Will technology revolutionize education?

Published Aug 16, 2010, 7:25 PM

In this episode, Jonathan and Chris have an interesting discussion about how technology affects the quality of education -- and why people will always be an integral part of the education process.

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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With tech Style from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone, and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette, and I am an editor at how stuff works dot com. Sitting across from me, as he always does on the occasions on which we sit here behind the microphones and talk about things about tech, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Is this a kissing book? So today we're going to address the question will technology revolutionize education? Yes? No? Maybe? Okay, we got the basis covered. Let's dive in. Alright, then I feel better. Emily, we love you. She may not even be listening anymore. Yeah, she might have moved on to bigger and better podcasts. There's no such thing, all right, So we wanted to talk about this is another in our series obviously on education and technology. Um, we want to talk about the the possibility, the potential for technology to revolutionize education and the way that the teachers teach students and uh, and kind of talk about the difference between the tool and the method. Actually, it's funny because we sort of set that up as a joke and we did the yes, no, maybe, But I think I think, yeah, yeah, because you know, there's there's a potential. But yeah. The the it's it's just like any other tool. If you if you hand someone a tool but do not tell that person how to use it, then you can't expect the person to become an expert with that tool, you know, and be able to produce anything of any value without lots and lots and lots of time. And that means the person has to be really motivated to to master that tool, uh, despite the frustrations of not really understanding how to use it. And that's just that's that's too good big a burden most of us, I would I would have I would not hesitate to say that most people, if given a really advanced tool but they were given no help and how to use it, UH, would abandon it. There'd be a few who would be intrigued enough to try and master it. But I think I think an overwhelming percentage of us, and I include myself in that would get frustrated and find it find better ways to use our time. I find I find myself doing that with a number of software programs, frankly, Yeah, there are times where well, here's a good example. This this is nothing. We didn't discuss this beforehand, but here's an excellent example. We did a podcast about this particular tool ages ago, and just recently it went away Google Wave. So Google Google Wave was a really innovative tool. And as we record this podcast, it's just shortly after Google pulled the plug on Wave. Yeah. I think they're I think they're just going to leave it and you can use it the way it is. But I don't think they're ever they're not supporting development. Yeah, they're not going to do anything with it. So Google Wave was this really interesting idea, the execution of which was so confusing that I think most people never really got a grip on the best way to use the tool. Here we go. We we've got this really advanced tool that could do lots of things, but without any direction on how to use it and and way in the real case scenarios of how this could be useful. Most people tried it maybe once or twice, and then found it to be so overwhelming and confusing that they were like, well, there's there's no use for this for me, and they stopped coming back to it. Chris and I are in that camp. Yeah, and we we did find a specific use for it, but then that specific use went away. Yeah, that was That was the funny thing too. It wasn't um, it wasn't so much that it wasn't terribly confusing, but there were a lot of situations in which you try to use it for something you know, you know what, this is not the right tool. Yeah, spending too much time trying to make this, make it work, make it work right, instead of having it work right off the bat. And you could see that there were potential applications, but they were so specific that if you didn't have a need for that, then Google Wave was just you know, it was easy enough to forget about it because unless that specific case came up, um, there's no point in going to it. So there's an example of a technology that in theory should be amazing, should be incredibly useful, and a great collaborative tool and a great communications tool, but in practice it fell apart. Well, the same can be said about technology and education across the board, and it could be something as simple as just a regular laptop computer, which a lot of us take for granted. Uh, you know, a lot of us have been used to using computers. Some some of you out there have been using computers ever since you can, you know, as far back as you can remember. Now, that's not the case with UH, with us, because we're old enough to remember when personal computers were very uncommon, although we both jumped on the bandwagon pretty early. True enough, I do remember monochrome monitors, so yes, yeah, I I also remember those. So again, they it's easy enough to take that for granted because they've been you know, computers have been around long enough now so that the current generation of students have grown up with them. But that does not necessarily