make here. If we are educating our children to live and thrive in their world, we cannot limit them to what we were limited to in our world. As things change and evolve, so must education. As educators we have a professional obligation to change as well. We must retain a sense of relevance and that requires effort. Relevance does not come to us as we sleep in the night. Educators need to employ the very skills they are passing along to their students. They need to: curate, collaborate, communicate, critically think, and create. All of this is best accomplished through the use of tools of technology. An education without technology does not prepare our students with the skills that their world will require. Technology should be ubiquitous in education. […]
[…] As long as I have been involved with education there has been a discussion of whether or not technology is making a difference in learning, and whether or not we should use it in schools… […]
[…] As long as I have been involved with education there has been a discussion of whether or not technology is making a difference in learning, and whether or not we should use it in schools. This disc…"….The skills that educators are emphasizing more and more are skills of: curating information, analyzing information, understanding information, communicating information in various forms, collaborating on information both locally and globally, ultimately, creating information for the purpose of publishing and sharing. These are the goals of 21st Century educators. These are also the today’s needs of industry, business, and banking. Many of these skills are also needs of artists, writers, and musicians. Even politicians could use these skills, which are apparently lacking in a majority of our current leaders….""…An education without technology does not prepare our students with the skills that their world will require. Technology should be ubiquitous in education." […]
[…] I think that too often the discussion of 'technology' gets trapped into a thing-in-itself, whereas the reality is that it is one facet of 21st century learning, which encapsulates a wide range of skills and practises. […]
[…] As long as I have been involved with education there has been a discussion of whether or not technology is making a difference in learning, and whether or not we should use it in schools. This disc… […]
[…] Below is a link to a great piece of writing on the subject https://tomwhitby.com/2014/01/04/learning-without-technology/ […]
[…] Relevance does not come to us as we sleep in the night. Educators need to employ the very skills they are passing along to their students. They need to: curate, collaborate, communicate, critically think, and create. All of this is best accomplished through the use of tools of technology. View complete answer […]