Living in the era of the digital cavemen and cavewomen
posted in disruptive-technology, history, schoolreform |Remember the cartoon “Captain Caveman?”
I’m sure I’m dating myself with this reference, but that was one of MANY cartoon favorites I remember watching growing up in the late 1970s. While that image and the memories it triggers bring a smile to my face and thoughts of, “Captaiiiinnnnnnn Caaaaaaaaveman,” the thought I had today related to cavemen and cavewomen is not so funny.
It struck me today that we are living in the era of digital cavemen and cavewomen. Perhaps it is because I’ve had several opportunities in the last two months to lead professional development workshops with teachers who ALL have laptops that I’ve become more frustrated with the exclusive reliance by students on analog tools in professional learning settings. Perhaps the cognitive dissonance invited by experiencing unfiltered Internet access at home in the United States, followed by filtered access courtesy of the Chinese government, followed by even more severe content filtering courtesy of an Oklahoma school district, has me rethinking some ideas? I’m not sure.
Today the thought trigger concerned VLANs, or “virtual LANs,” which are created on computer networks to segment access rights and protect resources. For some time, I’ve been encouraging school leaders to architect their networks with VLANs to both protect critical resources (like student information system data files) from unauthorized access by students or other “guests” on the network, as well as provide differentiated content filtering for teachers vis a vis students. Most school districts I work in currently filter/censor Internet content for kindergarten students the same way content is filtered for classroom teachers. Literally, certified, professional teachers are trusted (in most school districts) as little as a kindergarten student is on the network. This is ridiculous. If a school district already has teachers logging in to active directory or another authentication system, it is fairly straightforward to implement a content filtering scheme which provides teachers with more open access to Internet websites than that provided for students or guest users on the network. I know of a few school districts in Oklahoma with the progressive vision to be implementing this type of differentiated content filtering presently. Many school leaders I meet with, however, agree that in principle the idea sounds good but it isn’t something they currently can do or are doing.
The reason, I realized today, is because we are living in the era of the digital caveman. Digital technologies have grown and changed so quickly in the last ten years, the “mindware” of school leaders has in many cases failed to keep pace. Internet access for the 21st century classroom is an essential utility. Like electricity, pure running water, heating and air conditioning, fast Internet access should be considered a given for the classroom environment. I am more aware than ever that for many students and teachers in the world, none of the aforementioned services are “givens” in the educational environment. Consider the Liberian Renaissance Education Complex and other schools in Liberia. Consider the Costa Rican elementary school a friend of mine, along with his wife and students at her Oklahoma high school, are helping equip with computer technology for the first time since the school just got electricity. Consider the public schools in China I heard about last week on our trip to Shanghai, which not only lack electricity but also lack a library of books for students to read. I realize that as an owner of an iPhone, a user of multiple laptop computers, and other types of technologies as well as services which I take for granted I am part of a small minority on our planet. Certainly there should be a higher priority placed on providing food, clothing, clean water, basic sanitation and electricity to the people of the world rather than Internet access for students in the midwest of the United States.
It’s easy for me to lose perspective on that idea, however, and perhaps I have this week thinking about Internet access and our present “cave days” with digital technologies. I do not know what the actual number is, but I’d estimate less than 10% of the school districts in Oklahoma have school networks with VLAN architecture. I think 100% of public schools in Oklahoma now have computer networks installed, but only a small fraction of those have designed and are maintaining their networks in ways that are readying themselves for the 1 to 1 digital future. NewNet66 consortium schools may be an exception to this perception about VLANs and network architecture, I know some are. The majority, however, do not seem to have an appropriate regard for the importance of reliable, ubiquitous, fast Internet access which is empowering for learner communication and creativity.
Perhaps these views make it sound like I drank some kool aid recently. No, I have not joined a bandwidth cult. Yes, of course I work for a company whose bread and butter is bandwidth, but I don’t think the opinions I’m expressing here are rooted in an unconscious or conscious desire to promote a corporate agenda. I think my sentiments stem more from my own experiences in learning with digital technologies, in wanting to help others learn with digital technologies, and being frustrated facing so many obstacles to experiencing “flow” in a School-based digital environment. In order to do that, I have to be on an unfiltered, consumer high-speed Internet connection.
