on a scandal.

hello again. ive been doing some research (finally!) into the first real assessment that we have been set (more on why i call it 'real' later). it is an evaluation of pedagogical challenges to the digital education revolution in case study format. i have realised i really hate the word 'revolution' - you just know that the government spent money on consulting agencies just to come up with the term. but thats a side issue.

on my adventures through online journal-land i was confused by the polarity of the debate around digital technologies. now - i'm not saying that i have read everything on the subject, or am otherwise qualified to make a meta-study judgement, but this is just my first impression after a couple of days looking up sources and backtracing other references. there are folks like warschauer who seem to be putting out heaps of info, and quite good studies, on the benefits of everything clicky-clicky. even his article on equity (review of res. in edu., 2010 34(1)) ends on a high point for digital technologies. the general impression is that while there are massive differences in access to computers (he calls these 'gaps') it is imperative that We look at equalising the field by looking closely at how to get Good machines out to Everyone.

but then i found this guy (through one of his books 'oversold and underused'). http://larrycuban.wordpress.com/. he has one post in particular i found interesting - about the often unrecognised continuum of classroom tech 'skeptics' to 'utopians'. it occurs to me that the discussion back on That Post of mine did divide people into these categories. cuban mentions that someone who criticised the holy IWB's received hate mail and was strongly encouraged to apologise. this is insanity - the thing is a machine, and a very expensive machine at that. why is it that i now feel wary of even anonymously blogging my doubts about all this new tech? cuban and co are permitted to get away with it because they are so very eloquent, but it amazes me how much of the time on that blog is spent in justifying themselves, repeating that they like tech, are computer-proficient, don't dream of outlawing technology altogether.

now i'm not saying that i agree with what he's saying. for starters i haven't even finished reading one of his books. i'm just saying that it is nice to be aware that someone is vociferously taking a line that challenges a lot of the other things i have been reading, without a general assumption that he has no idea what he is talking about (which is how a lot of the anti-computer folks in the editorial section of the paper sound).

press gang is back on 7two. last week i caught the episode 'deadline' - the one where the newsroom receives a computer connected to the internet. it was cutting edge at the time and watching now, you can still sense the excitement. but even moffat, even back in the 80's, knew that that was not a story. the focus of the episode was in how the computer enabled a tetraplegic to send his stories in from home. its interesting that lynda refused to print his articles if he did not rock up at the newsroom in person for the meetings. cuban says that it is the physical communication of a classroom that is most important - it is what the students do not get outside of school. a place where they can discuss things in an academic way in person. there's that scene in serenity, where river is at a school where the tables are digitally enabled. the classroom still looked the same as they do now. they still talked to each other. i hope we don't lose that idea in amongst all this clicking.

i stood at the crumbling edge

funny lecture today. some government-type propaganda people came in to tell us about the digital education revolution - the only notes i took down where a bunch of acronyms that no longer make sense to me. and of course, while they were telling us all about how "Technology" was the way of the future and nothing would ever be done without it, the dvd player refused to work properly. this kind of technical difficulty, combined with the cynicism of the experienced teachers who are instructing us can only lead to a particularly jaded outlook for the whole cohort. the way the DET folks are talking sounds like no one will ever use a pen and paper again. ever. while it is blatantly obvious that heaps of schools are still labouring under ancient tech systems. the reason that none of us trust "Technology" is because it stuffs up and often seems superfluous. on the DET site, there are a bunch of laptop 'wraps' - programs (i mean 'tools') specifically designed for the netbooks that are allegedly being rolled out as we speak. i found one a few hours ago, claiming to be an interactive short story. it was just a glorified picture book on the net rather than on paper.

im still thinking this through, but so far i haven't seen anything done on the laptop that could not have been figured out without the silly 'glorified typewriters'. now, i agree that this particular epithet completely ignores the heaps of software that come installed on the netbook - onenote and the adobe suite stand out particularly - but the fact that no one is willing to spend any money on getting teachers acclimatised to the new changes makes them practically redundant. yes, kids can now talk to people on the great barrier reef, but they could have done that with a single IWB.

and then theres the troubleshooting. we are expected to use all this tech for Good, and they are attempting to teach us how to use the myriad 'tools' - but the fact is we haven't grown up mucking around on them. i have never seen, let alone used onenote, i don't know much about photoshop, audacity, IWBs, freemind, or creative commons. sure, they might be able to teach me, in one and a half years, the basics of all this software, but besides the fact that most of it will be obsolete by then, what about fixing problems? what happens when someone's system crashes, the IWB freezes, somebody BOD's? why do you think noone ever thought it a good idea to give all school-age kids a mobile phone?

final gripe for today (i promise). "Technology". i had a huge problem with the propaganda lady today and how she kept saying it like it was some glorious path to light. i have never seen an IWB in sydney uni at all. honestly, i have no real idea of what it is. one of my tutoring kids - a 6-yr old - would not believe me when i told him that a zebra was a real animal the other day. i kind-of don't believe in the reality of the IWB. i could point one out in a picture and tell you it's magical properties, but the same thing holds for me and dragons. actually, i probably know more about dragons. "Technology" is not a place we are going. it is not something that is invading our lives. it is not even a single entity that can do anything on its own. it is a bunch of tools that we have created. we can use them - or we can not. i realise that it is now mandated in the curriculum, and yes, if necessary i am sure i will be able to teach some kids how to use academically-related tools. they can talk to people on the other side of the globe - but they could do that with pen-pals. they can look at the NSW house of reps on a laptop wrap - or they could go there, sit in the chairs and smell the upholstery. 'technology' is a way of organising things, or a material product (wiki). it is nothing without someone steering it and feeding something into it. that is where all this money should have gone. when the netbooks are obsolete (read: in 2 years) someone, somewhere is going to realise that instead of flushing our taxes down the proverbial, we could have begun a process of teaching critical thinking around communication systems (technologies). that requires regular exposure to one computer and more focus on thinking, instead of continually producing gigabytes of stuff that simply shows which kids know how to use photoshop the best, and that will hang around on school servers until it looks silly.