Richard Noss, professor at the Institute of Education, University of London, has an article up on the “Centre for Education Research and Policy’s” website where he puts forth two claims:
- We lack technology constructed specifically to support learning.
- Educational institutions have not changed in response to technological development.
I disagree with both of these claims. I also find it frustrating that both of these claims are likely to be met with widespread agreement because they are indicative of some of the real problems regarding technology and education. The first is that there is, and has been for a long time, an abundance of technology specifically intended to support learning. The second is that education has changed in response to technological development, but those changes are not of the type that Noss (and I) would like to see.
Let’s consider the first claim. Noss says that, except for some “small steps” (such as interactive whiteboards – he didn’t really just say “interactive whiteboards” did he?!?)
… education has had to make do with the crumbs of other people’s technology, designed for other purposes.
First, Noss is ignoring the abundance of technology that has been constructed specifically for educational purposes going all the way back to writing slate hundreds of years ago and later including popular applications like the LOGO programming language (late 1960s), the PLATO instruction systems (1960s to the early 2000s), and the Mavis Beacon typing tutor first released in the late 1980s. Things explode in the late 1990s and early 2000s with all sorts of learning management systems, “courseware”, online encyclopedias, etc. – too numerous to list here. Many of the technologies that have been, or are being, developed for education are based on well-articulated pedagogical principles and include instructions for use in specific educational contexts. Basically, they cannot be said to have been developed for any other purpose than education.
But, Noss doesn’t talk about technology that supports education; he talks about technology that “supports learning”. That’s a whole different ballgame. A lot of technology that has been developed for education isn’t necessarily intended to support learning, ex. learning management systems, grading software, etc. (and some might include here interactive whiteboards). I’m going to define learning as the creation or destruction of knowledge that results in a change in an individual’s disposition to react to stimuli (a couple of references suggested by the terminology include W. V. O. Quine & J. Schumpeter). I think this is a fairly general and non-problematic definition (correct me if I’m wrong – I know a lot of people will want to include some reference to “reflection” but I think that’s debateable). So, with that definition in mind, what does it take for technology to support learning?
I would argue that any technology that supports the flow of information between individuals, supports learning. I have long been an admirer of Gregory Bateson’s elegant and useful definition of information (I wrote my philosophy thesis on definitions of information so I’m familiar with many definitions and this is the only one that I always go back to), “[information is] a difference which makes a difference”. Bateson is not using the phrase “makes a difference” merely in a colloquial sense to refer to something that matters or is perceived to have some importance, but rather that it results in a change. I think that it is this making a difference that constitutes learning. Thus, any technology that makes it possible for an individual to impart or receive information has the potential to produce the type of change that we refer to as learning. So, are Twitter, Facebook, text messaging and cell phones technologies that support learning? Yes! And what’s more, that is precisely the purpose that they were created for. The problem is not a lack of technology to support learning, it is that we have not devised ways to effectively use available learning technologies within formal educational environments.
Now to the second issue: Have educational institutions not changed in response to technological development? The truth is that educational institutions have changed considerably in direct response to technological development. Consider this: When and why did policymakers decide that there was a need to ban learners’ use of cell phones in classrooms? When and why did educational administrators start spending considerable portions of technology funds on software that blocks access to certain web services and sites? When and why did teachers start informing their students that Wikipedia is not a viable resource for legitimate learning? These are all changes that have come about in direct response to technological development. They are probably not the types of changes that Noss would like to see (certainly not the ones that I would like to see), but they are nonetheless changes and should be acknowledged as such. If we continue to ignore the ways that educational decision makers do react to technological development, we are unlikely to be able to overcome existing challenges to produce the type of change that we would like to see.
