Looking at readings from the past few weeks creates a pattern which I have found very intriguing. Technology is something that has taken over our world and education has been slow to adapt. This week we specifically read about how technology will not fix education and this is very true. It is my personal belief that it is not pieces of the system that is broken but the system itself. Most educators know that the educational system was originally created to construct laborers for our industrialized system. We did not build this system to work with developmental levels but instead assigned children to levels based on age due to size and the ability to complete tasks in a factory. It is with this mindset that I approached the readings this week. Across the United States, access to technology has been a hot-button issue. Computers in the hope, internet access, and technological knowledge are difficult to find in many low socioeconomic households which puts these students at a disadvantage when comparing these students to higher socioeconomic households. This leads to many asking if technology could be a silver bullet to end educational inequality. Looking back on the book Do Artifacts have Politics? Winner stated, "the ways human ends are powerfully transformed as they are adapted to technical means." (Winner, 1988), by providing technology we do not automatically make everything equal. In fact, it often separates us even more. Christo Sims discussed how technology comes into education with the idea of fixing the system but after being introduced into the system they often revert to our traditional school structure. The idea that technology is disruptive to the status quo was challenged and found to be much more conservative and less disruptive than expected. (Sims, 2017) Sims also discussed how education tends to favor the more educated parents since they find ways to work within the system and make sure their students have the advantage. Though “freedom from bias should be held out as an ideal.” (Friedman & Nissenbaum, 1996) it is almost impossible to create a bias-free situation. In a video from the Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science they discussed a case study, IPads for Social Justice, which interested me because the case study was in Los Angeles the demographics were very similar to my own elementary school. The study noted that though there was access to technology, many classes used paper and pencil instead of utilizing the technology. I personally saw this in my own schools. At the elementary school I taught at 2 years ago, they had the same armored charging stations that no teacher (except me) wanted in their classrooms. This creates an issue because “In education, technologies amplify whatever pedagogical capacity is already there.” (Toyama, 2015) It is ludicrous to expect these teachers to magically change their teaching simply because an IPad was introduced to their classroom. When introducing technology there are many requirements including “training teachers, creating software and digital content, delivering maintenance and support, and sustaining a long-term commitment.” (Kraemer, Dedrick, & Sharma, 2009) Teachers need support to incorporate technology and the current level of support is not nearly enough. Technology is not a magical fix to all problems and it would be silly to treat it that way. The children with parents who are involved and educated will always have the support at home to have a deeper understanding of the technology introduced. That is not the purpose or point of introducing technology. When I think of technology in a classroom environment, I immediately think of students finding skills that relate to their own lives. These students need a network both in and out of school. They need to learn about “correcting others, being open to being corrected oneself, and working together”. (Davidson & Goldberg, 2009) With this network established the technology will become an extension of who they are, not something that is only applicable to the educational setting. In this same way the technology should not be used despite curriculum but instead to enhance it. The real issue lies in the way that the school systems approach technology. They do not have the long-term commitment to any one piece of technology to see it through. Without this commitment, how can we expect technology to continue? There can be no solution without constant evaluation and commitment. There is no silver bullet that is effective without a skilled marksman to wield it. Works Cited Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Boston, Massachusetts. Wed. August 30 Sat. September 2, 2017. http://tinyurl.com/kt85k94 Davidson, C. N., & Goldberg, D. T. (2009). The future of learning institutions in a digital age. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Friedman, B., & Nissenbaum, H. (1996, July 3). Bias in Computer Systems. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, pp. 330-347. Kraemer, K., Dedrick, J., & Sharma, P. (2009, June). One laptop per child: vision vs. reality. Communications of the ACM, 73. Sims, C. (2017). Disruptive fixation school reform and the pitfalls of techno-idealism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton university press. Toyama, K. (2015, June 4). Technology won't fix america's neediest schools. It makes bad education worse. The washington post. Winner, L. (1988). The Whale and the Reactor. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
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AuthorEllie E. Archives
November 2017
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