Looking at technology through a different lens...

When you know something, or think you know something, it's just implicit to you, it's sometimes difficult to explain it when challenged. Young children are particularly good at producing vexing moments like this. A few days ago, my son asked, "Dad why does the water look blue when you're far away, but it's clear when you're close up?"

Uh..........

"Dad, if the earth is round, how come the people on the bottom don't fall off?"

Well......

"Dad, if God is in bigger than the WHOLE WORLD (arms spread wide), how can He fit into my heart?"

Um..........

The point here is that we sometimes take for granted what we know and don't stop to understand and think that someone else may be looking at the same facts, but through an entirely different lens. This is critically important for those of us "in" education technology. We feel so passionately about the transformative power of technology that we are sometimes vexed by what we perceive to be ongoing, illogical and inexplicable resistance to meaningful technology integration. But it sometimes helps to step back and look at this through a different lens.

My six year old son spent the weekend with cousins. They own x-box, I don't. I received a text message late last night about how much "family fun" he was having. I responded "That's great!" replete with smiley face, but I was inwardly thinking "Oh no." My mind flashed to my son sitting in front of a flickering television, eyes glazed, expression blank, a half consumed pop can sitting ignored by his side, his thumbs flailing away in a rapid staccato succession of click, click, click, click, hour after hour, day after wasted day, playing video games in a nonsensical, make believe virtual world. I thought, I don't want him playing with this awful machine. Will he still want to go outside? Read books? Play with other kids? Play with me? Or will he be consumed?

Will he lose the simple joys and pleasures of being a boy?

I had a strong, vivid and visceral reaction to what I'm sure was an innocuous event. I reacted that way and I'm an advocate for education technology integration.

Wow.

I had a bit of an epiphany. I realized that my reaction to my son playing with an x-box (and the inevitable looming request to buy one) was eerily similar to the concerns voiced by many stakeholders, both internal and external to education, about computers in our classrooms. They fear, I think, at some visceral level, the loss of human connections. They fear a classroom of multimedia zombies living in a virtual world, disconnected from people, each other and authentic experiences.

And you know what? That's totally fair. We need to understand that. Understand it, respect it, acknowledge it and talk openly about it.

We need to look at technology integration through a different lens.

In a comment to my post "My Fear? A feeding frenzy..." Rob writes:

I'm not an educator, but have been a technology worker for more than two decades. And I'm a new parent to a toddler.

I'm really uncomfortable with the way we're shoehorning computers into education and barraging children with technology. We seem to have been lulled into thinking that any exposure to technology is a good, educational thing so we're recklessly immersing kids into a high-tech, media-saturated environment that, I believe, could be undermining every other effort we make to raise & nurture healthy children.

He continued:

I don't pretend for a moment to know how to do it, but I'd much rather we focus on teaching children how to solve problems, think rationally, and express their creativity. The people I've come to respect & admire the most in the I.T. field are those who can reason - people who plan ahead and act with intent and focus. In almost every instance, these people are not the most technologically proficient nor have they had extensive computer education. Some of them were lucky to have had calculators in college. But they are problem-solvers - thinkers - able to consider outcomes and adjust plans accordingly. That's what I want to foster in my child. The technology stuff will fall easily into place after that.

Right on Rob. I couldn't agree with you more.

Kids need rich and varied learning experiences. They need to run. They need to paint. They need music and art and books. They need to crash into each other and the freedom to roll around in the mud. All of these have value; all of these are learning experiences and all of these should be an integral part of how we should educate our children now and in the future. Technology can't be there to replace those things, but to augment those things, and to allow for deeper, richer, more personal and interactive learning experience than would be possible in its absence.

Because in the end, what is a pc? What does it do? For most of us, the primary purpose of a computer is not data processing. For most of us—and for most of our students—the computer is used primarily for email, social networking and to transmit or receive information. In other words, for most of us, the personal computer is a personal communicator. Personal communicators allow us to connect with more people, in different ways, at more times and in more places than all the other forms of communication invented in the course of human history.

That is the ultimate power of technology.

It takes a world of billions of people, separated by language, culture and distance, and brings us closer together. It allows us—and our students—to transcend beyond our immediate physical space and connect to the thoughts, ideas, views and passions of people from across the globe. When we understand how others feel, what they think, and why, issues of “us” and “them” become blurred. We may agree. We may agree to disagree. But suddenly the phrase “the human race” takes on a whole new meaning.

Could the horrors of the holocaust have occurred in the age of information technology? What about the idea that one race is superior to another race? That “manifest destiny” was God’s will? That Native Americans are “savage”? That women are not the equal of men?

Ignorance thrives in a vacuum. Technology connects us to the world.

So we need to be careful when making our case. I think we need to focus less on applications and more on connections. Because that's what counts. Don't just explain how the presence of computers in our classrooms will make our young people better students. Explain how it will make them better, more compassionate, more concerned and more connected people. Show them how technology, when used properly, allows our students a more meaningful chance to interact with content, data and each other.

Help them to understand that we won't lose each other by integrating technology into our classrooms any more than the presence of textbooks in the classroom meant we stopped talking to each other.

And when defining what a pc is, think about using these words.....

Personal communicator.

Personal connector.

Personal creativity.

Whatever the words you use, help our parents and board members, our teachers and administrators, and everyone who cares deeply about the well-being of our children but may or may not support our cause, to look at technology through a different lens.