So Bill Ferriter just commented on one of my blog posts and then referenced that post on his blog. For those that don’t know Bill, he writes at The Tempered Radical over at Teacher Leaders Network. I find him to be full of sage advice and was honored to be cited by him. Our posts were essentially about the role of technology in our lives (and specifically within the field of education, as we’re both practitioners). I’m going to attempt some expansion of my views a bit more here. Hopefully we can get somewhere.

There has been a lot of chatter lately within my blogroll about the role of technology in education, and I sense that a meme is developing regarding the appropriate level of technology in our both our lives and education.

My original point was that computers are not a culturally neutral entity and they are definitely being utilized to promote certain ideologies. And Bill is right, it isn’t an either/or situation. It’s like most other things in this world of ours: neither all good nor all bad, mostly gray. Come to think of it, bipolarization of political ideologies is a similar beast. Still, I worry about instructional technology just falling prey/reinforcing culturally dominant power structures, especially the corrosive nature of neoliberalism in education. A particularly hilarious and sad example.

In my experience, I have found that many educators are seduced by the flashiness of technology and use it sans, you know, any sense of pedagogical research or any sort of acknowledgment of hierarchies of need. It just becomes another way of doing the whole “sage on the stage” style of teaching. Funny that there isn’t much evidence that it increases achievement or learning when used that way. Wonder why that is. If that research is out there, I’d love to see it. I think Bill and I agree here.

Having said that, it really does depend on how one actually integrates technology into their classroom. One of the great things about some of the newer technologies is the provided intellectual space for students to engage and actually show some ownership for their learning. Wikis, blogs, and all that 2.0 stuff seems better suited than me just showing a PowerPoint to emphasize a science concept. It’s really all in the instructional philosophy of the teacher.

My visceral push back against all this technology is that it’s changing the way that I live my life. Work stuff is now more easily accessible at home and I never really feel like I get away from my career. Having said that, teaching is the type of calling that you can’t just leave at the door when you leave for the day. I definitely think that all this techno-saturation is having some good effects. I am way smarter in the ways of the world than ever before. I am capable of maintaining relationships over long distances with ease. I can blog my thoughts about all sorts of stuff and people actually help me learn via this type of communication. Lots of good things to be gained.

Still, I think we’re losing something important: our ability to read the natural world. Richard Louv and David Orr magnificently write about this phenomenon, especially in terms of the changing educational methodologies. When I see something like Katrina happen in our country, I fundamentally see a misunderstanding of both natural and social systems by the individuals that exist within those systems. On a smaller level, I daily teach students that have no concept of “the outside” at all. Seriously, you should see some of their faces when I show them a live bug. How basic is that? A live bug totally tweaks them out, and they often respond with a need to completely transcend that messy, beautiful, destructive reality. Katrina showed us that you cannot get away from that reality. You can only learn to exist within it. I think this is where Dina’s post about New Orleans hits it right on the head (oh, and I work with Dina, and she almost always hits it right on the head). I’m not sure an increased emphasis on technology is the solution. I’m not sure I have any real solution at this point, but my gut feeling is that we’re getting farther and farther divorced from our environmental reality, and that technology is one of the main causes. Remember that all this technology is really just a casing of petroleum surrounding some mined metal and powered by cheaply (in the short-term anyway) produced electrons. But I digress. I am an Earth Science teacher, after all.

I try to use technology to expose my students to a world that is way bigger than the one they know right now. That globalized world matters, but being able to read and engage in the local is more directly relevant. If only we could figure out a way to merge the two into something awesome (to avoid the either/or). I’m not sure we’re anywhere close to where we need to be in terms of natural literacy, and I’m not sure technology gets us any closer toward that goal, especially given today’s dominant educational rhetoric.