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Compared to other areas of our daily life, the American education enterprise has not been dramatically changed by an infusion of technology.  There certainly have been large purchases, but the degree of actual change in instruction and the impact of any changes has been far short of the potential.  (A 2019 report for the Consortium for School Networking substantiates the lack of major change and outlines some of the barriers. https://cosn.org/driving-k-12-innovation-2019-hurdles .)

Think how differently people – particularly young people – access movies and TV (now more accurately called digital entertainment) with streaming services, on various kinds of devices, and coming from various types of producers.  Think how differently people shop.  How differently they use banks.  Cars, appliances, clothing, plastics, and thousands of other things that once required intensive labor to create are now manufactured by machines supervised by other machines and a few humans.  Family farms have given way to corporate farms largely because of multiple kinds of advancements in technology.

In schools we have traded encyclopedias for the Internet and notebooks for laptops.  We have bought computers to assist instruction in some areas with some interesting results, but the kinds of massive transformations seen in other areas of our lives have yet to come to education.  (I am not counting administrative uses of technology such as scheduling, grading, attendance or district business office operations.  I am talking about transformative changes in teaching and learning.)  

Perhaps a little recent history of education’s dance with technology would be instructive.  A generation ago, parents saw technology bring disruptive change to their adult workplaces and those parents worried that their children would not be prepared for technology-infused environments.  They pressed schools to help prepare their kids of this new world. Schools responded by buying the same computers used in adult workplaces and acquainting children with word processing and other established functions.  Districts seemed to think access to a laptop equated to an infusion of technology in teaching and learning.   These technology investments increased some students’ familiarity with technology but didn’t do much for many students who already knew more about the new computers than their teachers.  As things progressed, there have been some excellent programs for use in teaching science, social studies and other subjects, including the educator training needed to make such programs effective.  These efforts lack the comprehensiveness and universality needed to be transformative.  Let me explain by way of analogy.

Most workplaces in the United States as well as many in the rest of the world use Microsoft products for word processing, spreadsheets, digital presentations, and selected other functions. Most are not required to use that suite of products and there may even be some that are better.  Most of us do not begin to use all the features in Word or Excel, but they function well and users can always get help from somebody near who knows a few things that they may not, so there is built in support for implementation.  The fact that so many people used Microsoft Office created a common experience, common language, a common support network, and file sharing ability (interoperability to be more precise).  That software created a comprehensivesolution that sold software and millions of computers.  My point is not to acknowledge the success of Bill Gates and Paul Allen, but to simply ask, “Where is the Microsoft Office for teaching elementary Math and middle school Language Arts?”   The fragmented and uneven use of technology that we see in schools today is not enough to be a powerful force for change.

However, the potential combinations of recent developments in artificial intelligence, voice and facial recognition, gaming platforms, and other advancements could create much more powerful support for teaching and learning.  Technology could extend the impact of each teacher (not replace her!)  by multiples if we reached more of the potential of that technology.

Such huge development projects would require equally large upfront investments that developers find daunting when each of 14,000 districts seems to be its own market.  But with enough incentives and stronger distribution pathways, major technology players could be induced to develop solutions for broad education markets.  We are beginning to see these kinds of comprehensive solutions emerge.  The Alef platform developed in the United Arab Emirates may be an early example.  (National standardization is not an issue in the UAE; resources are plentiful and interest in improving education is high.)

I will provide more specific examples of the potential of technology in the next two posts in this category.  I would invite you to add any thoughts or examples in the comments as well