Stop Integrating Technology
By David Warlick
Before you think I’m off my rocker, let me explain.When I decided to become a schoolteacher, my vision of the classroom included textbooks, chalkboards, an occasional filmstrip, and papers to grade at night. Personal computers were not in this picture (They had not been invented). I was a passable teacher, and got better as the years went on. I did not become a better teacher by integrating 12 computers into my classroom in 1982. I improved because each year taught me more about working with middle school children, helping them learn, and helping them to love learning.
The fact of the matter was that those twelve computers were placed in my classroom without any software. It was believed, apparently, that the green glow from those cathode-ray tubes washing over our children’s faces would make them smarter. I spent a great deal of time in the wake of those rays, and all I got was less sleep as I stayed up at night teaching myself how to program the machines. The other teachers at the school continued to resist integrating technology, and continued to be very good teachers. They still think of me as that comical little guy running down the halls looking for somebody to come and see the neat program he just wrote.
As the decades have passed, we have learned many ways to use technology to help students learn. Yet, integrating computers into education continues to be a hard sell, especially in this time of budget meltdowns, and an overwhelming emphasis on reading and math test scores.
So I call for a moratorium on integrating technology into the classroom. I must confess a certain amount of tongue in my cheek, but there is a great deal of seriousness to my call. Education is operating in a new atmosphere today. Most obviously, the institution is changing because of landmark legislation, No Child Left Behind, an initiative that emphasizes basic literacy – reading and math (writing seems conspicuously underemphasized).
Far more relevant to our students is the fact that education is also operating in a dramatically new environment where the very nature of information is changing. Most of the authors of NCLB and its chief champion, President George W. Bush, were educated at the same time that I attended school, in the 1950s and ‘60s. At that time, if you could read and understand the magazine article that somebody handed to you, you were considered literate. In 2003, however, that article more likely appears as a Web page, and that article about Martin Luther King, Jr. may well have been written by a white supremacist. If our students can read and understand a Web page, should we consider them literate?
Information is changing dramatically in what it looks like, how we access it, and what we can do with it. The most fundamental of these changes include:
• A move from a broadcast distribution of information to multicasting,
• The increased digitization of information, and
• Unprecedented access to powerful communication mediums.Most of us were taught to read what somebody handed to us. We learned to read the textbooks from our teachers, reference books from librarians. Our students, on the other hand, live and grow in a world where information is freely distributed, exchanged, manipulated, and communicated compellingly by anyone without publishers and librarians to filter it. Their literacy must include the skills to mine this rich and diverse collection of information and wisely select those ideas that help them to accomplish their goals. This involves the ability to ready, but also a range of skills that help students to investigate digital information in order to judge its value.
Literacy for our students must also address changes in what information looks like, the technologies of viewing it, how it works, and how we use it. We will generate one-and-a-half exabytes of brand new information this year. Of this vast quantity of data, only .003% (that’s three one-thousandths of one percent) of that information will ever be printed (1). The rest is digital, and this digital information is what we will use in order to make the decisions and accomplish our goals. Being able to perform arithmetic is a prerequisite to prosperity in the 21st century. But if students are not able to use computers to count, measure, calculate, and solve problems with digital information, then they are not literate and they will not prosper.
If we continue to generate exabytes of information every year, we will have more information around us than we can possibly handle. Most would say that we are already there. This means that we must pick and choose the information products that we will use, and the ones that we select will be those that communicate themselves most effectively and efficiently. In the information age, information will compete for attention, and your ideas will only have value if they successfully draw the attention of your information customers. Consider that today, with a $500 digital video camera and software that comes pre-installed on many computers, you can produce video content that only a few years ago, would have required tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and highly trained technicians. This means that our communication, both personal and professional, will not be limited to text, and if writing is all our children are learning to do, then they will not be literate in the 21st century.
I stand behind No Child Left Behind in its emphasis on literacy, but only if we break through the smokestack notions of the term and work to redefine literacy in 21st century terms – in terms that our own children are already using.
Students must learn to:
Expose the Truth – Reading remains core to literacy. But we must be willing to expand our notions of reading to include skills to research and find information, gain meaning from what we find, and evaluate the information in order to select that which is most valuable.
Employ the Information – Mathematics remains a core skill, but it is an irrelevant skill unless students learn to analyze, synthesize, manipulate, and add value to digital information, and assemble new and valuable information products that accomplish worthwhile goals.
Express Ideas Compellingly – We will be writing for a long time to come. But if our ideas are to compete with the ideas of others, then we must be able to use images, animation, sound, music, and video along with our words in order to be heard.
I have very briefly described three Es for 21st century literacy. Yet these three sets of skills are sterile and even dangerous without a fourth E-skill that binds them together.
Ethics and information – Information has a new value in the 21st century. Until now, our information was produced and distributed by a few very powerful entities. In the 21st century, we will all be producers and distributors of information, and this changes its value. When we spend our time producing information, it has worth to us. If it helps people do their jobs, make their decisions, solve their problems, or pursue enjoyment, then it has value to them. Information is property in ways that it has never been before, because more and more of us are information property owners, and if students are not learning to respect the information property of other people, then they will not be literate. They will be criminals.
The ethics issue runs even deeper than intellectual property. Information is not just valuable; it is powerful and it can be potentially destructive. Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote that, "The pen is mightier than the sword." The word processor can be mightier than nations, and in this article, I am suggesting that we arm our children with some incredibly powerful skills. At the same time that we teach them to harness global libraries of information, manipulate that information, and compellingly communicate their ideas, we must also teach them to love and protect the truth.
Do our students need more technology in order to learn? Absolutely! Do our teachers need more staff development in order to better teach our students? Much more! But integrating technology will not accomplish this.
We need to stop integrating technology, and start integrating literacy, a new and compelling definition of literacy that prepares our students…
For their future.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------You will be able to read a more thorough examination of these ideas in Warlick’s new book (title to be determined), from Linworth Publishing. Also, see Mr. Warlick’s spotlight address, Literacy & Learning in the 21st Century, at NECC 2003, or at a state Ed Tech conference near you.
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(1) "How Much Information." School of Information Management & Systems. 2000. Regents of the University of California. 13 March, 2001. <http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/how-much-info/summary.html>.