mean that, you know, just by throwing computers in the classroom, you've made education easy and accessible and effective. So let's let's kind of talk about how technology can affect education and how, you know, where we place the importance on on the method of teaching. UM. One interesting thing I read was a case study that was being done where UH students were making a learning style assessment. Because we all have different learning styles, right, Yeah, some of us are much better if we hear information, then we can process it and we're we're good to go. Some of us have to see it UM personally. For me, the way that I learned, and and this is something that that still applies today, is that I needed to see why you did something a specific way, not just how to do it, but why it had to be done that way for it to make sense to me, because without it making sense, it was just it was just information and I couldn't put it into context and it was ultimately meaningless to me. So if you could, if you could explain a chemical reaction to me and explain to me why the chemical reaction happens the way it does, then it totally made sense. But if you just gave me the you know you acid base salt, uh, you know, and that was it it. I could. I could regurgitate those facts, but it didn't. There was no real comprehension there, right right. So really, I think the technology in the classrooms question, UH. It's a great tool, but what that really means is that we have to focus on teaching students how to think. Yes, definitely, so UM the uh the Sugar Learning System, which is a operating system UM that is geared toward elementary school students UM or primarily toward them ha ha. Primarily UM basically is designed. It was designed for the one Laptop per Child project, but it can be used on on any computer. You can use a what they call it sugar on a stick, which is a USB implementation of that. It's also tasty rock candy. Rock candy is sugar on a stick. Is tastes like silicon, um and and lead. I wouldn't suggest silicon and lead. This tastes like sand and blindness, yes, and rage. UM. Anyway, thanks a lot. Basically the one of the things behind the operating system, I mean, other than to be simple enough that people speaking many languages can use it, A lot of it is UH as visual and not necessarily language oriented, although it has been localized in many instances. UM. One of the benefits to this is that it teaches critical thinking UM. And that's sort of unique, I think in the idea of bringing technology into the classroom, because I mean, it's one thing to drop a PC in front of somebody and go, here you go, there's the Internet, that's everything, and yeah, here's your diploma. Get the hell out. Honestly, that's some people's approach, but ye, teaching teaching kids how to think for themselves is UH is sort of unheard of in some circles, you know, and it's, uh, it's nice to see that that people are trying to take that into account when they are developing technology, and uh, you know, they're also recruiting people to make more applications for the operating system and uh, you know it's a it's a free and open source OS, so it really gets many many people involved and tries to get the the end user in this case, the students, to uh to think for themselves. Yeah. And if you guys have been listening to our show for a while, you know that I've stressed critical thinking multiple times. And uh, and that's something that I wish had been stressed to me earlier in my educational experience. Um. By the time I was starting to hear the term critical thinking, it was pretty late in my high school. Uh. Well, I guess it had to be junior senior year in high school. And then of course I heard it throughout college. And uh, critical thinking is really really important. It's it doesn't to me, it doesn't really matter so much what tools you have at your disposal as much as it as much as learning to think critically. UM. Now, having great tools at your disposal makes that both easier and I'm having a zombie advance on me as I'm trying to do this. Uh. But having the tools at your disposal makes critical thinking easier to do, but it does not, you know, it's not necessary. So in that sense, you could say, well, technology revolutionized education. You could almost say no, because what would revolutionize education is making sure that you're teaching students how to think. But I think technology makes that easier. It also makes it easier to engage students. Um. I was talking about that learning assessment and I was talking about my own way of of learning. Uh, I kind of kind of lost the whole point of that. I thought I introduced it, but I didn't really get at it. But the point of that was to if you if you have a classroom where each student has access to a laptop computer. Let's say that's an example, and each student takes a learning assessment test and and the uh, the program determines the best way for that student to learn in theory. If you are using an electronic syllabus, Let's say a teacher could present a certain class a lesson and then all the materials that related to that lesson would be filtered to the student through the laptop in the method that was the most effective method for that student to learn in it's feasible, which is to me mind blowing. You have to remember, when we went to school, the way you learned really ultimately didn't matter because the person saying next to you did not necessarily learn that same way, and the teacher did not necessarily teach in that way. So