This video came to my attention in an e-mail from the National Reading Conference/Literacy Research Council list-serve. It is an amazing view into the not-too-distant future of computers. It raises more interesting questions about literacy. Will reading/writing literacies be more important? Less important? Different? This is worth the 14 minutes needed to watch!
In one of my last posts, I recommended watching the PBS program Digital Nation. It is a fantastic program that examines our society, particularly our children/young adults’ digital experiences. As I said in that post, it raised many questions in my mind.
I revisited the web page this afternoon and watched clips of an interview of Marc Prensky. This interview was titled, “Do Books Have a Future.” In short, his answer seems to be, “Only a little bit.” As someone who has spent his professional career teaching reading – teaching the love, I hope, of books, this is an unsettling thought. He raises many important questions in this short video of about 5 minutes. I encourage you to take a look at it and comment with your thoughts.
The end of my unexpected winter break has come and on the last day I spent some time reading a book that has been sitting on my “to read” pile for awhile. The book was Alan November’s Empowering Students with Technology (second edition). As with the earlier book I reviewed in October 2009, November’s book is quite clearly written, with numerous student examples and suggestions for implementing his ideas. I find myself mulling two major questions/ideas after finishing the book.
How do I view the role of technology in education? November presents two ways technology can impact/change a school or other organization. Technology can be “automating.” Here’s how this is explained in the book:
Automating essentially means “bolting” technology on top of current processes and procedures. When an organization automates, the work remains the same, the locus of control remains the same, the time and place remain the same, and the relationships remain the same. (2)
According to November, automating can provide incremental improvement, but it can also produce negative results. This was seen in an example from General Motors’ adoption of technology in the 1980s that actually led to lower qualities vehicles.
While automating can have benefits, especially procedurally (think online grades, computer card catalogues, etc.), November encourages readers to think of the use of technology as informating – with the focus on information/learning. Here’s how he contrasts the two approaches:
Perspective and leadership – not technology 0 are what distinguish automating from informating. When automating, the goal is to preserve the current structure. The essential question is, What technology can we buy and install to improve what we are currently doing? Informating revolves around a perspective of asking what new and timely information we can give people in the organization and what new relationships we can nurture to improve the quality. (4)
In many of the chapters that follow in the book, November shares how teachers focusing on informating or information utilize technology to more effectively reach their goals and how to help students more effectively, efficiently, and critically utilize technology tools to access information.
I know I often fall into thinking of technology for automating and need to be more focused on informating. I like this way of thinking about technology integration and particularly like how he points out that it puts the emphasis on what do we want students to learn and not on what technology we need to buy. In my own school, I often feel we discuss what technology to buy first and then “hope for the best” that it will find a good use.
The second question that came to me, however, is the one I am constantly wrestling with. Is a constructivist approach to learning really the best approach, especially for struggling learners? Related questions include: How does explicit strategy instruction relate to a constructivist approach? Can all that students need to learn be problem-based learning? I don’t have the answer, and at the moment I honestly struggle to find ways to even experiment with such learning in my classroom.
If I had the answers, I wouldn’t have the questions. So, if anyone stumbles across this blog, I welcome your thoughts and comments. I also encourage you to take a look at November’s book.
November, A. (2010). Empowering Students with Technology (second edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
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