Category: Learning

Technology in schools have always been neat tools of curiosity for students to explore. At its onset, any latest technological innovations were brought in as something to study, work or play with, but relegated to the sole focus of specialty courses.

Workshops were setup for woodworking equipment, automotive classes and manufacturing. Computer labs were set aside for computer focused courses such as keyboarding, programming or (my personal favourite) communications technology. The technology was there for that class and for that purpose.

However, all of that changed when the big tech companies recognized a lucrative market in education. Suddenly, there were talks of “1-to-1 devices” and “leveraging digital” as an “equalizer” and “preparation for the future.” Education platforms sprung up overnight and every company marketed the hell out of the “educational benefits” of their latest piece of software or hardware. Students were promised that all their education woes would be fixed and teachers were sold the dream of perfectly engaged classrooms and easy planning/marking/administrative tasks.

With such a strong sales pitch, how could we not just flood every classroom with as much tech as a school board can reasonably afford? Just get everyone on board, learn the latest tools and ta-da! Education has been permanently “fixed.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, some of these tools seemed pretty impressive and having a background in tech, I was curious to see what I could do with them. This would be taken to its limit during the pandemic when all learning went online and suddenly all these tech companies had to make good on their promises.

And that’s when we found out it was all bullshit.

In fact, every year since we started putting devices in front of students faces for all their classes, we’re discovering how horribly misguided we all were. Actually, duped would be a better term to use.

Some of these tools are helpful within specific contexts and are of benefit in specific ways. But the overall aim of any “educational” piece of technology isn’t to make learning better/easier/more engaging. Remember, these are private companies with profit agendas, who don’t really care whether the outcome is favourable for the audience they are serving. The only concern is keeping people engaged with the platforms and finding ways to fit square pegs into round holes when necessary.

They will find (or make up) something a teacher did at one school that looks good on the surface without showing whether it had any meaningful outcome (in magic, we call this a “flash-in-the-pan”), and then offer “certification” courses in their products. I can promise you those certifications are about as meaningful as my kids’ certificates for completing bike camp.

Then, of course, once the cost to switch platforms becomes too high because schools have invested most of their resources in it, these companies then start making their products worse and focus on extracting as much profit as possible. Cory Doctorow discusses this brilliantly in his work, enshittification – article and book.

They will add cute metrics such as “streaks” and “points,” but won’t produce a single metric to show whether this is any better for learning. At best, they will pay some educator influencers to provide anecdotal examples by asking them to find ways to use it in a classroom so they can showcase it. More flash-in-the-pan antics.

As someone who drank the kool-aid for years, finding neat and “innovative” ways to use these tech tools, I constantly kept coming up against a wall of new products to use while others I built around completely changed or disappeared. However, the most important piece was finally understanding that throwing technology in front of a person doesn’t automatically build the foundation they need for learning. That takes time, deliberate practice and consistency.

Personal case example was when I was teaching grade eight language arts. There was an “innovation” grant being offered to teachers who put up a proposal for what they would do in their classroom. Recognizing that reading rates have plummeted and many of my students don’t, won’t or refuse to read, I decided to make that my focus and proposed giving me the money for books. Paper books. In my classroom.

They gave me $500.

I spent the year scouring for deals, give-aways and begged others to fill out my initial grant so I can surround my students with books and then, get them reading every day. My “innovative” approach was to conference with them during their reading time, see how they’re progress is going, help them find a book that might interest them and keep pushing them until they found their gateway to reading.

After two months of them getting the picture they couldn’t hide, they got on board. To push it further, I also had them practicing their writing every day using pen and paper. Those students with learning disabilities who required a device were given one (specific context, right?). By the end of the year, they were complaining that the 3000 word limit I set was too small for their final short story assignment.

Could this be replicated everywhere? I’m not sure because it worked for me in my specific context. It’s like asking if you could you tell the same joke as a comedian and get the same reaction. Depends on the personality and the audience. Same goes for any other teaching approach that’s been around since the 70s. Sometimes they act as a main course and other times they make good seasoning.

Throwing technology at students (and teachers) to be the main course and the seasoning sounds like a dream, because it is. A dream of profits for companies and nightmares for IT departments as they now have to support this infrastructure and the countless cyber-security issues it presents. Don’t even get me started on the lack of privacy, which no company can convince me they actually care about considering the inevitible “data-leaks” that always happen, and how my grade twelve students (and only them) get emails from the big G to tell them to transfer their stuff over to a personal account now that they’re graduating. Gee… a for-profit, data-mining company that spends its fortune lobbying for less regulations around their practices are building profiles of students that are supposed to be sensitive data? Who knew!?

As I’ve shifted away from tech use in my classroom over the past few years, my students have come to tell me they really appreciated the more hands-on approach: index cards, post-it notes, chart paper, conversation, direct instruction and, wait for it… building personal connections.

And this is where it gets really interesting—as technology in the classrooms becomes less reliable, more frustrating, distracting and shittier in their use, it’s pushing educators away, students away and pissing off parents.

In other words, it’s failing on its own terms.

