"What the world needs now..."

The title of this blog entry is an excerpt from Cracker's song, "Teen Angst" (teachers will recognize it as the end-theme music for the Bill Nye the Science Guy videos; nice job overpricing the DVDs, Disney...), the full line being "What the world needs now / is another folk singer / like I need a hole in my head." Does the world need yet another blog, particularly another blog from a teacher, particularly another blog from... me?

Frankly, the answer to all of the above questions (especially the folk singer one...) is a resounding "NO!" but I endeavor to endeavor anyway. I already write a blog about my independent music work. My readership of about three people seems to enjoy my ramblings on that topic. The dual nature of my life, however, has been nagging for an ed. blog. Add to that nagging force the fact that I am part of the New Hampshire Tech Leader Cohort Program. There are a number of New Hampshire educators establishing their presence in cyberspace. My views tend to be... different from many of theirs, so I thought I would balance out the scales a bit.

To begin with--and to return to my dual nature--I am both a tech addict and a tech hater. Technology, particularly as it applies to/in/with/about education, is just another tool. If you think like I do, you will see the redundantly repetitive redundancy of that last sentence; technology and tool are, for all intents and purposes, synonymous. Computer=pencil=cave painting=finger-drawing-in-the-sand. If you survey most science fiction, you will find a major theme of humans vs. technology. The UAW would probably chime in on this as well (though they probably would not discuss their own role in the decline...). Technology of any kind is supposed to be a tool to make our lives easier or somehow better. The shoehorning of technology, as my friend and fellow educator Jason Lees terms it, is a bit ridiculous. Adding tech-related items into classroom lessons just for the sake of adding tech-related items into classroom lessons undermines the integrity of the student/teacher relationship, not to mention our integrity as professionals.

When the US space program began, we did not go out and find greenhorn nerds who we could pour into pre-made astronaut molds--we grabbed experienced pilots. Early American astronauts were successfully able to adapt their knowledge of terrestrial aircraft (wait...) to their new tools and environments. Did they need to be trained on the new technologies? Obviously. However, it was their prior knowledge and experience with a variety of systems that allowed them success.

If we really want to educate "21st Century Learners", we need to focus on creativity and higher-order thinking, regardless of what tools are in use. If the tools themselves become the focus, we might as well start handing out soma.

(posted in the Year of Our Ford 102)