you had to try and adjust your learning, uh, your learning preference to the way the teacher taught. You know, the teacher could not. The teachers are just in they're not able to teach in a way that's going to hit every student effectively. It's impossible. It's not that the teachers are it's not impossible, but you would really need group students into groups who of similar learning styles to make it work. Based upon being based upon our resources, okay, based upon the number of teachers compared to the number of students. It's impossible because we don't have enough teachers and enough space to group students in class sizes small enough for that to be an effective approach, at least not not across the entire country. In some school districts that may be possible and that is amazing and wonderful and uh, you know I and I'm also I want to stress I am the son of two teachers. I want to stress that I respect teachers. There are no words to express how how how gratified I am towards them. But they they they're fighting a losing battle when it comes to trying to teach and engage every student. It's just not gonna happen. Technology helps that makes that a little less difficult. I'm not going to say that with technology we're suddenly going to have a nation of engage students, every single one of whom is eager and willing to learn at every day at school. But it makes it easier because if you can determine that each student's learning style, and if you can taylor the lessons electronically so that the student has the best chance of grasping a concept, understanding it, and being able to apply it, then it makes engaging that student much easier. Yes, I think a lot of students would be engaged if they felt I didn't feel like they were not getting it, you know. And of course, you know, if you could, if you could teach every student to his or her particular style. I think you would have fewer board students in class, you would have more engagement overall. It would be it would be a really amazing I think it's a really amazing outcome from that. I was just going to mention too, if you're interested in learning your learning style. UM. I wasn't long ago that one of my professors in my graduate school studies suggested the VARC Learning Assessment, which is really neat and free um AT and you can find that at v A r K VARC dash learn dot com. So you know, if you're you're if you're curious, there's a quick questionnaire um takes just a few minutes to fill out, and you can find out how you learn, which actually may affect the way you use technology to learn, because maybe you can find you know, once you've identified these things, they'll probably seem sort of self evident. You'll go, oh, yeah, well I knew that. But you know, it's nice to to kind of have somebody go, okay, well, based on what you've told us, this is what we think. Uh, you know, it could be useful and and for some people it's all about getting hands on experience with something. For others it's you know, hearing it all intellectualized. It depends from one person into the next. Some people tend to be really good at all of them and I hate them. Well unless you listen to tech stuff. Well, some people are self directed to yeah, uh, you know, others need the teacher or professor to you know, go through its step by step. Um. For me, I think it sort of depends on the topic. Yeah. For example, Uh, in in symbolic logic, I found that I could direct myself so effectively that I would attend class two days out of five and I aced it. But in other classes, Uh, that was certainly not the case. So it's not like I was some sort of genius. It was just that, for whatever reason, symbolic logic was one of those things that just clicked. Um. But you know that's again with with the technology, we can identify that at least have the potential to identify that early on with students and hopefully maximize each student's potential to to learn. Um. And there's some other ways that technology really could revolutionize education. Uh. Here's here's just a simple example is consider a social studies course or a geography course, and then think of a virtual globe program and I'm just gonna use Google Earth as the example because it's the one and the most familiar with all right now, Google Earth allows you to apply various layers to the the globe, the virtual globe you're looking at, which can be helpful in dozens or hundreds of different applications in an educational format. So theoretically you could create a version of Google Earth that would show you what the civilizations look like in medieval Europe, so you could see things like the size of Paris compared to the size of London and uh and and see like how far widespread certain civilizations were, and even in core break things like multimedia and movies, so that if you want to explore a particular concept even further, it'd be easy enough to do that. With modern day geography. You could show how how borders have shifted over you know, as little as a decade ago, how how borders have shifted, And you can even show things like through pictures and video and that sort of thing, um, the conditions of that particular region, the people who live there, the kind of lives they lead, which I think would lead to a much deeper understanding of various cultures and regions throughout the world. In my experience, we got all that by reading from a textbook. But words on a page, don't you know. Of course they always say a pictures worth a thousand words. Words on a page don't have