I had to buy a new calculator the other day. The old one, a TI-84 abandoned (and unclaimed) by a student, finally stopped working after many years of service. As I tried out the new one and saw the small upgrades here and there, I began to think, once again, about the huge impact that technology has had on my subject, mathematics, as well as others. The use of computers, graphing calculators, cell phones, and other devices has revolutionized school curriculum and communication between various school constituencies; we certainly don’t want to return to the days of writing comments or doing all math computations by hand. But, at times, the furious rate of change is dizzying. Are all the “improvements” well thought out?
Almost all of my students are now aware of the website WolframAlpha.com. This site has an impressive array of problem solving and data retrieval abilities. One can type in any equation and it will be solved, or type in a date and get a list of famous people born on that day along with various astronomical info, or input the name of a stock and get more financial data than you dreamed existed. This is truly impressive computational ability that allows our students to solve more problems and retrieve more data more easily than ever before. Freeing our students from tedious computation is a good thing because it allows us to study topics and learn more conceptual material. But using technology also raises some important questions; does solving math problems by hand provide insights that might be lost if they are solved online? There seems to be little doubt that many students these days have less “number sense” as a result of using calculators from an early age — what does knowing how to solve a problem mean, just finding the answer?
In addition to subject-specific applications of technology, there are school-wide uses that should be evaluated. Among them are intranets, Wi-Fi available throughout school, the use of laptops in classes, and cell phone availability in school. For example, nearly every independent school now has an “intranet” system on which student assignments, tests, projects, school announcements, grade reports, etc. are posted. Does this mean that teachers need not give assignments in class? If a teacher does write the next day’s homework on the board, are her students free to ignore it because it will be posted online later in the day? There is a strong whiff of irresponsibility about this scenario. And what if the teacher, due to the crush of work or just plain forgetting, fails to post that assignment, are her students absolved from doing it? Logging into the intranet allows parents to keep track of their child’s work and results in a lot of parent “advice” and “encouragement.” Is this a good thing? Some educational psychologists (Michael Thompson, for example) think that this leads to too much parental involvement in their child’s schoolwork. Has your school considered these questions as ever more information is posted online? There are also questions about widespread use of laptops in school.
It would be irresponsible for educators to ignore powerful technological advancements that dramatically improve how students learn. But it is foolhardy to incorporate them in our everyday work without having thought through the full implications of their use. A wide-ranging conversation is needed among educators to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of technology in schools and how best to use those technologies deemed useful.
For those of our readers who don’t yet know it, let me proudly announce that NAIS is the new home of Independent Teacher and we are happy to be here. The people at NAIS could not be more helpful and supportive, as were my colleagues at Latin School of Chicago (Illinois) where Independent Teacher got its start. While there are a few kinks still to work out, we look forward to many years with NAIS and many great issues of Independent Teacher.