Growing up in a family with several educators, I made some keen observations before starting my own journey within it. While I could spend endless time on its politics, and the societal issue with why we can never “fix” education itself, my focus remains solely on becoming a better educator.

Within every profession, there seems to be a plateau where people develop enough skills to become proficient, maybe even good for a brief period, but then stagnate in their growth. I figured out the response to this particular moment separates the disgruntled from the masters.

One of two things happen:

You recognize there’s still more to learn and when you hear praise being thrown towards others, you immediately find out what they’re doing and pick up their ideas.

Or you assume you have it figured out and when you hear praise being thrown towards others, get defensive about it.

I suppose option three is to just give up, but speaking from an education standpoint, it’s usually one of the two above.

The part I always find wild is that when you’re willing to put aside ego and pick up new ideas to implement, making mistakes and having missteps along the way, the defensiveness naturally subsides because you’re not even thinking about these ideas as a personal attack. It simply becomes part of the process to ask whether something works, if it can work for you and how.

And more often than not, the best ideas tend to be old ideas that are repackaged for a new audience. As a magician, this rings so accurately that you start to wonder whether there has been any progress in the magic world. That’s why Penn & Teller’s “Fool Us” is so popular among magicians–there’s a promise of something new… but not really. Just new takes on old ideas. Usually.

But all of this is how growth happens.

It’s how learning happens.

All you have to do is be open to it.

Keep up or get left behind.

This was the mantra of the tech industry in the 90s, specifically, before the dot com boom and bust. It was pushed so hard that even though I was studying computers at the edge of this movement, I felt like it was already too late for me.

But then I saw this message repeated over the years:

“Learn about this new networking tool or you’ll be left behind.”
“If you haven’t jumped on MySpace yet, you’re already too late.”
“Learn this new piece of software, this app, this social media platform, this investment opportunity, this training technique, be an early adopter…” and so forth.

And what happened?

Things came, things went. Some of it stuck around and new stuff emerged.

But go ahead, keep telling bestselling, award-winning authors who still write by hand that by not learning the shiny new tech toy, they’re being left behind.

Also tell the teachers that get their students excited about learning that they will be left behind if they don’t fully embrace the latest “ed-tech” nonsense (most of which has been an *abysmal* failure).

While you’re at it, let your plumber know they will be left behind because they didn’t prompt AI on how to fix a leaky pipe. Screw their experience with the matter.

We can all find a regret on not getting in early for a long-term investment, but for the rest of the hype? 

It’s time these people look up what being left behind in the world really means.

My initial foray into education had an idealistic streak to it in thinking that I could do something to change the monstrous machine that is the education system. While my focus was purely dedicated to teaching Religion, I spent quite a bit of time dipping my toes into various methods that have been beneficial across disciplines.

Even a slight nudge to a large ship can still change its course, right?

Unfortunately, this dedication to honing my craft and aspiring to be at the top of my game at all times led me to some sobering conclusions:

• education is a big machine that has existed long before I got there and will continue long after I’m gone
• it’s highly political
• nobody really cares what I’m doing
• I wasn’t a fraction as good as I thought I was

Now, those conclusions haven’t stopped me from doing my best and striving to push my craft as far as I can take it, but it’s also put a damper on my motivation for doing so. 

In my observations and careful studies of what ultimately works, well… we already know, but refuse to consider it in lieu of more flash in the pan ideas, progressive ideas for the sake of looking innovative, or downright stubbornness of not wanting to change. 

While there’s no one size fits all solution, there is a reason why the Michaela school in England (the “strictest school in the country”), which pulls from the poorest areas, has consistently outperformed every other school in the country for years. Or why Nancie Atwell’s school in the US has grade eights reading classic literature meant for seniors, while also writing at that level. Coincidentally, Atwell was the first teacher to win the Global Educator’s Prize, which is literally the award for best teacher in the world.

Or the reason direct instruction has consistently been the most effective method of teaching. 

In a microcosm of culture where academics are valued and students are nurtured to hold a high standard for themselves, while also taking responsibility for that standard, you see great success. Unfortunately, when you try to implement ideas that work in a larger culture that clashes with it, it often fails. 

My personal stance is we replaced values with tools, or methods, confusing the purpose of what those were meant to achieve. We don’t need another app to help students learn; we need to give them a reason to want to learn in the first place. Then it’s simply a matter of picking the best tool, or method, for the job.  

The values should lead the methods, not the other way around. 

Unfortunately, you can only push so far before you hit the boundary where you’re no longer supported. On top of which, culture is always changing and the narrative needs to change with it. Students today no longer buy the idea that studying hard and getting a great education will lead to a great job. While I share their frustration with that sentiment, I’d much rather have an educated population than an uneducated one because if we don’t teach them how to think, someone else will teach them what to think. 

I don’t think I need to explain the end result of a society that learns from social media and non-stop news cycles posing as reliable journalism. We’re living it. 

But to fight against that, I have to fight against a much larger culture that repeatedly hammers home the idea that education is a scam, alongside a system that constantly has to justify itself to that culture, and a world that is changing faster than we can have time to adjust to each iteration. 

So, how far can we really push education?

As far as we can in hopes it can impact culture enough to push it further.