I agree that teaching with technology is key. Those that can teach with technology can keep students challenged in their own use of technology and on the right track. It can even motivate those who have trouble learning in conventional ways to do well. (i.e. Painfully shy or students who stutter can make MP3 recordings instead of oral presentations). I see a lot of wasted chances to enhance learning because core curriculum teachers just don’t connect to the technology available.

You make a couple of good points here – as I noted in my original piece, one of the things students need most is guidance in using technology to enhance their learning. That guidance can’t occur if teachers aren’t prepared to offer it. But as I told a colleague at a cross-posted site, getting those who are “deciders” to understand that technology in and of itself isn’t a remedy for student learning difficulties seems an unconquerable task. As is too common in our culture, the alluring idea of a “magic bullet” trumps careful consideration of how an socio-ecological change might be affected by Occam’s razor, the Heisenberg principle, or Murphy’s law.

You identify yourself as a “computer teacher.” I’m not sure if by that you mean you teach WITH technology or if your primary focus is teaching the technology itself (in this case hardware or software use/creation, etc.). If the latter, we may be looking at an “apples and oranges” scenario – teaching with techology has some profound differences from teaching the use of the technology as I’m sure you’d admit. If the former, I’d be interested in hearing more about your methodology (here or elsewhere). As one who teaches WITH technology, (and who has a solid tech understanding and good training – but then I’m a university English professor, so I’ve been privileged), I still find that, while I can engage students successfully, I still have to run a gamut of student misperceptions about what the technology will/won’t do for them, how much time they must devote to the material in the course (which isn’t even a computer issue), even what academic research entails (despite the advantages of the Internet in locating sources).

So I agree with you that training teachers to use technology to enhance learning is essential for computer enhanced learning to be successful. But I think much, indeed most, of that training has to focus on teaching WITH technology for such programs to be successful.

There is a third view that I feel is completely lacking a voice. How can you place computers in the hands of children, up the NCLB regulations, reduce funding, require teachers to learn on their own how to use technology in their classrooms, and not have a mess on your hands?

The laptops and complete training should have been placed in the hands of the educator, and as soon as they proved competent enough to teach with and for technology, then the students needed to get them.

As a computer teacher, one of the things I learned first is if you give students nothing to do, they do nothing, and do it better than their school work. Plus, they find many tools to “do nothing” with. This happens way too often.

There is too much to teach them and prepare them to allow “do nothing” time. We run out of time, out of money for appropriate software, out of good navigable learning sites, etc. as it is. My tech support wonders why in the two years at the school, I haven’t put in a repair report. Simple, with the proper preparation, I find that keeping up the pace of the education and keeping them running to keep up alleviates this problem. I will make time for those who cognitively can’t keep up. But for the rest, the race is on – winner gets the best jobs!

Most teachers are not trained to do this and they don’t know applications like they should. They don’t have the skills to keep their students technologically challenged. This is a shame.

For better or worse, we are Borg.

First, that the policy wonks I worked with and for were aggressively, willfully ignorant about their computers on a fundamental level. I’m talking the kind of people who could quote you chapter and verse on the ins and outs of poverty policy for Alaskan children, but could not send an e-mail attachment without help.

Second, their ignorance bred a sort of blithe optimism that those of us who WERE computer-literate could accomplish any task, in the most narrow of time frames, no matter how complex. Whether it was resizing images or building entire SQL databases from scratch, it was expected that I (and others like me) would know how to do it. “Oh, you know computers,so you should be able to handle that.”

When you have that level of Luddite-ism going on, is it any wonder that the succeeding generation’s ability to find prOn and illegal music is somehow looked on as a marvel?

Technology will always cater to the whims of its users. I don’t expect everyone who has an Internet connection to really understand things like blogging, wikis, file-sharing, etc.,and it doesn’t bother me that many kids use their computers primarily for entertainment–hell, so do I. The ones who do the innovating and exploring have always been a small, passionate minority in any age, and no matter how fancy the widget, only those with the real smarts will really explore it for all it’s worth.

There’s popularity and there’s competency. And the former outnumbers the latter by a huge amount. Or at least huge enough to keep folks like me solvent.

Properly utilized, a computer is a wonderful tool and resource. Improperly utilized, it’s a waste of time and money- especially in the hands of children.

well, iTunes, aim and pornotube.com just make is so damn easy.

Snark aside, my grandmother IMs me to say hi and my grandfather asked for an mp3 player for Christmas. We’re completely saturated and dependent. Problems with tech? Then more tech to fix the problems, because no tech or less tech is just not an option. My hard drive crashed about a month ago and damn near sent me into academic melt-down mode because I had no computer and the entire frickin’ system is contingent upon being connected. Don’t get me wrong, online catalogs, networked resources and electronically available journal articles are amazingly convenient and cater to my ridiculous 2am researching bursts. But, if the system goes down, I’m stuck.

A return to pastoral Eden just isn’t going to happen; but I think there are some serious issues if this is supposed to be the way toward a new Jerusalem.

Duh.

An old colleague of mine once noted about his students that we’re told how damned tech-savvy they are. But once you get past downloading music, IMing and surfing porn they’re illiterate. It’s true, too.

What makes the technophilic impulse so powerful is that it’s deeply embedded – really, at the DNA level – in Millenarian theological impulses that trace back to the Bible and that have played a critical role in the technological project of Western culture for at least the last 1300 years or so. Asking us to doubt that tech can really solve a problem is like asking the tides not to feel the pull of the moon.

If anybody is really bored drop me a line and I’ll send you a copy of the dissertation. It makes the case in far less exciting fashion….