I wonder how my own children will regard this era in which they are growing up, where Internet access in formal learning environments is so sharply restricted in so many U.S. public schools? At home, my two oldest children are regularly using wireless, laptop computers for entertainment on Webkinz and Club Penguin as transparently and adeptly as they use the television remote control or the door to the refrigerator. My 9 year old has amazed us all with his adept skills in regularly recording episodes of Avatar, NOVA ScienceNOW, and other shows he enjoys on our DVR. My children eat, drink, sleep, laugh, play outside, play on the Internet with wireless laptops, and bend our DishDVR to their will (thereby avoiding the influence of almost all television commercials, which they only see in fast-forward mode) in natural ways which encourage me to rethink my aversion to the term “digital native.”
I think my own kids will look back with amazement at the first decade of the twenty-first century, and shake their heads at the slow, underpowered digital devices we used to access and share ideas across the globe. I think they’ll be amazed to think how ridiculously locked down networked computing environments were in most places designated for formal learning (to which they had access in U.S. public schools) in 2007.
As I drove to eastern Oklahoma this evening for another E-rate seminar tomorrow, I was trying to think of a metaphor for how my expectations of empowered, engaged learning have been changing. The best one I could come up with involved walking, riding on a horse, and driving a car.
In the days when real cavemen and cavewomen walked the earth, before the first wave, everyone walked. It was not just natural, it was the only way to get around. At some point, humans figured out how to domesticate and ride certain kinds of animals. Much, muuuccchhhh later, the automobile was invented. Roads and highways were constructed, and basic assumptions about the speed with which people could and did travel changed in a relatively short amount of time.
Once you have traveled down an Interstate highway at 75 miles per hour, it can be a challenging experience to walk or hitchhike cross country. I’m not talking about going on a short walk, I’m talking about going on a LONG walk. My chronology here is really choppy and incomplete I know, I think trains were the first type of industrial technology to fundamentally change people’s perceptions of traveling speeds. When Steve Goodman wrote the City of New Orleans and sang about traveling 500 miles before the day was done, that feat was unthinkable before the era of planes, trains, and automobiles. The modern industrial era has completely changed our perceptions of speed and acceptable delays when it comes to cross country travel.
All of this being said, there is a strong “anti-speed” part of me which yearns for long trips. As we flew to China about two weeks ago in the mere space of 18 hours, I wondered what the trip would have been like on a trans-Pacific ocean voyage. Certainly it would have been LONG. It also would have probably been unpleasant in ways I did not consider. We didn’t think about taking a boat to China this month, because our fundamental assumptions about travel and speed are different than those of people living in a pre- or early industrial era.
Similar to those changed perceptions about travel and speed, I think my own perceptions about digitally connected learning are changing my own basic expectations for education. After teaching multiple groups of teachers and students in 1:1 learning environments, where every learner has his/her own laptop computer, I don’t want to go back to a purely analog learning context. Face to face, synchronous and interactive learning can be WONDERFUL, but I want to always have the option of a digital communication modality. The option to extend a conversation online, in an asynchronous forum. The chance for EVERY learner to explore the digital ether and CREATE in uncharted, digital spaces.
I sometimes romanticize about what it would be like to travel back in time in North America when bison by the millions roamed free on the unfenced prairie. Having the perceptions I do now about speed and transportation, however, I think I would find many aspects of that time travel experience to be mentally challenging. If I was to step back in time and accompany Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery, I’m sure parts of that experience would be thrilling…. MUCH of it would be unpleasant, however, and I wonder how I would deal with the slow pace of travel? Perhaps not well.
We’re living in the era of the digital caveman and cavewoman. Our kids are hardly going to be able to believe how slow information and ideas were allowed to travel in many of our U.S. Schools in the early 21st century.
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history, liberia, thirdwave, bison, lewisandclark, exploration, speed, caveman, cavewoman, slow, education, school
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