Jason Markey just nails it in a recent post addressing the intense debate on devices (devices, devices, devices):
Let’s not have a such a narrow vision of creation and let’s not be petty about devices. Instead, focus on what is best for your students, your school, and your vision. It is funny how a district that demonstrates a profound investment in their students can be scrutinized to this degree over device selection. I wish people spent as much time considering curricular choices and other learning resources as they do on debating other’s schools device choices. (Markey)
Everyone has their own device bias. Schools have their own thinking on which device is best – some for the right reasons (learning), some for the wrong reasons (technology-centric), and some for misguided reasons.
And while I can some what understand the criticism levied at those for the latter two, I’m with Jason on the former and wish to extend his idea a bit.
I think there is great room for growth by debating the vision for learning NOT the device, so let’s start there. If a school/district has rooted the device decision in a vision for learning and teaching, let’s begin the debate without the device as the center piece.
- What is your vision for learning? teaching?
- What are the skills, habits of mind, experiences, and dispositions for students?
- What types of teaching will best reach this idea of SHED?
- How do you envision the classroom/school experience? What will students be doing? What will teachers be doing
- How do you envision resources for students?
- How do you envision spaces, curriculum, and assessment in this type of environment?
- Why to each of the above?
- How do you envision the devices in this environment? Which device and why
I like that discussion much more. I like where it could lead. I like the common ground it could establish. I like the richness of the debate it would provide? There is room in it to get to our love of device debates, but I’m thinking it would be much different if it came at the end versus at the start.
Maybe it is just me but I’m not growing much from the “device at the center” debates. It reminds me of the Mac vs PC debate. I didn’t much like that debate either.
While I appreciate the depth, complexity, and subtlety of your list of questions, there is also something to be said for having a shorthand with which to identify the crux of the dilemma: for me, the question “Who’s telling the computer/device what to do?” makes for an apt summary of the dilemma. For the most part, for most poor kids, their time with devices is spent responding rather than creating. Unless student expression and creation is at the center of how device use is organized, there’s something wrong.