The Information Economy

Wednesday, February 15th
12:54, My Classroom - I ask a student to put away his cell phone

I certainly see why teachers have a distaste for the use of some technologies in the classroom.  One of the major behavioral issues I run into as a classroom teacher is students surreptitiously texting under their table or behind a book.  This distraction mentally takes them out of the classroom and away from the subject at hand.

1:17, My Classroom - I take away the cell phone because the student was using his cell phone, again.

While using technology in class is a choice for students, it’s also a habit.  Students reach for a cell phone as naturally as they might tap a pencil on their table.  To them, their phone is like an appendage and some students react as such when it’s taken away.

2:48, Science Department Meeting - A coworker breaks the news to another: There is a new iPhone app that allows people to identify tree species by using the camera to take a picture of the tree’s leaf.  The second coworker expresses concern that students don’t have to think anymore.

I’ve put my time in with a dichotomous key.  I can identify most New England trees without an iPhone app.  If I had the app, I would have saved countless hours deciding whether a tree’s leaves were double serrated or just serrated.  Of course I could have spent the saved time texting my friends or I could have used my time analyzing forest structure or predicting a tree stand’s future.  After using the app often enough I probably would have memorized the trees anyway. 

6:22, My Car - I hear a radio piece on Facebook going public claiming that we are not just living in an information age, but an information economy.

In education, one of the current buzz phrases is “21st Century Skills”.  The radio piece reminds me that we live in a different world than the one in which I went to high school.  In the information economy, information, like that which Facebook, Wikipedia or countless other website collect, is the raw material.  One of the key 21st Century Skills we need to impart to our students is to learn how to process all of this freely available ore, into something more valuable.

The default setting of technology is to be a distraction.  Without much work it becomes a cheat or crutch.  As educators, we have two choices: We amputate the diversions that have become an extension of our students’ bodies or we turn these tools into something even greater.  Let’s turn these technologies into the calculator of the 21st century, saving time rather than eliminating tools.  I say we use technology as spring board, catapulting students into deeper thought and broader accomplishment, leaving the simple math to the machines.