Technology is Not Magic

Perhaps you read the story this week from the New York times about how technology in the classroom is not showing an improvement in test scores. It may surprise you (unless you know me) to find that I could have wrote that article years ago. Except I would have called it, "New Technology + Old Ways of Educating Lead to Lower Test Scores and Empty District Budgets."

Every day I hear about a new panacea for all that is wrong with education. Often this magic comes from a piece of software, website, or hardware. To hear the marketing departments of these companies talk, you would think you just put ________ into your classroom and everything will right itself.

If this were an infomercial we would all laugh at the hyperbole, but unfortunately thousands of districts flock to these vendors and fork over money like a gambler spending his family's food money. Early in my career, I was given a pink slip in order to shore up budgets. In that same year, millions of dollars were spent on adding interactive whiteboards, clickers, microphones, cameras, etc. I have seen or heard this too many times to feel like my situation was an anomaly.

These technologies are incredibly cool and powerful so why are we not seeing a bump in scores? My first reason that I will only mention briefly as I have spoken on it in the past is the growing disconnect between test scores and learning. There are so many issues and errors with the "system" used to assess learning that I would question every statement that begins or ends with "test scores show" or "led to an increase/decrease in test scores".

The oft cited Tony Wagner refers to the skills needed to close the global achievement gap (video).  If you don't have the time to read them, I can quickly summarize them by saying that they are not skills that can be tested by today's assessments.

Technology can be used for good and evil, it can give us superpowers or add convenience. This is one of the reasons why the Flintstones/Jetsons cartoons are so funny. In the Flintstons you see Fred in his foot pedaled car when he could far more easily walk or run. In the Jetsons, modern society remains exactly the same as it is but with technology (e.g. George walking the dog on a treadmill because for some reason they live in the sky). This is what we have done with technology, spent all of our money on shiny toys only to do things the exact same way as we did before.

Here are a few conversations I have had or overheard over the years:

• Why should students learn to program, they already have calculators?
• Problem solving/creative thinking
• If you give students access to the Internet, all they will do is copy-and-paste.
• Perhaps your assignment could be updated to require thought.
• We have to block all social networking and chat on the school networks or students will spend all of their time talking to each other.
•  Do teachers spend all of their time working alone without collaboration (oh wait, sadly many do).
• You (Phil) can do all of these cool things you do because you had XYZ technology or laptops.
• Hahahahahahahahahahhahaha. Have you ever tried to do a boring assignment on a laptop? The lesson is still boring.
• We can't have cell phones in school. (Never really heard the justification)
• My dream is to have school in an open field or apprenticing at a lab/workshop. Cell phones could make that possible and they cost far less than the tech we are filling our rooms with.

Here are the marketing companies: Look we took all of your old lessons and assignments and made them flashy and gave the students buttons to push. 

Here is my challenge to our community: Help the students do things that were never possible before.

If your test scores are not going up, don't look to adding some new piece of entertainment, give the students a challenge to create, apply, engineer. If that involves technology, great! If it doesn't then that is probably better.


Subscribe and Connect to BrokenAirplane and stay up to date with the best resources for your classroom.

California Standards Test - How Your Students Can Learn and Enjoy Taking It

In California our big standardized test is approaching. In a project based learning school there is always a bit of apprehension because we know that we have taught for depth and not breadth. This means that students are over prepared for some topics and less prepared for others.

While we provide them with the usual advice of getting a good night's rest and have a simple breakfast available in the morning, we also emphasize the importance of using their critical thinking skills.

I have always looked at tests as a game or puzzle which explains why I was often not stressed about it. I love trying to figure out a problem and I won't lie, I have rederived some equations but I also found a deeper understanding of a concept as I was trying to figure it out. While others are trying to recall facts and equations, I lean upon my understanding of the world to help me answer questions. If that sounds esoteric or inefficient, remember that I live and look at problems as puzzles. I would rather turn the tests into another opportunity for thinking and discovery for my students than into something they have to do and will not enjoy.

Help your students to think critically about a question as opposed to trying to remember the information. In the "real world" there is no analogous situation, people do their work and are free to look up information as needed or if it is truly important they remember it from using it so often. Looking at the test as a game can turn a painful experience into a exhausting but fun game. There are no shortage of people decrying the need for better testing, but while we wait for that we can help our students see this as a challenge to enjoy. I am not defending the test or saying we should have more but hoping to make the best of a situation.

Long after they have forgotten the content of your class they will be using the critical thinking skills they develop. My 2 cents, take them for what they are worth to you.

Subscribe to BrokenAirplane and keep up with all of the latest education and technology resources!

For Profit Education: Why Students and Teachers are Paying the Price

In your class do you provide tests that count for 100% of the grade? No of course not, what kind of teacher would do such a thing? Unfortunately, you and your school experience that very thing every year. Students are not learning everything there is to know with perfect retention (see how silly it sounds to read that), and the decision was made that more accountability was needed.

So tests emerged that were intended to gauge how well students learned and how qualified teachers are to teach. In an effort to save money and time on grading, the simplest method of assessment and grading was chosen (multiple choice tests with occasional written response). Students who were already doing well performed well on these tests and students who were struggling....well they struggled on the test.

A panic swept across the nation as cold hard data made it clear that there was definitely a disparity in funding, quality of facilities, community support, qualifications of faculty, etc. Something had to be done, this is the Nation of Equality! Yet the idea of equality, where all are treated equally, was conflated with the idea that all should perform equally. In case I am not making myself clear, we expect that all students should perform well in all aspects even though in our lives we specialize where our talents and gifts lie. 

The idea that all students should want, need, or be able to do Calculus is a lie. I love Calculus and while it describes many aspects of our lives, it is not necessary for all to learn it. In fact forcing all to learn a topic that I love would only make it torture for all of us. All students are expected to know almost ten years worth of math, science, literature, history, a foreign language, arts. It is not fair to graded for our ability to retain that much information.  Every year, as the amount of information increases exponentially, we have to spend more time reviewing. We talk about adding 21st century skills to our curriculum (which I support) while keeping all of the 20 previous centuries of content. This is simply too much!

More and more tests are appearing each year to test our student's retention, and similarly teachers are being asked more and more to demonstrate their ability to teach their content area, support subgroups of students, and review pedagogy that was already taught to them in their federally accredited University. I understand that there are teachers doing a poor job, but a standardized test that one can cram for is not going to prove that any more than a student's A on a test proves that they know the content.

Each year states spend hundreds of millions of dollars on standardized testing. Not to mention the costs of so called elective tests (e.g. SAT, ACT, APs, GRE which are not elective at all if you would like to go to College). There is a lot of money going to organizations to provide us these tests and they are aggressively seeking to spread their influence. I am concerned that we are shortchanging our students by putting so much value on these tests. The valuable lessons, discussions, and projects I have seen cannot be assessed on a standardized test.  What would a class look like that covered all of the information on the test?

The fact is that there is too much information to cover in one year with any hope that it will stick and be deeply understood. I know quite a few teachers who have opted for early retirement because they did not wish to pay hundreds of dollars to hassle with tests to prove that they know what they are talking about. Just this week, another company is seeking to profit from  Student Teachers.

If our money was spent in other ways (classroom supplies and experiences, educational technology, teacher pay) this would go far further towards authentic and meaningful learning. What we are currently keeping teachers/students accountable to is how well they memorize. Real authentic learning comes from application, discussion, long term experience and deep, messy, time consuming, lengthy but meaningful assessment.