kitchen table math, the sequel: 6/14/15 - 6/21/15

Friday, June 19, 2015

The black magic of "technology"

If you haven't read Education Week's new article on education technology, you should. I'll try to get a post up excerpting it later.

Why Ed Tech Is Not Transforming How Teachers Teach
Subtitle: Student-centered, technology-driven instruction remains elusive for most

"Why Ed Tech Is Not Transforming How Teachers Teach" explains, as clearly as anything I've seen, why constructivists want mobile devices in the classroom.

Constructivists want mobile devices in the classroom because mobile devices create student-centered learning.

That's what they think.

And that's what is happening here.

For the administrators who run my district, aided and abetted by a 3-person board majority, "technology" is magic. Nothing matters more.

Nothing matters more because once you have mobile devices in the classroom, the teacher decamps to the back of the room, from whence she can survey students' Google docs.

In the wake of today's traumas, I've discovered yet another horrific aspect of our administrators'  "passion" for technology.

I've discovered a double standard where disciplinary actions are concerned.

An infraction involving technology is punished far more harshly than the same infraction involving paper.

Swipe a set of teacher notes from the teacher's desk and you get detention.

Swipe the same set of notes from the district computer system after having been given the system password by a district technology advocate and you get two hours of interrogation without your parents present and a year's suspension from school. And the police sent to your house.

Because technology.

And see: help desk

Help desk - & another black mark on "technology"

If you are so inclined, could you and anyone else you know like these two Facebook posts?


Della Lenz, Irvington, NY

Thanks -- I appreciate it.

These are the 3 posts I've written about this situation:

Passwords on Post-its (superseded by next post...)

More in a second post