the same impact as seeing this stuff. Uh, if not in person, then at least through video and things like that. So when I think about the potential of using technology to relate something along those lines, I think it really is revolutionary. It just requires a teacher with the savvy and approach to to use it at its most effective level for it to become a reality. Well, I mean, speaking of textbooks. One of the that's one of the advantages um of having something like a virtual book or an e book, if you have the right um device that you can read it on where you can embed different kinds of technology in the page. You could actually see a video of you know, the people being discussed, um, you know, or or see pictures of them. Um. You might even be able to if it were connected to the internet, you know, get an update based on you know, what's going on. And this is the way people looked, you know, in this region fifty years ago, this is the way they are now. Um. And that that's one ability that the web has that you know, the uh, the World Book Yearbook in nineteen sixty six, didn't. Um. You know when back back when, back when I was a kid, we were using primarily paper encyclopedias. You know, you'd have the honestly, you'd have the encyclopedia salesperson coming door to door trying to sell you a set of books or your parents really a set of books. And the thing is you were expected to buy a yearbook every year to give you updates. But you know, frankly, you know once you had a set of encyclopedias and it was from nineteen seventy two, you know, for your older brother or sister. You know, it's not it's ninety eight. And while I mean this stuff is six years old. And then you know, you get in the middle school in four and you go, man, this thing is getting pretty ancient. It's pretty outdated information. Now you can go online to the web, um and find a pretty good resources. I mean, you can go to Britannica dot com and get you know, fairly recent you know, articles about virtually anything, and uh, it's you You can be pretty well assured that these are scholarly resources that have been researched by somebody who knows what they're doing. And uh, and it's and it's recent and you don't have to worry about whether or not you're teacher is gonna give you a lecture about Come on, can't you find something newer than this? Yeah, and technology is certainly revolutionized access to information to the point where now the problem isn't finding information about the topic you want to study, it's filtering that information in such a way that it's meaningful. But we'll we'll talk about that. We've got a plan for a future podcast. Specifically, this was actually a listener request to specifically address how to use the web and the internet to research topics in an effective manner. But that is certainly one of the ways that technology has been in the process of revolutionizing education. Well certainly, UM, you know, when you have a school media center and it's really got limited size and limited financial resources behind it, um, having an opportunity to be on something like here in Georgia, we've got Galileo, which is part of the University system of Georgia, and it's got access to thousands of different scholarly resources. Puer viewed articles, um, other kinds of information that you wouldn't physically be able to house or afford by the school itself or even the school system. It's an invaluable resource, you know, things like that. It's something that we hear at at how stuff works use quite often because it allows us to access scholarly journals that otherwise we would have to have, you know, we'd have to have two hundred subscriptions and where do we put all that stuff once we get it? Yeah? UM, that tool has really made research much easier and um far more effective than um than before. I mean before you pretty much had to you know, just hope that whatever you had was adequate to the task at hand. Well that's uh that one benefit two of of a system like that, and I'm sure they're probably uh comparable resources in many you know, many of the states in the United States and probably elsewhere around the world. Um is uh is the ability for somebody to a student to access that in their school media center and then go home or go to their public library nearby and get access to that. If they have an Internet connection and a computer available to them, They're going to be familiar with the system already. And it's not where they have to learn two or three separate systems. They're already acquainted with it and there there should be comfortable with it. Of course, it requires a certain level of information literacy and training, which is also part of you know, having the the teachers and media specialists having the time and um in some cases know how to explain what's going on to them. Yeah. Really, what's required there's a support system for the educators so that they themselves can not only know how to use the tools, but how to use the tools in the most effective manner. Because we you know, I've talked a lot about how teachers need to be able to explain to students how to use these tools. That means that the teachers need to learn it too. And and some teachers are going to find that more challenging than others because this is a completely new way to them. Um. And often a lot of our school systems don't have the real they don't give the teachers the resources they need to increase their skill sets in such a way that's meaningful. Yeah, and again, you know, my heart