Redefining Education

My grad class has asked this question: "Has technology redefined education?"

The answer is a no-brainer, and has always been true- YES!

Much of this stems from this article written in the New York Times last October.  The article more or less suggests that education doesn't need to be using technology because it works at the Waldorf school.    Malarky.  These students are children of highly-paid employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google.  These kids have DNA that helps them, as well as families who value education.  That's a great start to being successful.  It doesn't hurt that the staff at Waldorf features a majority of teachers who have spent time overseas and in other professions.  That experience makes them fascinating people that are interesting- great qualities for teachers.  Plus, the teachers "loop" with their students from Kindergarten through eighth grade!  I can tell you that the advantages of knowing your students that well and for so long are many.  It's not the lack of technology that makes this school better, it's clearly the people.

Back to the question.  Before the printing press, (this is a lot of history for me, I'm not much into the past) one would learn as an apprentice.  They would learn from working directly with the person doing the job they would one day be doing themselves.  A blacksmith's apprentice would learn all of the smithing techniques from the blacksmith, and once he was capable he would become a blacksmith.  After the printing press, this didn't change that much.  At least not at first.  Rich people could afford books (they were cheaper than handwritten books, but they weren't free or anything!) and there was a "Digital Divide."  Ok, a "Technology Divide", but it's not as fun to say.  So now some people learned from books, not necessarily people.  As the Industrial Revolution changed the way humans worked, it also changed education.  Too many kids were jobless!  (Seriously, child labor laws came to be and kids didn't need to work as much as before to help their families survive.)  Schools started giving basic educations to everyone!  Plus, they were kind enough to let everyone out during the summer so they could do the farming.  Twice, through books and then machines, education was redefined.  So what's happening now?

It's all about jobs.  We are well past apprentice jobs, which were really simple to train for.  It was a "sitting duck".  Now we are aiming at a "moving target."  According to a study last year, technology companies have employees with a median age of 36.  According to this study the first social networking site began in 1997, when the average technology employee was 21 years old and likely in college.  That means that even while they were in college, their jobs may have not existed!  Technology  is changing the work force so rapidly that we no longer know exactly what we are aiming for.

Technology has always redefined education.  We are now aiming at a moving target.

I should add (and I have to for my grad class :-) ) that we took notes collaboratively.  Here is the link to my group's notes.  Truthfully I didn't really dig the joint notes.  I felt much of it was redundant and notes are often strange to read when someone else wrote them.  We tend to write small fragments with little context and often only write what is new or unknown to us.  These tendencies make others' notes quite strange to read.