EdTech Impact, COSN & Disruptive Technologies

COSN's "Response to the Alliance for Childhood Study" and The Alliance for Childhood's "Replies to COSN: 'Straw Man' Fallacy Obscures the Real Issues" contain some pointed accusations and enlightening statements that are extremely relevant for 21st century education. These publications are over a year old, but there relevancy is still high.

Indicting the faith of many in educational technology to categorically improve student learning, the Alliance's response includes the following statement:

Current approaches to technology education, supported by CoSN, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), and the U.S. Department of Education, emphasize the use of advanced technologies by every child and every teacher from kindergarten on up. Yet as Tech Tonic documents, there is an appalling lack of research evidence justifying this massive and costly experiment, particularly if one looks for long-term, cost-effective gains. Just this year, Susan Patrick, head of the Office of Educational Technology at the Education Department, admitted that evidence for the effectiveness of high technology in education was lacking and that “despite a decade of investment, most achievement indicators are flat.”

The subsequent indictment of COSN as well as Education Week by Alliance authors are also worth considering:

Keep in mind just who CoSN is. While it calls itself an association that represents school district technology leaders, its 75 corporate partners include many of the largest technology vendors in the country—including Microsoft, Dell, IBM, and Intel. CoSN’s efforts to make sure billions of taxpayer dollars will buy unproven technology for schools have been enormously successful. The extensive financial and political connections between education officials and school technology vendors are documented in Chapter 3 of Tech Tonic. We urge citizens to wake up to the pernicious and increasing influence of corporations in policymaking for public education.

Educators and journalists should also be aware that Education Week, a major national source of news about elementary and secondary education, is another of CoSN’s corporate partners. It is disturbing that this respected publication, which ought to be independent and objective in reporting on technology education issues, is instead part of a lobbying group promoting a one-sided agenda that benefits wealthy corporations at the expense of children’s real educational needs.

Eisenhower warned US citizens against dangers intrinsically tied to a growing military-industrial complex when he left the White House. The Alliance for Childhood has thoughtfully and appropriately issued a similar warning about the educational technology nexus which continues to grow both here and abroad, between technology companies, researchers, and educational organizations. I further reflected on this concerns back in February 2005 when I presented "Luddite Literacy: Digital Tools or Toys for the 21st Century Classroom?" at our Texas state technology conference.

I think the Alliance makes some excellent points in its report "Tech Tonic: Towards A New Literacy Of Technology" (122 page PDF). I strongly agree that we must seek to reform our predominant educational practices, which are based more on an industrial age / factory production model of education rather than an insightful understanding of human development and cognition. The Tech Tonic authors wrote in Fall 2004:

We have titled this report “Tech Tonic” both because we believe that current approaches to technology education are unhealthy and in need of a curative dose of common sense, and because the remedies we call for are not superficial but deep and structural. They require a fundamental, tectonic change in our underlying assumptions and beliefs about children’s development and the practices that are most supportive of healthy growth.

One of my main contentions today regarding educational technology is that teachers and students should utilize DISRUPTIVE technologies in constructive ways, to make authentic connections to others through cyberspace rather than merely automate traditional educational pedagogies with SUSTAINING technologies. COSN's defense of educational technology, in their response to the Alliance's report, ironically supports my view. In their much shorter response to the Alliance study, they wrote:

...we strongly disagree with the conclusion that technology inherently leads to a less humanistic caring and nurturing environment, and therefore should not be part of children's environment. In fact, by using educational technology in appropriate ways we can and are enabling human connections. For example, through video conferencing between classrooms we can link children in the U.S. with children around the world to learn from each other. Likewise, email pen pals can improve children's writing skills. Similarly, we can create collaborative work environments with teams of students working together to collect scientific information.....

I don't have the research myself to back this up (yet), but I am strongly persuaded that classroom uses of disruptive technologies like those endorsed above by COSN: interactive videoconferencing, epals, and collaborative work teams, are by far the EXCEPTION rather than the rule in 21st century classrooms. In the US and elsewhere, high stakes tests are center stage, and educational technology applications like these are viewed by many as "fluff" no one really has time for. Certainly not before May, when all the testing is done.

I find COSN's promotion and endorsement of disruptive educational technologies (as I define them) to be both interesting and heartening. It would be great to see more kids and teachers safely blogging, videoconferencing, and collaborating together across space and time in joint projects. Maybe when our students, teachers, and schools are all in a 1:1 technology immersed environment that dream will be much closer to wide realization. Let's hope the MIT $100 laptop project continues to march on successfully.

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