Technolust and Potatoheads
The Washington Post describes a palatial new school where technolust has run amok, dragging teachers down into negativity and frustration instead of engaging them and building learners. “Technolust,” or technology for technology’s sake, does more damage per incident than any initiative (or lack of it) in education today. Technology attracts attention by its sheer luminescence, and the attention turns negative when the money spent carries no planning for the implementation and collaboration that would scaffold successful impetus for learning and change. Taxpayers smell waste instead of seeing success.
Or, to put it bluntly: Shove technology at a faculty without thinking like a teacher and involving the teachers, and you might as well turn on the fan next to your stack of bills.
Sadly, what I am saying is NOT new. Research backs it, and the research on successful implementation is readily available. You don’t throw hardware at people and expect them to use it or use it well. More broadly, you don’t throw ANY concept at a learner and expect them to seize it and integrate it into their understanding without some context, some involvement, some sort of connection to their own “reality.” We KNOW this.
Conversely, you could make Universal Mr. Potatohead (U.M.P.) into a successful initiative if you did it right: let teachers experience a workshop using Mr.P. Challenge them to think of ways Mr. P. could provide connections and allow students to engage in the subjects they teach. Involve some teacher-leaders in Pilot Potatoheads. Brainstorm. Challenge creativity and reward teachers for using it: Mr. P. can provide cells for the microscope in bio, write stories from his own point of view in English, discuss natural resources in social studies, plan an ideal potato city in civics class, observe food chains in potato land, read stories aloud, make friends with fellow potatoheads on the other side of the world, calculate fractions of potatoes in math, and so on. Let teachers collaborate on their successes and problems with the new U.M.P. approach. Share the Mr. Potatohead successes with the taxpayers and invite them to participate. Do we NEED Mr. P. to be able to teach? No. If we stop and think about ways he could become part of our toolbox, however, he might actually make some concepts “stick” (he’s starchy, after all). Mr. P. MIGHT even make us rethink ways to look at our curriculum and learning through creative eyes in general.
Those folks in Alexandria bear more resemblance to potatoheads than effective planners. And now their story will spread like melting butter, preventing deserving schools from getting anything but small potatoes in their technology budgets.
