Technology Without Teachers

Here's a vision of the future:  every classroom in America has a white board and state-of-the-art equipment.  Thirty, maybe forty, students are crammed into the class.  But we're saving money!  Because there's no teacher.  Or a remote teacher.  Isn't that a great idea?  No.  It's my vision of retrograde missing-the-point educational hell.  And we seem on our way there faster than you think.

This morning's Twitter stream brought to my attention two articles.  One was about the librarian in Lake Parsippany, New Jersey, who was named Teacher of the Year and then laid off in this year's round of budget cuts:  http://tiny.cc/jeelv The other article is in the Washington Post insisting that high tech classrooms aren't all they are cracked up to be:  http://tiny.cc/5dy9e

What's wrong with this picture?  First, white boards are a ridiculous expense in hard times unless they serve a purpose that fundamentally changes what else you can do in a classroom.   A white board used as a fancy blackboard changes nothing about the conditions of learning, especially if funds for those technologies continue as funds for teachers and librarians dry up.  If every penny spent on technology were spent instead on retraining teachers how to think about kids in a digital age, if it were spent on hiring more teachers and librarians who could assist kids with various learning styles to think collaboratively and creatively together, that would be a far greater contribution to our digital age than more white boards.

Second, we have everything backwards.  At a time of economic downturn, instead of laying off teachers, we should be sending them back to school, using this downturn to inspire us all to new ways of thinking about the future so that we can be ready and able for that future.   On a recent trip to Sweden, I was surprised to see the universities booming.  Because of the economic downturn, there were programs in place all over the country for retooling everyone, in every field, with new educational ideas.  Tuition was free to everyone.  In fact, there was controversy there about a proposed new tuition of a few hundred dollars a year for those who were not part of the EU.   We met Australians, Americans, and Chinese students now in the Swedish universities on new tuition, all learning the future together.  

And in the U.S?  We are facing drastic cutbacks to the economy by cutting education.  What kind of shortsighted and even defeatest thinking is that?   If we think accumulating a national debt burdens our children, what in the world does it do if we shortchange them of an education?

The problem isn't the state of the technology in our classrooms.  The problem is training teachers and supporting teachers in new ways of thinking through and with technologies that our kids find, ubiquitously, in their everyday lives.   The problem is how to redesign education so kids know how to take advantage of the Internet's riches, be wary of its mindfields, and learn better ways to take the amazing gift of the World Wide Web, where so much knowledge is available in easy ways never before imagined, and transform how we think and act together.   That's the best training for life and for the workplace of the future.   Does it need a whiteboard?   Not at all.  It needs a teacher who can think creatively about how to incorporate digital thinking into the classroom and it needs a rethinking of our educational institutions and forms of assessment for a digital age.