goes out to all the teachers out there. But yes, sometimes sometimes they're really fighting against the system in order to get the tools they need to do a good job. Yeah, this is going to be sad to many of our younger listeners who are still in school. But yeah, once you once you get out of college with your degree, you will probably be engaging in some sort of professional development for the entirety of your career, especially if you are passionate about passionate about your job, like so many of the educators with whom I have worked over the years. I mean that goes to things that you you know, stuff that you wouldn't necessarily think would be applicable, even if you're just you know, you're just even if you decide to go into say, uh, you know, white collar office environment, I mean you have systems change all the time. So without that literacy, that technological literacy, uh, those changes can be really, really tough. Even with that literacy, they can be challenging. Because I can tell you, as someone who has experienced multiple upgrades over the course of my professional career, Even as someone who knows how computers work and I'm familiar with different UIs and all that kind of stuff, even I find it challenging whenever there's a significant change. Um, I'm reminded of when the last time we updated our word processor and I was crying because all the things that I used were in different places. Now, why do you do that? Microsoft? I'm looking at you, not to call you out, Microsoft, but seriously, when you upgrade your your systems, why do you have to rearrange where everything is? I think if you say the name of the developer twice, you're probably calling them out? What Microsoft? Three times? So anyhow, well, I'm sure that if I were using some other system, like if I were the same thing is true for others as well. I remember distinctly upgrading from I think it was word Perfect four point two to word Perfect fight point one and thinking, what did you do? I can't find anything anymore? Yea, my all my shortcuts don't work anymore. Yeah, and that's an argument for UI designed. So when we were talking about the Classroom of the Future and the previous previous podcasts we were, I mentioned the study that we ran across in dirsh Biegel, in which they the German research searchers, had assumed that the students were comfortable. They had grown up with the Internet, so you know, they knew the ins and outs and they were going to use it for everything they ever did, and it turned out they didn't. Um, But I do think basically they to sum it up, if you haven't listened to it, they the kids music for entertainment purposes, chatting, keeping up with their friends. They're very good at using it for specific purposes. But beyond that very or a relatively narrow range of uses, they were not as effective. And they're not necessarily information or Internet literate as far as going to find research and you know, really knowing how to use the Internet. But I do think that in that case, um, they would probably be at least more familiar, Like if they were asked to switch from say Windows seven to Katie Lennox, they would probably be able to get around more so than somebody who was just getting into computers for the very first time as an adult. And I know a lot of adults who are extremely comfortable with it, but there are some and there are some kids who look at a computer and say, you know, that's just not for me. I'm not comfortable with that. I really don't want to mess with it. So I mean, you have to have people who are are trained in it. You have to have people who are comfortable with the technology for it to really make a difference in the express room. So yeah, there is an amazing potential for technology to really impact education, but ultimately it just boils down to the people, you know, And I mean that's no real big surprise. I mean it can be a surprise if you're one of those technologists, a futurist who who looks ahead and says, look at the amazing tools they'll be at our disposal, because that they often will presuppose that we will be adept at using them. Um, turns out people are a little more complicated than that. So we I I fall into the cautiously optimistic camp and that I definitely see the potential for for technology to help and I am hoping that it does. Uh. So I'm going to concentrate on that. Okay, then sounds fair to me. Okay, Well, that was a good discussion about technology and education. We do have one other one plan specifically looking at the way to conduct research online and the most effective uh kind of skills that you can develop an end uh and some tips for you guys out there if you are needing to research something specific, UH, what's the best way of going about it that will be coming up in a future podcast. So if you guys have any other questions about education and technology, or just other technology topics in general, you can write us. Our email actress is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com Chris and I will talk to you again really soon if you're a tech stuff and be sure to check us out on Twitter tech Stuff hs WSR handle and you can also find us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash tech Stuff h s W or more on this and thousands of other topics becausit how stuff works dot com, and be sure to check out the new tech Stuff blog now on the how Stuff Works homepage, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready for you.

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