We need to take bigger mental leaps as educators and policymakers

Marc Tucker, President and CEO of the National Center on Education and the Economy, had a blog post back in August titled Instructional Technology: Villain of the Piece – or Savior? In that post, he postulated five ways that technology could be used to improve student achievement:

Use word processors to teach writing.

Giving students access to the wealth of information on the Internet.

Giving students access to powerful modeling and simulation tools.

Giving students access to some of the most talented teachers in the world.

Using the technologies of natural language processing and artificial intelligence, in combination with other technologies, to provide automated, accurate, and timely assessments of student progress.

I didn’t have a huge beef with anything that he listed. All of those likely have a place in our new systems of learning, teaching, and schooling. But they still reflect a fairly limited vision of what student learning with technology could be. Here’s what I said in my comment:

Marc, with due respect for all of your excellent work, I believe that you are missing the true impacts of digital technologies and the Internet. Every single one of the examples you list above portrays adults as the directors of the learning process and students merely as consumers.

The real transformation occurs when we give students access to robust learning technologies and then get out of their way as much as possible, giving them the power and permission to DIRECT THEIR OWN LEARNING. For the first time ever, our children have the ability to be powerful creators, collaborators, and contributors to our global information commons. They have the ability – at surprisingly young ages – to work with each other and with adults to follow their interests and passions and do relevant, authentic, meaningful knowledge work. In your list above, did you acknowledge the ability of digital technologies and the Internet to facilitate personal ownership, investment, and self-learning affordances in our youth? Nope, not at all. See http://bit.ly/NwBQrV for more about this concept.

Do children need help and guidance from adults along the way? Absolutely. But go visit a Big Picture school, or a New Tech school, or a High Tech High, or an Expeditionary Learning school, or an Edvisions school, or an Envision school. Learn from the work of Henry Jenkins, danah boyd, Mimi Ito, and others. Then think about what you left out from your list above…

I think we need to take bigger mental leaps as educators and policymakers. Digital technologies reinvent daily what our students could be doing, but our mindsets are holding us back. Marc never responded to my comment but if he ever has time I’d love to hear his thoughts (or yours)…