I don’t know about you, but I am getting very nervous when I look around and see how the world is changing and morphing at warp speed. In the middle of last school year, I saw the soon-to-be elected President of Turkey holding up a Coby android tablet device and saying that in his 4 year tenure ALL 16 million students in Turkey would have such. Then last spring I saw the news reports out of South Korea stating two things:
- Seoul would have a citywide free WiFi system that was robust and could sufficiently handle the bandwidth issues
- South Korea is planning to have ALL of its students on fully digital textbooks by 2014-15. These textbooks are not just “flat” versions like our hardcopy texts – but rather an enriched version that looks much more like Wikipedia, CK12 Flex Books, or the Houghton Mifflin FUSE products.
Meanwhile, we really haven’t adjusted much in California, other than our reducing commitment / investment in public education. All of that was not too bad, until earlier this month when I came across another news article that talked about India where ¾ of the population makes less than $2 per day. There are efforts to make sure ALL students have an iPad-type device to assist them with high levels of learning. Impossible! Yet the device has been developed, has a name, and sells for less than $50. If all Indian children and students have one of these devices – do you think it will affect us, our competitiveness, our global stature, or our lives?
Technology is an amazing tool, but it is only a TOOL. I believe the invention of the printing press, movable type, the pencil, and the personal computer were as equally profound in the history of what has mattered to open up learning to the masses. What matters is not the device, but how the devices are put to use and maintained in our classrooms.
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