Catching Sparrows

Bouncing off of Joanne Jacobs, I read Core Knowledge’s post about the “Google Generation” and the apparent gaps in knowledge that seeming expertise with technology is hiding. One statement that struck me was “Kids don’t know what they don’t know,” which supports my previous post and the notion that we must teach them what we want them to know, including behavior and habits related to technology.

What bothers me most about the push toward more technology in the classroom to enhance student learning is not, as might be expected, that these demands are often made in absentia of actual technology to use, but rather that they have not resulted in a rise of lessons teaching students how to interact with technology in a way that is critical, analytical, or even moderately knowledgeable. It’s expected that we discipline students who plagiarize, but not that we teach them how not to (besides a few brief, conscientious lessons teachers may work in among all the other lessons they must teach). Not in my school, anyway.

I find that we also give students conflicting messages about technology. On the one hand, at our school, they are forbidden to have their cell phones out, on, or visible at any time during the day. They are forbidden to have their iPods with them. Each of these infractions carries with it penalties ranging from confiscation (and a fine for the return of the item), or referral.

Yet in the classroom they are expected to interact with laptops, SmartBoards, and other technology. We see people walking around with their phones and iPods out all over the streets. We know that many forms of employment actually require employees to be expert with all those extra neat-o features that come with the latest personal technology, that they enhance organization and work flow, that they enable global communication. I am not required to leave my iPod or cell phone at home. (I have neither, actually.)  I see teachers stepping outside classrooms to answer their cell phones all the time. And believe me, if I see, students do as well. Personal technology should not be a secretive, shameful thing so much as a well and appropriately managed thing. This is a perfectly acquirable skill with the right instruction.

I’m not sure why, rather than teach our students the responsible use of their personal technology in a classroom setting, we create a false conflict between their personal technology, our classrooms, and “educational” technology which is not present in the world outside the insulated walls of school. Similarly, if we require them to seek out knowledge on the internet, but do not teach extended lessons in how to critically judge that knowledge, or in how to incorporate it into their own work without plagiarizing it, then we have put them in another sad Catch 22.